From Split, my next main stop was initially Dubrovnik, but I got in contact with Jessica and she convinced me to meet up with her in Mostar, Bosnia, which wasn’t too far out of the way for me. She was an elementary school teacher from San Diego that had taken a year sabbatical to travel and had been traveling in the Balkans for a few weeks already.
A few minutes after she arrived at the hostel we were both staying at in Mostar, she got a phone call from her boyfriend. “Hey, how was your interview?!” she said to the phone. I knew immediately I had misread the situation badly. Somehow I had seen what I wanted to see back in Split. Somehow Nicole’s intuition was wrong. I felt so dumb for chasing this chance to hang out with Jessica. It’s not like a bike tourist can have a meaningful relationship with anyone anyway due to the transient nature of touring. I knew this intellectually but I think the loneliness of being on the road that long was really messing with my ability to be rational. I didn’t really want a relationship, but I did want to just take a chance with someone new and see where it went.
After her phone call with her boyfriend, Jessica and I went to find dinner. I admitted to her that I showed up in Mostar on the assumption of mutual attraction, but clearly I was confused. We laughed a bit at that and took it to friendville. I was getting accustomed to making this shift by this point.
We stayed in the first hostel in Mostar, Hostel Miran, which was run my a guy named.. Miran. He had a reputation for being a wild guy that gave a great War Tour of the city. So we took that tour and listened at great length to his first-hand experience of the war. I had never been to such a war-torn place before and this was very interesting to see. There were blown up buildings and bullet holes left over from the was in 90’s. Mostar was recovering but it still had a lot of scar tissue. It made me feel grateful to have the problems the U.S. has.
Miran, Jessica, Me on top of a very windy mountain
It was raining a lot still in the area. The temps were getting into the low 40’s/30’s. The forecasts were showing nothing but rain everywhere for the foreseeable future. I was feeling really discouraged about going on in that weather. It just seemed so miserable to ride in the rain for days. The bad weather combined with my feeling depressed and lonely made me want to quit the bike tour. Maybe I would just switch into “normal traveler” with luggage and bus around the area instead of ride in the rain? Maybe I should just pack it up and go back to the U.S.? I didn’t know what to do.
So after a few nights in Mostar, I took a bus to Dubrovnik thinking that would be a good place to think it over since it has an airport in case I wanted to fly back. Jessica was also planning to go to Dubrovnik so I would at least know someone else there.