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Bosnia-Herzegovina
Bosnia Herzegovina has made considerable progress in improving its infrastructure since the war which ended at the end of 1995 and hotels are available in Sarajevo and in other major towns.
Bosnia and Herzegovina has long been the crossroads of many civilizations and cultures. It is these centuries of culturally diversity that has melted it into one of the most fascinating, interesting, and beautiful countries in Europe. People are mostly all of Slavic origin with small numbers of Roma, Albanian plus other mixed communities further enhancing the\is magical mix of many cultures, races, and nations. Bosnia and Herzegovina has luckily succeeded in preserving many of its most precious natural and cultural heritage’s in their original form. Some of these gems of unique beauty, such as the Una River and its magical waterfalls, the wild canyon of the upper Neretva, or the pristine beauty of the River Sutjeska that flows through the oldest National Park in the country, even meet the criteria of world natural heritage sites.
Bosnia & Herzegovina’s religious heritage - In few places has history created such an unusual society tying century’s long contacts of different peoples, cultures, religions, and customs together. In the Illyrian-classical, pre Slavic period, the cults of the East, Roman Pantheon and young Christianity met in a very creative way. Elements of East and West met here and intertwined. There was Catholicism and Orthodoxy versus the Bosnian Church; the Cyrillic, Latin, and Glagolithic writing versus the Bosnian Cyrillic writing (Bosancica). Byzantium Serbian fine arts, western European Romanesque and Gothicism brought by the Croatian coastal practice versus the native artistic traditions like the hand-carved tombstones that line the countryside (stecak). A completely new spiritual and cultural framework was created. In a small territory and among a small number of inhabitants, all speaking the same language and all of similar Slavic origin, the three great Mediterranean civilizations met: Western European in the form of Catholicism, Byzantine in the form of Orthodoxy, and Islam in the form of the Ottoman State. When the Jews were banished from Spain and Portugal at the end of the 15th century, the Ottomans offered them asylum and a fourth cultural component was introduced to Bosnia and Herzegovina. The country’s religious traditions are testament to a rich cultural, religious and historical heritage. It is here that you will find the mystical and quaint Orthodox monasteries in pristine natural surroundings, the Franciscan monks serving their communities in the same fashion as their medieval predecessors, the beautiful Ottoman style mosques and minarets that dot the skyline, and the small but significant influence of the Jewish settlers and their ancient trades. And Medjugorje, the religious shrine near the southern border with Croatia, still draws thousands of pilgrims a year.
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