Most first trips run Sarajevo to Mostar and back, and that is a fair week if you use the days in between. Sarajevo is the anchor: Baščaršija, the Latin Bridge, the tunnel museum and Trebević above it. Herzegovina is the day-trip half, with Blagaj, Počitelj, the Kravica falls and Trebinje all inside a couple of hours of Mostar on good road. Add Konjic and Jajce if you are driving, because both sit on the way. The second week is where the country gets interesting: Bihać and the Una in the northwest for the rapids and the waterfalls, Banja Luka for the Vrbas canyon, and Tjentište in the southeast for Sutjeska, Perućica and the highest ground in the country. May, June, September and October are the months that work everywhere at once. Distances read short and drive long, so plan two hundred kilometres as a half day rather than two hours.
1 Bosnia and Herzegovina city guide
Fun fact
The whole coastline of Bosnia and Herzegovina is about twenty kilometres long and all of it is at Neum, which makes it one of the shortest stretches of sea any country holds. It is also enough to cut Croatia in two, separating Dubrovnik and the south from the rest of the country. Croatia built the 2.4 kilometre Pelješac Bridge, opened in July 2022, to get around it.
Stereotypes, sorted out
The realityThe war ended in December 1995 and no foreign ministry treats the country as dangerous today. What is left is administrative and physical rather than active: a constitution written to end a war, and mine contamination in rural ground that clearance has not finished. Cities, roads and marked trails are ordinary travel.
The realityThey are two regions with different rock, weather and food. Bosnia is the northern, forested, mountainous share drained toward the Sava. Herzegovina is the southern karst below the Ivan Pass, hot and bare and planted with vines, drained by the Neretva. Crossing between them takes one tunnel and changes what grows.
The realityThe Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Republika Srpska are internal entities of one state, and moving between them means a road sign and a change of alphabet on it. There is no checkpoint, no stamp and no separate currency.
The realityBosniaks are the largest of three constituent peoples, alongside Serbs and Croats, and the religious map runs Muslim, Orthodox and Catholic. Sarajevo has a mosque, a synagogue, an Orthodox cathedral and a Catholic one inside a few hundred metres of each other, which is the reason the city gets its nickname rather than a tourist-board line.
The realityMostar takes a coach load an hour from the Croatian coast and empties by evening, which is exactly why it is worth staying the night. It is also one town in a country holding Una National Park, the Vrbas canyon, Sutjeska and Perućica, a medieval royal town at Jajce and a Drina bridge with a Nobel Prize attached.
How to behave
- Coffee is a length of time, not a drink. Bosnian coffee comes in a džezva with a cube of sugar and a piece of lokum, and it is served on the understanding that you are staying. Ordering it to take away is the one clearly foreign move.
- The war is not off limits, but it is not small talk either. People will talk about it, often frankly, if they raise it. Asking a stranger which side they were on, or what happened to their family, is the line.
- Names carry information here, and guessing at someone’s background from theirs is rude even when you are right. Nationality questions come up in politics constantly and in conversation with visitors almost never.
- Shoes come off at the door of a home, and in a mosque. Cover shoulders and knees in any religious building, and women should carry a scarf for mosques.
- You will be fed, and refusing outright is awkward. Take what is offered, eat some of it, and let the bill argument happen without you: guests do not pay.
- Rakija is poured in small glasses and sipped, not shot, and refusing the first one politely is normal. Driving is a complete answer, because the blood alcohol limit is effectively zero and enforced.
- Cash still runs a lot of the country outside the cities. Cards work in supermarkets, chain hotels and city restaurants, and stop working at bus stations, small guesthouses and mountain huts.
Famous Bosnian faces
Ivo Andrić
Meša Selimović
Aleksandar Hemon
Emir Kusturica
Danis Tanović
Jasmila Žbanić
Goran Bregović
Dino Merlin
Zdravko Čolić
Edin Džeko
Miralem Pjanić
Mirza Delibašić
Amel Tuka
Vladimir Prelog
Alija Izetbegović
Must-try Bosnian food
Ćevapi
Small grilled fingers of minced beef, served by the ten in a somun flatbread with raw onion and a spoon of kajmak. The national dish, and the one thing every town argues about.
Pljeskavica
The same mince pressed flat and grilled as one patty, wider than the bread it comes in. Ordered when ćevapi feels like too many separate decisions.
Ražnjići
Skewered cubes of pork or veal off the same grill, plainer than ćevapi and usually eaten with bread, onion and nothing else.
Pastrmka
River trout, grilled whole, from the Una, the Neretva or the Pliva. Ordered at the restaurant nearest the water it came out of, which is the whole point.
Burek
Meat in a rolled coil of hand-stretched pastry, baked and cut by weight. In Bosnia burek means meat and nothing else: the others have their own names.
Zeljanica
The spinach and cheese one, and the pie most locals actually order. Eaten with a glass of thin drinking yoghurt, which is not optional.
Krompiruša
The potato pie, cheap and heavy, and the one that fills a bus journey. Sirnica is the plain cheese version beside it on the same tray.
Uštipci
Fried balls of dough served hot with kajmak and soft cheese. A breakfast in the mountains and a side dish everywhere else.
Begova čorba
Bey’s soup: chicken, okra and root vegetables thickened to a pale cream. The formal starter of Bosnian cooking and the test of a kitchen.
Bosanski lonac
The Bosnian pot, layered meat and vegetables cooked slowly in a tall clay vessel and served out of it. Ordered ahead in the places that still do it properly.
Japrak
Vine or chard leaves rolled around rice and mince and simmered in stock. The cabbage-leaf winter version is sarma, and both come with sour cream.
Klepe
Small pasta parcels of minced meat under garlic yoghurt, closer to a Turkish manti than to anything Italian.
Tufahija
A whole apple poached in sugar syrup, cored and packed with walnuts, served cold under whipped cream in a glass. The classic Sarajevo dessert.
Hurmašice
Semolina biscuits soaked in syrup until they are heavy. Made for holidays and funerals and eaten year round with coffee.
Baklava
Layered pastry with walnuts rather than pistachio here, cut into diamonds and cured in syrup. Sold by weight in the bazaar.
Kajmak
Salted clotted cream skimmed off boiled milk and left to mature. Spread on bread, dropped on hot ćevapi, and better the older it is.
Ajvar
Roasted red peppers and aubergine cooked down to a relish, made at home in autumn in quantities meant to last the winter.
Suho meso
Beef cured and cold-smoked over beech, sliced thin. Herzegovina makes an air-dried pršut alongside it, closer to the Dalmatian style.
Bosanska kafa
Ground fine, boiled in a copper džezva, poured over the grounds and drunk with a sugar cube held in the teeth and a piece of lokum beside it.
Rakija
Fruit brandy, distilled at home as often as bought. Šljivovica is plum and the default, loza is grape, and Herzegovina adds herbs for travarica.
Žilavka and Blatina
The two indigenous Herzegovinian grapes, a mineral white and a dark red, grown on the karst around Mostar, Čitluk and Trebinje and rarely exported.