About Sheva Tours and Travel
Sheva Tours and Travel is a team of dedicated Mostarians who want to share our home, experience, and insider knowledge with you! We strive to create a unique local experience during each tour that responds to guests’ individual interest and needs for your time with us in Mostar and exploring the wider region.
Travel offers an incredible opportunity through which we can engage with new cultures and traditions, landscapes, food, and communities. People desire and are attracted to the opportunity to travel for so many reasons: fun, adventure, relaxation, enjoyment, entertainment, transformation, escape, romance, education, pleasure, growth… the list may be long and varied, but whatever might fuel our desire to explore, we believe that traveling has an exceptional capacity to bring our global community together.
Travel can contribute to mutual understanding, create meaningful relationships between people, and break down unnecessary barriers created by stereotypes and misinformation. In fact, Sheva Walking Tours was born from the connection made between a local Mostarian and an international traveler and researcher who eventually chose to make Mostar her home. The team at Sheva Tours and Travel loves the potential impact that travel and immersive local experiences can have; this is one of the many reasons we choose to do what we do.
It is said that the best way to come to know a place is to explore its streets. When you visit Mostar, we invite you to walk with us! The Sheva Tours and Travel Team looks forward to welcoming you to Mostar.
Our Free Tour Philosophy
Oftentimes, independent travelers can have a difficult time finding a quality tour for a reasonable price. Tours are frequently designed for slightly larger groups of travel companions and families or as larger organized tours through non-local travel companies. Having a greater number of participants makes these more traditional tours much more cost effective for travelers – the larger the group the less a tour may cost per person. This means, however, that traditional tours are not designed to consider the needs or interests of individual travelers or create a truly immersive experience for guests. We believe that ALL travelers, including the solo or independent traveler, should have access to a quality tour experience regardless of any potential limitations, be it budgetary or otherwise.
Travel should be inclusive, and we are constantly working toward providing access through various means. It was in consideration of the travel challenges that independent travelers often encounter when trying to book tours (and that we had experienced ourselves while traveling) that we created Sheva’s Original Free Walking Tour of Mostar in early 2018. This tour was developed as a response to what we felt was a significant gap in the local tourism market. Not only did Mostar deserve a high-quality Free Walking Tour, but one which addressed and informed visitors about the recent events of the last three decades and discussed today’s socio-political context. Our intent was to provide an engaging and entertaining tour, while also educating against the propaganda, misinformation, and stereotypes which exist about Bosnia and Herzegovina and the greater Balkan region.
Rather than be priced per person, Free Walking Tours are based on the idea of a shared economy, and each individual participant is FREE to donate or contribute what they feel the tour experience was worth. Together, the contribution of each individual Free Walking Tour participant makes it possible to provide this service and compensate the guide for their time and expertise. In essence, by pooling together “tips,” guests pay the hundreds of Euros a private tour might otherwise cost!
Sheva’s Free Walking Tours of Mostar offer an affordable opportunity for both small groups of 6 or less persons and individuals of all ages and backgrounds to come together to encounter Mostar from a local perspective. We believe in providing a tour experience that does not avoid, erase, or otherwise sterilize Mostar’s difficult past and instead, contextualizes it so that you can better understand not only what occurred in Mostar, but what locals have experienced first-hand. The best way to understand Mostar’s present, is to learn about the region’s history and the ties between its past and present. We discuss Mostar’s current socio-political situation in a critical and informed manner while also integrating our personal experience, but without any personal political motivation – our only agenda is to leave you with a well-rounded understanding of Mostar’s past, present, and future through a compelling tour.
Today, the Sheva Walking Tours and Travel Team hosts three distinct Free Walking Tours of Mostar, each responding to the different interests of our guests. Our first and most popular Free Walking Tour is Sheva’s Original Free Walking Tour of Mostar, an all-in-one tour experience that traverses Mostar’s earliest history to present day. Our second Free Walking Tour is The Heart of Mostar, a shorter waking tour which focuses on the culture, tradition, and heritage of Mostar’s Old Town, a celebrated UNESCO World Heritage Site. Our newest Free Walking Tour is The Making of Modern Mostar: A Century of Transformation and Conflict which continues Mostar’s story from the late 20th century to present day.
In addition to our Free Walking Tours, we have also developed a range of tours and experiences through which we collaborate with and highlight local businesses while celebrating handmade crafts and locally produced goods. We are continually working to create compelling opportunities for visitors so that they may experience the best of what Mostar and the entire region has to offer. Whether you are looking for a Free Walking Tour, a private tour for your family or traveling companions, or a group tour for your organization, Sheva Walking Tours and Travel is dedicated to ensuring a memorable and high-quality travel experience during your visit with us in Mostar and the entire Herzegovina region.
Sheva Tours and Travel Team
Our Beginnings
Sheva Tours and Travel developed out of an early interaction between Ševko and his partner, Caroline. Caroline, a long-time visitor to the region, had arrived to undertake research focused on the topic of cultural heritage reconstruction following wartime destruction. Ševko, a local research participant who Caroline met by accident the old-fashioned way (over a beer at a local pub), had a vast knowledge of local history, extensive personal experience from which to draw, and an exceptional capacity as a storyteller. Together, Ševko and Caroline recognized a need for a slightly different approach to providing immersive and engaging local experiences to travelers and the seeds of Sheva Walking Tours, and eventually, Sheva Tours and Travel, was planted.
Frequently asked question
FAQ
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Sheva Tours and Travel Team Members
ŠEVKO
Ševko is the owner and head tour guide of Sheva Tours and Travel. Beyond that, he has a number of other titles including father, son, carpenter, soldier, uncle, and diver. He is easily recognizable by his long beard – no doubt you will see him around town both during and after your tour with him, as he is a local fixture. If you are looking for him on a hot summer afternoon, you will likely find him on the bank of the Neretva, under the Old Bridge, taking a swim to cool off! Ševko grew up in Mostar during the last decades of Yugoslavia and experienced its dissolution first-hand. One only need to go on a tour with him to understand his genuine love for Mostar; his local upbringing provides a unique authenticity to his story-telling ability. His deep and ever-expanding knowledge of the more recent history from the late 19th century to present day along with his direct experience of the wars of the 1990s shape the impactful tours that he provides on Mostar and the region’s more difficult history and current socio-political context. Ševko offers tours in English, Italian, and local languages.
ARNELA
Arnela joined the Sheva Tours and Travel Team in late Summer 2023, but she has years of experience working as a tour guide in and around Mostar. The depth of knowledge and experience she has to share with guests is truly astounding. Her professional background ranges from working as a language assistant with the UN Peacekeeping Mission to BiH to experiences working with NGOS, including those focused on women’s capacity building and outreach as well as democracy development in the local community. When not sharing Mostar and the surrounding region with guests, Arnela loves spending time with her son; she enjoys staying active through training, dancing, and swimming as well as reading, traveling, and meeting new people from different cultural backgrounds. It is not surprising that she should enjoy guiding visitors to the region – it keeps her moving and enables her to engage with new people every day! If you are lucky enough to go on tour with Arnela, you will quickly learn that her passion and enthusiasm for Mostar and its beautiful surroundings is infectious. Do not be surprised if you find yourself planning a return visit before you even leave town! Arnela conducts tours in English and local languages.
INA
DIVNA
CAROLINE
Caroline’s first visit to Mostar was in 2006. This started her love affair with the Balkans and, more specifically, Bosnia and Herzegovina! She returned to the city and explored the wider region repeatedly over the next decade, only to relocate permanently in 2016 while she was undertaking her doctoral research in Herzegovina. Caroline is a landscape historian and archaeologist with research interests focused on cultural heritage reconstruction, development, and use in contexts recovering from war and with a focus on local narrative and the construction of social memory. Since then, she has called Mostar home. Caroline and Ševko worked together to develop and launch Sheva Walking Tours in 2018. While Caroline will happily answer your questions on local and regional history, culture, and politics, you will most often find her at work behind the scenes or wandering the streets with her camera. Although she has plenty to say, she believes that the true experts are local community members who can draw from decades of personal experience as well as their deeply rooted cultural memory. In her free time, Caroline is launching a new NPO dedicated to the community Cats of Mostar!
