Beaches of Bosnia

Bosnia and Herzegovina is a country of forests and cold mountain rivers. Unless one looks at a map with a fine eye for detail, it might escape notice that the country has any beaches at all. The coastline of neighboring Croatia stretches an amazing 1777 kilometers along the Adriatic Sea and is broken only by Bosnia’s tiny opening to the coast. This curiosity was impossible to ignore considering how close we were, so NG and I took a twenty minute taxi ride from Croatia to Neum, the only seaside town of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Until just last year, Croatia was split in two by this small corridor to the sea. There was no way to get from Split to Dubrovnik overland except by going through the border crossing into Bosnia and Herzegovina, getting passport checked, driving for ten minutes through the country and then doing it all again to enter Croatia once more.

In 2022, Croatia opened the Peljesac Bridge so that traffic can loop around Bosnian territory and avoid border crossings. I imagine that this makes Neum a much quieter place.

This small corridor to the sea exists because of 17th-century geopolitical events. Neum was originally the northern-most part of the Republic of Ragusa, an independent city-state now known as the Croatian city of Dubrovnik. During this time, the Venetian Empire controlled most of the Adriatic and the Ottoman Empire controlled Bosnia and Herzegovina. Ragusa gave up Neum to the Ottomans, creating a buffer zone between them and the Venetians.

Although Neum is just minutes away from Croatia, and the people share the same language and culture, it feels like it is in a different country. Only recently, Croatia and Bosnia were part of the same country along with Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia, Kosovo and Slovenia. During the Yugoslav era, the Adriatic coast was a backyard to people from all these countries and the place to go during summer vacations. But now that Croatia has become part of the European Union, it has become a popular holiday destination for Western Europeans. For people in Bosnia and Serbia, visiting Croatia involves crossing the border into the EU and changing money to Euros. In a way, Neum is the last Yugoslav-era resort town to remain. Despite being just minutes away from the busy Croatia coast, it feels like a small enclave of the East.

We wondered along the sea front promenade. Home-drawn signs advertise local products for sale: honey, herbal brandies and homemade souvenirs. There is not a lot of sand, but the water is clear and the weather is nice. The holiday makers here are families and older couples mainly from non-EU former Yugoslavia. I don’t see any tourists with cameras. There’s not really much to see or do here except enjoy swimming in the sea and eating at the seaside cafes.

But it’s a pleasant, relaxing town with an amazing sunset and a feel of authenticity that often can be hard to find in more popular destinations.