Do you know Christian Schmidt?
We had more or less forgotten him. Somewhere there was a memory that he had once been a German federal minister. We had no idea that this same man was now supposed to be one of the most powerful political figures in Bosnia and Herzegovina, despite being German.
Until we came to Mostar.
Angie was researching Bosnia and Herzegovina’s political structure, and almost the first thing that appeared was a news item. Christian Schmidt had announced his resignation as High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina. First, we had to look up what that office was.
And discovered that it was an extraordinary answer to an extraordinarily complicated state.
The Mostar we had not expected
At first, though, something quite different had occupied us.
Before and during our journey, we had read about Mostar. About a divided city. About the war. About the rebuilding of the Old Bridge. About a bridge as a symbol of reconciliation. About a predominantly Muslim east and a predominantly Catholic west.
In short, we had expected to see that division everywhere.
Our first impression was different.
The old town was full of people. Visitors, street musicians, souvenir shops and cafés crowded around the bridge. The bridge divers waited for the next donations before plunging twenty metres into the Neretva again. But as soon as we walked a few steps further, it became quieter.
From the terrace of our little café right beside the bridge, we could watch the activity with a little distance. In the morning, the city was almost still. In the evening, the lanes slowly emptied. In between, we sat over coffee or a spritz and looked at the bridge.
Above all, we did not feel that we were constantly moving between two worlds.
Expectation and reality
We had expected symbolism. Perhaps we had been looking for the wrong things.
ChatGPT had prepared us for differences: more mosques in the east, more churches in the west. The bridge as both boundary and connection.
At some point, Angie began counting. It was not scientific. But neither did it produce a strikingly clear picture. There were churches on both sides. Mosques too. The differences were much less obvious than we had expected.
That does not mean they do not exist.
Only that they did not leap out at us.
An extraordinary office
And then came Christian Schmidt. The more we read about the High Representative, the more unusual the office seemed.
A foreign politician who can enact or amend laws. Who can overturn decisions. Who, when it comes to it, has the final word. In the middle of Europe. Of course, this office has a history. It emerged after the Bosnian War as part of the international peace settlement and was intended to help hold the country together.
One question remained: if Mostar initially seemed so peaceful to us, why does Bosnia and Herzegovina still need such an institution?
We found no simple answer.
Visible and invisible
Our puzzlement did not remain entirely without clues, though.
There was the large cross on the hill above Mostar. There was the knowledge of the fighting here a good thirty years ago. And there was the feeling that perhaps you cannot always see a city’s tensions on its surface.
Christian Schmidt’s office did not fit the picture we had formed of Mostar.
Not because we had known him before. But because the office showed that the country could look peaceful while apparently still requiring an utterly exceptional political framework.
Bosnia and Herzegovina is not a country you can understand in two days. In Mostar, we initially noticed little of the division we had read so much about. Christian Schmidt’s office reminded us that a peaceful impression and a fragile order can exist at the same time.
That contradiction stayed with us from Mostar.