11/13 – yesterday the skies opened and the rain poured down, so we stayed close to home in our cozy apartment in Split. Our gracious landlady came down to make sure the water wasn’t coming in anywhere – there had been trouble with flooding before. We were nice and dry. She offered us more schnapps. Gotta love this place!

I spent most of the afternoon trying to plan the next leg of our journey. Jim wants to go to the pilgrimage town of Medjugorje, (Med you GOR ya) where the Virgin has been seen or heard daily for over 30 years.

We can get there easily enough on a Croatian bus from Split, in about 4 hours. The problem is where to go from there. Looking at a map, it appears to be a straight shot from there to Sarajevo, then northeast to Belgrade in Serbia, which is where we’d like to go. However, the nice folks at EuRail tell us that this train doesn’t run anymore, and the website for Bus Bosnia suggests that we rent a car! Oh well. The Bosnian infrastructure may have some issues. I’ll keep working on it.

The bus ride was tranquil, taking us up the coast advertised as the Croatian Riviera. Lots of posh hotels, casinos and yachts in the harbors. Only got a few pix, due to the rain.

After a short border check, we were in Bosnia, and the rain stopped. By 4pm, we found our apartment in one of many new buildings erected to support the influx of pilgrims. We have a brand new kitchen, and a washing machine that looks like a deluxe cheese grater!

Unfortunately, I hurt my hip lifting my pack this morning, and have been in considerable discomfort all day. I hope I can walk to the pilgrimage sites tomorrow.

Medjugorje was a small village prior to 1981, when six teens started reporting communications with Our Lady, Queen of Peace. The messages, sightings and miracles have been occurring daily since then, and over 40 million have visited the town, which has grown to support all the pilgrims who flock here. If you are not familiar with the history of the apparitions, you can read up on them at Medjugorje.org.