Road Trip Day 2: Mostar and Wine!

The next day we woke up before our alarms went off, well Jen and I did. And off we went to get breakfast. Turned out to be delicious potato burek with yogurt. I had some of this in Strumitca and wanted it again, well I got my wish and fill in Bosnia. Apparently, they do it often there. Then we bought some stamps for our postcards and some books for Jen. Then we hopped in the car with everyone else and were on our way to Mostar.

Mostar is located on a river in the mountains and thus developed as a city. It’s basically famous for its bridge that was built in 1565, then it was destroyed and rebuilt a few times. So of course we headed straight to the bridge when we got there.

After lunch and souvenir purchasing, we left for a winery or two. We didn’t really know where they were located, but figured we would see signs and that we did. We also went up a seriously scary mountain side.I refuse to call this anything other than a mountain, although, it did look like it might be more of a plateau while where we were was gouged out of the regular landscape and made lower. Oh well. We found one winery, but it wasn’t open so we kept looking for a new one. We found another winery, this one was called Andrija. And normally they don’t do tasting on Saturday, but they opened up a two bottles for us and poured us a glass. They gave us one red and one white. And cheese. This cheese was so good. I wanted to buy the cheese not the wine. The white wine was really good, but I didn’t like the red. However, the rest of the party thought the opposite. Then the guy gave us a tour of the winery.

And off we went to find the next winery. This road was vicious and I almost got sick twice on the way to these wineries. I eventually had to just close my eyes and hope for the best. The wine made it so much worse! The next one we found was Brkic. The guy was super nice. He told us all about his wines and how he makes them. Then invited us to join this tour that they had arranged for some local embassy workers (American, Polish, and Norwegian to be exact). We ate some more delicious cheese and olive oil. I mean this was the best olive oil I had ever had- it actually tasted like olives! Then we got to taste 3 whites and 3 reds. One of the whites was called “Moon Walker.” They allow the grapes to get some yeast on them before putting the whole grape into the barrel. Then when the moon is young, they churn the wine. When the moon is full, they let the moon church the wine (with gravity). It was interesting. The last red we had tasted the best, but it wasn’t for sale sadly.

Then we headed back to Sarajevo. We had to go down the creepy side of the mountain again. It was a lot less scary going down. People suggested that it was less scary because I was in front, but I claim that it was just less fast.

We stopped for dinner in a little restaurant on the side of the road. It was kind of creepy because I knew out the back of the restaurant was basically a giant river, but because it was so pitch black dark, we couldn’t see it! They literally had no veggie food. The guy just shrugged when we asked for some. Eventually we convinced him that shopska and cabbage would be an acceptable version. Then he seriously over charged us, but apparently the hunk of lamb was yummy. We made it back to Sarajevo in time to go to sleep to be functional tomorrow while exploring!