What Amir Wants Tourists to Understand About Mostar
Amir Pasic is 52. He runs a cafe on the east bank of the Neretva, within sight of Stari Most. He was 19 when the bridge was destroyed — a loss felt across the Balkans on November 9, 1993, hit by over 60 Croatian tank shells. He watched it collapse into the river from a rooftop two hundred meters away.
Now he serves Bosnian coffee to tourists and, when they ask — and they often ask — he tells them what the bridge means.
We sat at his riverside table with a dzezva between us, the rebuilt bridge glowing white in afternoon sun, and I asked him the things I'd been too awkward to ask anyone else.
"Tell me about the day the bridge fell."
"I don't talk about that day easily. But I'll say this: the bridge was 427 years old. It was built by Mimar Hajrudin in 1566 for the Ottoman Sultan. For 427 years, it connected the east and west sides of the city. When it fell, something in Mostar fell with it. Not just stone. The idea that connection is possible.
I was 19 and stupid enough to be on a rooftop. The shelling had been going on for months. But the bridge... we thought maybe they wouldn't destroy it. It was too beautiful. Too old. Too important. We were wrong.
The reconstruction took 11 years. Turkish, Italian, Croatian, and Bosnian engineers. They pulled original stones from the river and used the same construction techniques. The UNESCO inscription in 2005 recognized the rebuilt bridge. It looks the same. It feels... almost the same."
"How does it feel when tourists treat it as just a photo spot?"
"I understand it. They don't know the history. They see a beautiful bridge over a beautiful river and they take a photo. That's fine.
What bothers me is when they don't visit the War Photo Exhibition. It's 10 BAM — 5 euros. Forty-five minutes. It tells you what happened here. It shows you the bullet holes and explains them. It shows you the bridge before, during, and after.
If you're going to walk across Stari Most, you owe it to the bridge to understand what it took to rebuild it. Not just the engineering. The political will. The forgiveness. The decision to reconnect what war had divided."
"What should tourists eat?"
"Cevapi. Always cevapi first. Grilled meat in somun bread with onions and kaymak. Tima-Irma near the bridge does the best — 8-12 BAM for a full plate. That's your lunch.
For dinner, the riverside restaurants. Yes, they charge a little more. But eating grilled Neretva trout (15-20 BAM) with the bridge lit up upstream — that's worth 5 extra BAM.
And the coffee. Please, please call it Bosnian coffee. Not Turkish. I know it looks the same. I know it's made the same way. But calling it Turkish here is like... imagine if someone called American barbecue 'English roast.' It's ours. The ritual is ours.
The way to drink it: pour a small amount from the dzezva into your fildzan cup. Dip a sugar cube into the coffee — just the corner. Bite the sugar cube. Sip. Repeat. It should take thirty minutes. If you finish in five minutes, you've missed the point. The coffee is not the product. The conversation is the product. The coffee is just the excuse."
"Where do you send visitors that other places don't?"
"Blagaj Tekke — the Dervish monastery on the Buna spring. 12km from Mostar, so most day-trippers don't make it. But it's extraordinary. A 16th-century monastery built into a cliff face where the Buna River literally emerges from a cave. The water is cold and clear and the acoustics inside the cave are remarkable.
Go before 10AM. After that, the tour buses arrive. Entry is 5 BAM. The trout restaurants beside the river are excellent — 15-20 BAM for a full meal.
Kravica Waterfalls are 40 minutes south — Croatia's Plitvice Lakes are another waterfall wonder worth the trip. A semicircular waterfall you can swim under. 10 BAM entry. In summer, the pool below is full of swimmers. In September, you might have it to yourself.
And the Partisan Cemetery above the city — a memorial to Yugoslav partisans from WWII, designed by the architect Bogdan Bogdanovic. It's crumbling and overgrown, which somehow makes it more powerful. Free. Few tourists go. The view over Mostar from there is beautiful."
"Is the city still divided?"
"Officially, no. Practically... it's complicated. The east bank is predominantly Bosniak. The west bank is predominantly Croat. They have different phone networks, different football teams, different newspapers. Some schools still operate with separate Bosniak and Croat curricula under one roof — students enter through different doors.
But it's changing. Slowly. The young generation crosses the bridge without thinking about it. They go to the same cafes, the same clubs. The arts scene in Mostar — music, film, street art — doesn't care about your ethnicity.
The bridge helps. It was rebuilt to reconnect. And every day, thousands of people walk across it. That's the point. That's always been the point."
"What's the one thing you wish tourists knew?"
"That Mostar is not a war museum. We are a living city. We drink coffee, we argue about football, we complain about the weather, we fall in love.
Yes, the war happened. It's important. Visit the exhibition. Read the plaques. Understand the bullet holes. But then sit at a cafe, drink coffee, watch the bridge divers, eat cevapi, and experience Mostar as it is now — a city that rebuilt itself.
The bridge was destroyed and rebuilt. Mostar was destroyed and is rebuilding. That's not a tragedy you visit. That's a story of people who refused to let destruction be the last chapter.
Order another coffee. Stay longer than you planned. And when you cross the bridge, walk slowly. It took 11 years to rebuild. You can give it 5 minutes."
Amir's cafe is on the east bank, 100 meters south of Stari Most. Bosnian coffee 3 BAM. No menu — he serves coffee, juice, and conversation. Open 8AM until he decides to close.
