Surprising walk around Višegrad in the Srpska Republic

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(the article below accompanies this video)

It was our first full day in the mountain town of Višegrad in the Srpska region of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and we were anxious to see the big old Ottoman bridge, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It also turned out to be New Year’s Day in the Serbian Orthodox Church, thirteen days after December 31.

I woke up at 5 am to begin the day, with a BG of 57. I had a package of Twix and went back to sleep (eventually).

At 9 am I woke up for real, and got a rude surprise: I was now 202. How did a Twix do that? It was only 30g of carbs, my usual low snack lately. I could see maybe 150, but not 202. I don’t mind bad BGs, it’s the unexplained ones that get to me.

Anyway Masayo and I had coffee for breakfast, and some of the sweets that the apartment owners had left out for us last night for our arrival. We also turned on the TV, quite a rarity for us; any video we watch is always online. But we found a channel called EuroNews, and watched news about Charlie Hebdo and its first issue after the shooting in Paris.

After a while we went out to walk around Višegrad, which is easy because it’s a very small town. We went up a hill to the Orthodox Church, which is next to the Serbian Military Cemetery. We looked around at the gravestones, all for people who died in 1992-5 during the war. Many of them had engraved photos of the people — some in casual sweatpants and tennis shoes, some in military gear holding guns. There was still snow everywhere, and the quietness of the location up on the hillside, the only noise being some kids sledding down a hill next to it, made it very striking.

We walked down the hill and found a tourist info office, a small little hut at the back of the bus parking lot. We got a nice Republic of Srpska map (I’ve been collecting maps of every area we go to and have an incredible array already), and got some info about buses out of town into Serbia, our next destination.

Then we planned on the big site: the UNESCO-inscribed Mehmed Paša Sokolović Bridge, completed in 1577 and featuring 11 arches. But we couldn’t see it, because there was a large wooden temporary wall surrounding it. We walked all around it as we realized that the bridge was closed for construction.

We went to one side of it, onto the porch of a restaurant that was accessible, and I checked my BG so I could get a diabetes-related photo of the bridge. I was 122.

Then we stood around wondering what to do, and began to notice that occasionally we could in fact see someone walking across the bridge. How did they get there? Were they working? Were they supposed to be there?

Our answer came in the form of a tall woman who emerged, smiling embarrassedly, from a hole in the corner of the wooden fence. People were just breaking in and walking across! And you couldn’t really blame them; there wasn’t any other way nearby to get across the wide Drina River.

Masayo and I talked it over. Would we go through? Quickly we decided, sure, why not? I stepped through the hole, and she followed. We walked around a group of trees, and the first thing we saw was a guy casually dressed, but apparently guarding the bridge. Uh-oh.

I ignored him, and tried to act innocent and touristy, taking a photo of a sign explaining how Turkey was aiding in the reconstruction project. Finally I had to confront the guy. He spoke no English.

With hand gestures and smiles, I got that the bridge was closed but we could go onto it for a minute. (Literally, one minute, he signalled.) And I thought he indicated that we should take no photos, but he didn’t seem to care too much. He was lighting a cigarette, and I wished that we had some we could give him as a “tip”. The restaurant we had eaten in last night gave us souvenir lighters, but we didn’t have them on us.

So we walked halfway across the bridge to the center, where a large stone contains some Arabic inscriptions, and where we took some photos of the river. We headed back, and I nodded in appreciation to him. So, nice way to see a UNESCO site: as craven rulebreakers!

Then we went to Višegrad’s newest and, locals hope, most attractive site; Andrićtown. It is being built by Emir Kustarica, a Serbian filmmaker, in honor of famous Višegrad resident Ivo Andrić who won the Nobel Prize for Literature for a novel inspired by the town and the bridge.

Andrićtown is a kind of tourist area whose buildings reflect the different empires and entities that have owned Višegrad over the centuries. When we were there, it was a little rainy and there weren’t many people. Plus, it wasn’t finished yet; construction was actually going on at the time. But we walked around and ended up at a small bakery, where we ate some burek, just like we’d had yesterday.

I ended up at 310 after the burek I ate yesterday, and I didn’t think it was because of the food. So today was a good chance to test my theory: I’d eat the same thing, but take the same amount of Humalog, and see whether or not I ended up high again. It was, of course, delicious.

Back in the room, we decided to add one night to our stay. The Apartment Dimitrieski was so nice, I wanted to hang around and work some on t1dwanderer.com. We did that through booking.com. The owner came down to collect the payment, and though he didn’t speak English too well he mentioned a trip to a spa tomorrow at 10 am, and a meal at 3 pm. I tried to explain we didn’t need the spa but thanks for the dinner info. After he left Masayo and I tried to figure out what he’d meant. Was he inviting us up for a meal with him and his wife? We thought so but weren’t sure.

At 4 pm I checked again to see how my burek experiment went. It went well: I was 121. So I really was unlucky yesterday.

We went to a supermarket for dinner, and made fish sticks plus instant soup with some carrots I cut up, plus a croissant bread each. And I had the beers they owners had given us last night. Everything was easy to dose for because I counted the Nutrition Info from the packages.

It didn’t work though: I was 271 at 11 pm. More mystery. I took two units of Humalog and went to sleep.

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