Guidebooks be damned. To Hell with Itineraries. We wanted spontaneity fueled by inspiration.
I know, it sounds lofty, maybe downright corny. I'm not here to argue that point, just here to tell the story.
This particular story starts en route to Dubrovnik. My friend Jana (from Czech Republic) and I were heading to the "Pearl of the Adriatic" from Mostar, Bosnia-Herzegovina. As soon as we boarded the bus and the driver launched into a warp speed that would make Hans Solo proud, it was obvious that this man who would be in charge of our well-being for the next 3 hours had a rather cavalier attitude toward his mortality (and ours). The possibly suicidal driver had an assistant whose responsibility it was to load and unload luggage (and take 2 Euro per bag - evidently, like airlines, buses are now charging for luggage) and to collect tickets once the bus established a dizzying speed. This man yelled at us at the tail end one of the many "new passenger" (read "smoking") stops. As the driver, the assistant and a majority of the passengers were standing around casually having a cigarette while waiting for new passengers to load, I asked in English (even though we'd already established no one in the smoking circle spoke English) if we had time (pointing to my wrist which was not adorned with a watch) to run (miming running) to the bathroom (this one threw me for a loop - I was not about to squat to indicate the need for a bathroom so I just pointed in the direction I thought there might be a WC). He said something that I thought meant "hurry," so we did just that. Hurried. When I got back on the bus (Jana was still in the WC), the assistant to the bus driver yelled at me and even though I don't speak Serbian, his meaning was clear. Where is your Expletive friend. Expletive? We've got to go. Double Expletive. After Jana came busting out of the WC and ran to the bus, the assistant scoffed at us and made some comment to the rest of the people on the bus who laughed in unison; I can only guess they were laughing at our expense.
As soon as we arrived in Dubrovnik, we developed an itch to get out of town. I know, I've heard, Dubrovnik is magical, enchanting even. I don't doubt that it is. But we were met by women in their 60's holding signs that read, "Apartment for rent. Air Conditioning. Good Location." These women are relentless. If they see a person with a backpack on, they latch on to the traveler, insisting that their apartment is the best place at the best price in the best location. You should see these ladies work; they move with such intensity and aggression, they'd be the perfect zone defense - traps all around! As soon as the bus doors opened and we took our first steps onto the concrete, they swarmed us and I couldn't breathe. Being mean to them is out of the question (that'd be like kicking your grandmother in the shins!) so the old lady traps and the heat were enough to inspire a spontaneous exit strategy. We agreed to escape the crowds of the coast (and the heat) and head to the mountains of Montenegro.
We needed information on possible avenues of escape. Trains to Podgorica? Not leaving until midnight. Buses? Again, not in the time frame we needed. So we lugged our backpacks to the nearest car rental office a long, hot, sweaty 10 minutes away.
The man behind the desk cut us a deal (it didn't look like he had much demand on his time or his cars), put us into a Skoda Octavia and waved us off as I tried to remember how to drive a stick. We felt good. Our stuff was resting safely in the back of the wagon (importantly not on our backs), the AC worked perfectly, and he had pointed us in the right direction, away from Dubrovnik, and away from the crowds.
Or so we thought. Evidently, Montenegro's coast is just as happening as Croatia's and even more expensive. We got to Kotor Bay two hours later and I had the same panicky, too-many-people-around--me feeling that I had in the big D, but it was getting late and we had to stop; the drive to the mountains was another 7 hours on a serpentine two-lane road that the local drivers use as a training course for the Grand-Prix.
Kotor, one of the world's most naturally protected cities, rests at the back of a long bay. To get to Kotor, a would-be attacker would have to pass through a series of bottleneck straights. The most famous of these straights, Verige Straight, was protected by cannons on both sides where the town of Perast is now and at one point in this area's history, the Illyrian (Pre-Roman peoples, 3rd c B.C.E) Queen Teuta had some sort of ship sinking device that explains the many ships resting at the bottom of deep bay. Kotor's "Old Town" sits within imposing fortifications, high and thick to withstand attack.
Even though Kotor is hard to attack, there have been many conquerers who figured out a way to be successful. The Illyrians fell to the Romans. When the Roman Empire split (4th c A.D), Kotor staddled the Roman Catholic West and the Orthodox East. With the Fall of Rome, the Slavs made themselves at home.
Because of its location, Kotor flourished as a trade city. The 10th c saw the Slavs organize into a sovereign state loosely affiliated with the Byzantine Empire. The 14th c witnessed one of this area's major economic developments as the Serbian emperor, Dusan the Mighty, established a safe haven for traders by ruling with a philosophy that would do Hamurrabi proud (chopping off the hand of a thief or cutting off the nose of a liar). And although the Ottomans threatened to invade in the 15th c, Kotor never fell under their influence because they called on the help of the Venetians. Venice controlled the bay for the next 450 years and Kotor is one of the few areas in the Southern Balkans that didn't wave the Ottoman flag.
Today, Kotor's "Old Town" lay within the confines of protective walls, occupying a triangle that juts out from the base of a mountain. Within Old Town, there are two major buildings representing the blending of cultures in Kotor's history: an Orthodox Church and a Catholic Church - each gets equal billing. Old Town is beautiful with shuttered windows and balconies adorning old stone buildings but in mid-July, it's overrun with tourists parading around the maze-like streets. There's a restaurant selling pizza and pasta everywhere you look and souvenir shops within spitting distance in every direction. For me, somehow, the historical significance of such a place is ruined by all this consumptive tourism being pushed in your face.
From the back of Old Town, a steep, rocky mountain rises up and seems to just keep growing toward the heavens. That's the thing about these mountains in Montenegro; they are on steroids. What I initially thought was a rocky ridge turned out to be a castle fortification snaking its way up the mountain. Having spotted it, I visually followed it to the ruins of a castle sitting, seemingly impossible feat, on the side of that steep mountain. Jana and I decided over dinner and a desperation glass of wine (you should see these crowds in Old Town) that we'd storm the castle the next day.
After dinner, we found a room at 1/4 the price quoted to us by the Tourist Information office in Old Town. The folks with whom we stayed recommended that we take a back road from Kotor to Cetinje (the former capital of Montenegro when it was a Kingdom). Our host said, "If you haven't driven that road, you haven't been to Montenegro." Well, considering they didn't even bother to stamp my passport at the border, we couldn't argue with that logic even after he warned, "Go slow. No rush. Roads very narrow and steep and serpentine. But don't worry, tour buses only go up, no go down."
And no joke, that was one of the most beautiful and dangerous roads I've ever traveled. Sheer cliffs, hairpin turns, not enough room for two cars to pass comfortably and no shoulder to speak of. And the view out over the Bay of Kotor where the deep green of the steep mountains swoops down to meet soft azure of the sea was too tempting for safe driving. At least there were old stone walls spread periodically along the side of the road to keep your car from flying off the cliff. Probably wouldn't do much good, but the mere presence of some sort of "guard rail" made me feel a bit better. If I'd been on one of those tour buses, I would have faked a heart attack to get off because this is one scary road. But totally worth it.
We finally made it through to Cetinje and then on to Podgorica. From there to Nitsic and from Nitsic to our final destination Zabljak, a little mountain town at the mouth of Durmitor National Park. It seemed, looking at the road map, to be a no-brainer. No such luck. From Nitsic to Zabljak requires you to drive up steroid-enhanced (Arnold Schwarzenegger in his heyday enhanced) mountain passes, more hairpin turns, down steroid-enhanced moutains, more hairpin turns, across valleys, then up and down and up and down again and again. Each time we climbed, descended and crossed the valley in between, our growing distance from our outside lives was palpable.
The sun was going down and we were growing tired of driving. We'd seen a sign pointing us toward the park about an hour earlier and then we'd seen a sign pointing us to the next town on our map. After that town, a depressing post-industrial town called Savnik, nearly abandoned, we fell off the map. All of the sudden, ALL of the road signs, few and far between as they were, signaled us in Cyrillic. Given that neither Jana nor I had any experience with that alphabet, we were utterly illiterate in this land. Now the sun was really going down, and it was close to getting very dark, we had no idea how much longer we'd be driving or if were were headed in the right direction. I had visions of Deliverance passing by my mind's eye and that was only exacerbated when we passed two children standing in the road looking like characters from a Stephen King novel. The first child, a little girl, stood in the middle of this very narrow, weather-worn road, holding her arms as if she had a bow and arrow drawn and pointing directly at us. I thought to myself, "Damn, little girls can be creepy." But as we passed her, we saw that she was only selling berries, with a bit of intimidation on the side. We didn't stop to buy berries but when we came upon her brother standing on the edge of a hairpin turn, I wondered if we should stop for karma's sake. But we didn't; our imaginations had taken over and I had seen Children of the Corn too many times to put on the brakes.
Desperate to know just where we were, we did slow down enough to ask a man walking down the hill if we were heading in the direction of Zabljak. Jana, who can approximate their language since Czech and Serbian are both Slavic, thought he said 2 kilometers ahead in Serbian and that was solidified in my mind when he tried it, with effort, in English. 2 kilometers. Good news. But 10 kilometers later, we still hadn't reached Zabljak and we were now faced with a fork in the road and all directional advice given in Cyrillic. Which way? We figured left (Why left, you might ask. That's the way we lean politically - seemed like as good a reason as any!) and drove on. We saw another man and asked him. He reassured us by indicating Zabljak was ahead and clearly stated in English that we had another 20 kilometers. With a bit more confidence, we moved on.
We arrived in town with a few other detours around 9.45 PM and secured the first room we saw available. The next day, we wished we'd been a bit more discerning. Two nights in that apartment was enough to deprive us of much needed sleep, especially after the group of 15 drunken maniacs checked in to the room next to us. But even with those less than ideal sleeping arrangements and even though the plumbing in the town is off every night between midnight and 6 a.m., I fell in love with Zabljak. It's an outdoor town in many ways and it's got character. Log cabins and small wooden houses line much of what is main street and even though every so often these idyllic visions are interrupted by ill-conceived communist-era block housing or the unfortunate architecture of communist-era resort hotels, this town seduces.
And we made friends there. Almost immediately after checking into our room, we asked the lady to point us in the direction of pivo (beer). We were in need of a drink after that drive. We walked toward the main part of town and we were drawn to this small cabin sitting behind a flurry of trees and plants, a little bunk house sporting a covered porch, an antique empty window frame hanging with intent from the edge of the porch and a perfect, comfortable, inviting chair sitting behind it offering a charming view onto the main street. Behind that perfect little chair, there were tables and chairs, all antique-y and the combination eclectic. Beside the entrance, there was an open window where Jana and I chose to sit and drink our Nitsic beer (a beer named after the town where it's brewed, a town we drove through earlier that day) and watch the town go by. We couldn't have lucked into a more perfect perch or better company.
Vuk or Wolf (he informed me I had no hope of pronouncing his full name but that it means Wolf in English so that's what I should call him) was the one and only server and he went about his job with infectious enthusiasm. He happily spoke English with us and patiently answered my questions about the town, his life, the area etc. His timing with the 2nd round of drinks was perfect, plus the beers were on the house. We met Marko, a Belgrade Serbian whose mother was born near Zabljak and who had come for the summer to help the owner (his cousin) build a kitchen and design their menu. He's a photojournalist by profession and a chef by hobby. Marko saved us from a very drunk local man who had been at a friend's wedding that day (he informed us 10 times in the matter of 10 minutes) and who had decided to continue the celebration in between our stools. Marko, realizing we were a bit irritated, came to chat with us and I was able to ply him with questions about Serbia and his experience as a Serbian with the recent war. Since he's 32 years old, he was in the Yugoslav National Army (Serbian army) during the war; he's not a nationalist by any stretch of the imagination and he spoke eloquently about his conflicted emotions about serving. He did say that he never left Belgrade during his time of service and was never called upon to participate in the fighting. His experience was administrative.
When I asked Marko about the conflicts within the former Yugoslav countries, whether the impetus for the fighting was religious, political, racial or old historical grudges flamed by opportunistic leaders, Marko was definitive in his response that the violence and the war weren't about religion; Communism, he said, had deflated most of Yugoslavia's religious tendencies. This was sentiment we heard from our tour guide in Sarajevo. I couldn't help but wonder (aloud) if, for the cosmopolitan areas, that might be true but in more rural areas, I got the sense that religion played a much more important role in people's daily lives and in the fanning the flames of conflict 15 years ago.
Marko responded to my question with a generous smile. I could tell he was amused and pleased that an American would take the time to be curious about his country's history and he seemed to appreciate the challenge to what he called his "over-simplification." He said, "Of course, you can't imagine how complicated it all is." He used the term, "You can't imagine" repeatedly in our conversation and I found it interesting and so completely accurate. I Can't Imagine. That's the thing that drives my curiosity about this area of the world and these collisions and divisions of cultures or factions.
For the young people with whom I spoke (generously and in the name of self-service, I'm calling 30 somethings young!), the past is the past. They have no interest in living in the past the Milosevic's and the Karadzic's of the world created. They look forward to being a part of the EU and being accepted as a part of Europe instead of the black sheep that no one invites to the family reunion.
Ah, so much more to write about Zabljak and our experiences in Durmitor and at the pub called The Garden. Will continue but now I must meet my friend Alice (I'm in Prague writing this - the day before I fly home) to test some Moravian (East Czech Republic region) wine!
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