Marko Radić – Tourism; stories; thoughts; promotion

I am currently working on the Tourism Development Strategy document for the Municipality of Višegrad. When you are involved in strategic planning for a destination, you inevitably face numbers, capacities and infrastructure. Višegrad has weight.

Višegrad is anything but ordinary.

That's why, for the first time after high school, I took the book "The Bridge on the Drina" off the shelf. This time, I must admit, not superficially and out of obligation, not as a student, but as a tourism worker with decades of experience. And I realized one thing, Ivo Andrić wrote the most important guide to branding this space that we will ever have.

In high school, Andrić was a must-read, where, whether you want to admit it or not, you turn the pages with resistance. These are sentences whose weight I couldn't bear because I wasn't old enough to understand what "duration" meant. Back then, it was an assignment. Today, as I think about the concept of the tourist product of Višegrad, I read that same book with different eyes. With the eyes of someone who understands that a destination must also be an emotion.

The Višegrad Bridge, a masterpiece by Mehmed Pasha Sokolović, is for some just a photogenic location in passing, for others it is proof that an individual can leave a work that outlives politics, borders and time.

UNESCO recognition, which will soon be 20 years old, is an obligation, a status, and today a marketing tool. Why an obligation? Because we are obliged to tell tourists about encounters, suffering, and hope. We are obliged to convey emotion.

Višegrad is anything but ordinary.

We often forget how powerful the fact that we have a Nobel Prize winner is. This prestigious award, never repeated in this region, is confirmation that the story of the Drina is universal, in which Andrić comes as a translator of our complex history into a language understandable to the world.

"The people remember and recount what they can understand and what they manage to turn into a legend. Everything else passes by them without a deeper trace, with a certain indifference of nameless natural phenomena, does not touch their imagination and does not remain in their memory."

When a foreigner comes to Višegrad, he seeks to feel the universality of a small space and a big story. This is the essence of what we call “storytelling” in tourism. Andrić left us a “gold mine” of stories, and it is up to us to tell them in a way that today's guest understands.

As I walk through Višegrad, I see layers that are sometimes in conflict, but actually form a perfect whole. On one side, there is Andrić's modest childhood home and his classroom, as authentic witnesses to the formation of a genius. There is also the mighty green Drina.

On the other side, at the mouth of the Rzav, stands Andrićgrad. The vision of Emir Kusturica.

Tourism today seeks content. Critics say that Andrićgrad commercializes a myth, but visitors find an experience there.

Višegrad is anything but ordinary.

Višegrad will not pamper you with a simple story. It offers the bridge as authenticity and Andrićgrad as content. And it is precisely this combination of old and new, the silence of the bridge and the bustle of the city, that makes the destination alive.

As I write, I pose and answer questions to myself. What is tourism and what are we actually selling?

Tourism does not seek sterile beauty. It seeks authenticity. It seeks depth. Emotion. Returning to Andrić, I realized that even a tourism development strategy must not be just about beds and roads. It must be about a return to understanding.

Our task is to bring the guest to the bridge, not to take a “selfie”, but to feel what Andrić wrote in the silence of wartime Belgrade, that, as he says, “life is an incomprehensible miracle that is constantly being spent and wasted, and yet it lasts and stands firm, like a bridge on the Drina.” That is the value that Višegrad has. That is the value that we have to offer the world we want to bring.

And you, have you recently visited Višegrad and have you felt the "weight" of the times that Andrić writes about?