Blagaj -- a mild place

Possibly the most cliche shot of Bosnia -- but it is pretty

Sunday 7/30 we drove to Blagaj, about 12 KM from Mostar, to see the famous spot where the Buna River begins in a spring of cold, green water spurting from beneath a limestone cave. On this spotunder a 200-meter cliff the 1500s Surfis built the Tekija monastery in the 1500s.

Today, tourists admire the building, throw coins into the water and take a sip of it from a silver cup tethered to stone stairs that lead from the monastery to the river. Then then sit under trees in the courtyard and sip Turkish coffee prepared and presented perfectly on a heated copper salver with a square of sweet locum.

After we did all of this and snapped a million pictures, we walked to the other side of the river to get this shot. We brought pears, apples and wine for a snack but we also went to one of the riverside cafes and got fresh trout for 10 KM (about $6.

It is a lovely, peaceful spot, though we could not but notice that a marble sign implanted high above the mouth of the cave in the cliff, had been shot out. Coming into town it's impossible to miss the crushed skeletons of a christian and one orthodox church. The sign which gave offence was written in Cyrillic -- in other words, Serbian in this Bosniak section of the country.

The only word left distinguishable was simply Blagaj.Blaga here means mild.