Private tour of Počitelj and Blagaj in Bosnia and Herzegovina

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Today was fun because we got to see some parts of Bosnia that we normally wouldn’t have seen: we were taken by car by the owners of the apartment Masayo and I are renting in Mostar, Bosnia, who offer an affordable and informal tour.

The day didn’t begin well, medically speaking: my BG was 209 in the morning. It had been over 300 last night, and I guess my Humalog wasn’t enough. Breakfast was cinnamon cereal, with eggs and yogurt prepared by Masayo in our kitchen.

The tour began at 10:00 am. The couple came and picked us up and we set off down the road. The first stop was a town called Počitelj (“po chi tel ya”, sorta). It is a small town built on a hillside on one side of the river that flows down from Mostar. The buildings all seemed to be made of ancient white stones. The houses, and a tower, and a mosque, and an old fort way up on the crest of the hill, were uniformly grey. The sky was grey too, and we didn’t see or hear any other people.

But it was nice to walk around the little town, up and down the steps that lead everywhere. Apparently, in summer, the place is rather busier and a nice place to hang out drinking tea by the river. But today it was more like an open-air museum just for us.

In the car, our hosts told us about the war years, and how bad it was in Mostar. Ramajana, the wife (who spoke much better English) also lamented how Islam is misunderstood and is a very peaceful religion. The Charlie Hebdo killings were just yesterday, but she didn’t mention them. I asked how the rebuilt bridge in Mostar was different than the original one; she said it was mostly the same but the old one was better.

One interesting point was her explanation of the name of her business, Little Rock Apartment: not only was the building situated on a site where some rock had to be cut out from the hillside, but she wanted to honor Bill Clinton from Arkansas for his actions during the Bosnian War. She loved Clinton, and incidentally rhapsodized about the Yugoslavia years as well.

The next place was a town called Blagaj (“blah guy”), built around the river that flows from a high rock face. An old Muslim-style house is built beside the river, and we were able to go inside and see how life might have been hundreds of years ago in the Ottoman Empire days of Bosnia. Masayo had to put on a headscarf.

The place was nice, with comfortable, friendly little rooms and big ornate rugs on all floors. We saw each of the rooms and then had some traditional Bosnian coffee at a small (and similarly-styled) attached shop. We each poured our coffee from a little copper pitcher into a tiny ceramic cup, and there was a small sweet snack to go with it. The room was warm enough, and we could hear only the river and the little circular waterfall outside.

Then it was back to Mostar, the tour over. Back in the room, I was a little worried about my BG because I had not only eaten the little sweet snack, but had unwisely put a large cube of sugar in my coffee (when in Rome…). It was 190, a little high but not unmanageable. We had some lunch.

Then we walked around Mostar some more, and I took the opportunity to return to the riverside below the Old Bridge to attempt to take a photo in exactly the same place that Michael Palin had filmed from on his New Europe BBC series in 2007. We did pretty well, but I realized later that, while we got the spot correct, the BBC’s camera was back further, and possible zoomed in. (Plus it was summer and green when they were here, and a small fence had been built since.)

Later at 3 pm I was 142, and spent the afternoon working on t1dwanderer.com. Masayo made sausage omelettes for dinner, and we had soup and a plain croissant with it.

My BG before dinner had gone up to 246, so I took a big shot.

Irritatingly, my BG was almost the exact same a few hours after dinner: 245. I took another Humalog shot and went to bed. We are getting up very early tomorrow to leave by train for Sarajevo. That will be fun, trying to steer diabetes through an unusual early morning.

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