The Magic of Medjugore

Smack dab in the middle of nowhere is wonderful place called Medjagore. My knowledge before I went there was - the Blessed Mother appeared to some children and that many people who come here find a spiritual renewal and some have miraculous experiences.

Now when you drive into Bosnia Herzegovina from Croatian, you actually leave the European Union and some of our pampered modern day wonders like our GPS disappear. Of course we're old enough to remember the Fred Flintstone days of pre-Google maps, Siri and the rest of the modern travel helpers but it did prove to be a bit troublesome. I'm sure that there is a GPS network that works in B/H, but we were not on that one.

The border crossing went fine. They did take our passports and did something with them, but it was not more than a 10 minute delay. We did need some sort of car insurance rider which, lo and behold one could purchase at a trailer behind the border crossing building for 20 Euros. No big deal - the  hidden cost of traveling.

All was fine until we got into the town and our hotel was hiding somewhere in the maze of new buildings and rosary bead shops. An honest description of Medjugorie is that it seems rather tacky at first and has that unplanned boomtown look that I'm sure many of these types of places have.  The town is not huge and we hoped we could just drive around and the hotel would pop out at us. And luckily one of the first signs we saw was the Pension Ivona, our hotel - or so we thought. It looked pretty nice and we thought this will do nicely for the $50 per night we booked. But after the person we first spoke to fetched the sleeping person who spoke English, it turned out the Pension Ivona was not to be confused with the Hotel Ivona - and he didn't really know where that hotel was. (yea right!) Eventually a little wandering, asking actual people for directions - and getting the most helpful advice from shop keepers and even other hotel people, we found Hotel Ivona, somewhat out of the main town, but very new, clean, friendly with a gorgeous pool in the back, an even better $50 choice.
Being us, the seat-of-your pants travelers, we just said, "oh let's walk up Apparition Hill, the site of the apparitions in the 1980's. The guy at the hotel said it's an easy 20 minute walk. Really??? I said to him later, did you actually look at us, you 30 year old skinny guy? ((I didn't really say the 30 year old skinny guy part) It was NOT easy, it was very difficult, we really should have paid attention to all those walking sticks being sold along with the rosary beads and we definitely should not have listened to the hearty young Italian family who said follow the red stone path, it's more direct. Direct means steeper in Italian, I guess. Of course it was about 95 degrees out too. Picture a rocky river bed, uneven and steep and then picture me and Svend - not pretty. And to add insult to injury, barefooted pilgrims passed us. Others, old and young, some saying the rosary, also passed us. But guess what - we made it and it was wonderful. Reverent, peaceful, moving and special in a way that's hard to articulate. There's a statue of the Blessed Mother and not far away a cross. People were praying, some in tears. It was a truly moving and gratifying experience.
There was a quite a felling of accomplishment when we finally reached the world of sidewalks after our decent from Apparition Hill.

That evening we drove down to Saint James Church and participated in a Mass that was in Croatian, but that fact didn't matter. It was wonderful being among several thousand faithful individuals.  There is a powerful felling of peace and belonging in Medjugore. 
After a delightful swim in the beautiful pool behind Hotel Ivona and a $4 over the top breakfast the next morning, we went back to the church for one more Mass (in English this time) and the priest spoke eloquently about the miracle of Medjugore in his once skeptical opinion. It's that despite all odds, in the middle of nowhere the faithful come and they won't be stopped. I hope to go back someday!