Halfway between two worlds

Sitting on a sloped part of the mighty city walls high above ancient Dubrovnik with the Adriatic sea as my horizon, the sun shining on my face and a fresh sea breeze in my hair, seems like a good place to start my 1st blog of this journey.
From here I can see the whole of Dubrovnik's old town, dating back to the early 8th century. In the Middle Ages, as the 'Republic of Ragusa', it was an important rival to Venice's maritime empire with colonies all along the Croation Adriatic coast and trade links throughout the whole of the Mediterranean.
The church towers of St. Blaise's, the cathedral of the Assumption of the Virgin and the Franciscan monastery pop out of the otherwise evenly flowing roof-scape and at the other end of the walled and heavily fortified old town, close to the sea, rises the simple yet majestic Jesuit monastery, where most of the nobility of the town were educated in the days of old - now it's merely a music school. Along its side stands a tall cypress, which apart from a few palm trees on the south-western side seems to be one of the only trees in the old town.
Little noise comes up from the town - the clattering noise from a construction site and a hammering sound in the distance - it's still early and the tourists are yet to flood the tiny car-less marble streets that form an intricate maze between the ancient houses. However, only a very small proportion of them are trodden by the tourists, leaving much to be discovered for the curious traveller - a little shop in a backstreet along the southern wall for example, which sells organic products, or a stately house with extravagant Romanesque window frames, each like the entrance to a Roman temple - almost too grand for the humble beauty of its neighbours, or a tiny little chapel only recognisable as such by the small elevated gable above its entrance holding a bell, which gives it a Spanish or Mexican look... or a door so old and run-down, opened and closed a million times, that the patina itself is coming off its surface in little cubes only a few millimeters thick.
Very few of the roofs one can see from up here are still the old ones with shingles of slightly varying tones of red. Most have been renewed after the terrile and terribly unnecessary shelling of the town in 1991 at the hands of the Serbian and Montenegrin army/navy. For over 6 months the town was subject to frequent and totally random shelling from the sea.

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That was four days ago - now, although still in the Adriatic climate zone - I have entered a completely different cultural zone. I'm writing from an internet cafe more or less built into the foundations of the old bridge of Mostar, on the western side of the Neretva river, but still in the Muslim part. I have spent the afternoon talking to the Imam of the central mosque of Mostar (a young man of 25 who spoke fluent German) and a friend of his from Syria - I drank Arabic coffee with them and ate borek. Although only two hours by bus from the Croatian Adriatic, I feel like I must've travelled for days and have crossed more than just a national border to get to Mostar. I actually walked across the border from Croatia into Herzegovina and immediately got a ride by a young aircraft technician who spoke perfect English and drove a fancy BMW. As we drove north, towards Mostar, mandarin groves flying past on both sides, I saw a white turret on the left - the first mosque on my trip to the Islamic heartland. I asked him to let me out at the second one we saw, in a little village of 38 families called Poćitelj. As I walked up to it, almost crushed by the weight of my backpack (a kind lady before the border in Croatia had loaded me with at least a dozen wonderfully ripe mandarins), I suddenly realised that this was exactly why I was carrying this packpack all the way from Germany to Syria and why I wasn't having it flown there by a plane - because I wanted to see THIS: the transition from West to East - how the East, how Islam and the Ottoman influence slowly mixes in with the European elements, the place where these two mighty cultures have met, mingled and clashed over the centuries, causing a multitude of cultural phenomena and an immeasurable amount of bloodshed. Although maybe not even a quarter of the way to Syria, I felt like I was halfway - in the space where the two worlds meet. In a sense, my journey, which so far has been nothing but wonderful and exciting, gained a lot more purpose when I stood there in front of the mosque, on the big open terrace overlooking the wide valley that the Neretva wound itself through. There was noone but me and the mosque's Imam, who stood calmly at its entrance next to the table offering books and leaflets on Mostar, Poćitelj and Bosna i Herzegoina. He was wearing a red fez matching his double-breasted jacket and after visiting the mosque I found he spoke a little German. His eyes widened upon hearing I was an Arabic student and on my way to Damascus - his kind and polite face gave off a generous smile, but remained far from inquisitve. I wasn't sure whether he understood the importance I attached to visiting his mosque on this trip of mine. But his gaze was warm and welcoming. I shook his strong hand and said goodbye.