The Old Bridge has been built 1566 and ever since than it presents an architectural wonder, because this bridge was built without concrete. It was built of the stone called Temelija and with the eggs and the lead. The bridge stood immovably for four centuries until crushed it in the war.

Since then on this place it has been a lot of suspension bridges. The last one was built under the ruins of the Old Bridge and it was solidly constructed and it was very nice too. 

But, destiny of Mostar is not to have a replacement for beautiful stone arch which firmly connected two shores of Neretva in the town center. Today in morning hours a water level was extremely high and it demolished a new Old bridge. 

Neretva has as wild beast destroyed everything what was in it way, so it destroyed all houses and all restaurants and cafes that were close to the water. Although it is only important that there were no human losses, damage to the single persons and also to the whole town was great. The guilt for all this is not only in the showers and because it was raining in the past few days. 

The guilt is partly on the Electric Company that didn't release the water slowly from the accumulation lake. They release the water all in the same time, and we saw what happened. It seams that we are not tired of crushing the bridges during the war and we need to crush them now.

The new Old Bridge was pulsing vein of the town center. During the day, especially at the night, thousands of young people were crossing this bridge. This bridge was very important to the youths because it connected directly a right shore to the many cafes and to the Discotheque on the left shore. These cafes are main place for going out in Mostar. Mostar, as the name says the town of bridges (most=bridge), lost all bridges in the past war. And now when we have managed to recover from these losses we lost another bridge. Now we have only two bridges but on the farthest parts of town. So if you would like to go out on another s i de you will need to have a long walk. 

And for all wealthier I suggest a helicopter or a plane, and for all less wealthier I suggest a motorbike or a bicycle, and for all normal Mostar people I suggest not to save their shoes, and everybody who dares there is only fifty meters to swim. It seams there is nothing we could do, except building the newest Old Bridge, but now of a stone (at least the water will not take it far away). I'm sorry for the bridge and for all destroyed houses, but I'm glad that we didn 't have a school today.

 MIRAN ČERKIĆ  09/12/1999