Croatia: On Tuesday the official opening of a long-awaited bridge connecting Croatia's southern Adriatic coast, which includes Dubrovnik with the rest of the country, while avoiding a small part of Bosnian territory.
Facing the summer heat in anticipation of the evening's official opening ceremony, many Croatians began walking as soon as they opened to pedestrians, which would feature speeches by Chinese Premier Li Keqiang and Croatian Prime Minister Ledi Plenkovi. After the ceremony, it was made available for vehicles.
The Pelje Sacac Peninsula connects to the southern part of Croatia's coastline, surrounded by a 2.4 km (1.5 mi) cable-stayed bridge between the sea and the Dinaric Alps with six pylons for support. Boat races and concerts started early Tuesday, while dozens of people lined up on the bridge to take pictures.
The fact that they now feel like they are living in their own country is a big deal for locals, according to 75-year-old Joso Miletic, who visited the city of Zadar on Croatia's central coast to see the opening of the bridge. had visited. He had come from his nearby village. It represents the unification of Croatia as a whole.
The link, one of the country's most ambitious infrastructure projects since Croatia declared independence from Yugoslavia in 1991, will eliminate the countless hours that are currently spent on the Bosnian border by travelers, businessmen and tourists.
However, the bloody dissolution of the federation left a patchwork of divisions throughout the Balkans, with the borders between its six former republics becoming international borders.
Ultimately, Bosnia retained its access to the coast, but its narrow outlet into the Adriatic Sea passed directly through Croatia. As a result, about 90,000 people were cut off from the rest of the country, including citizens of Dubrovnik, the country's popular medieval tourist destination. For merchants, strict limits meant lines and red tape, and for travelers hoping to travel south by road, it meant problems.
Residents of the picturesque area surrounded by red vines, pebble beaches and oyster fields are eager to remove the Bosnian border because it has kept them geographically isolated. They claim that the long lines on the border and the worry of missing the last boat of the day are now a thing of the past.
In an effort to bring tourism back to pre-pandemic levels, Croatia is targeting a tourism rebound with the opening of the bridge this year. Millions of tourists flock to the 3.8-million-person nation each year in hopes of soaking up the sun along its breathtaking coast, which includes more than a thousand islands and islets and has one of the most vulnerable economies in the European Union.
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