montenegro

This is going to be a short post, mainly because I don’t have much that’s interesting to say about Budva.

The bus from Kotor to Budva took less than an hour. I walked in the already scorching heat to my hostel, where it was too early to check in. This was not my first choice of accommodation, but as it was high season and I booked at the last minute, this was about all I could find. While sweating on the common room couch (which was later covered with a sheet and charged as a bed, I believe), I met a couple of backpackers heading into town and asked if I could join them. After stops at a bookstore (one of the guys was collecting a copy of Lord of the Rings in every language) and another hostel to meet up with other travelers, the group of us sweated away the afternoon at a bar/cafe in the Stari Grad.

Budva’s Stari Grad

The hostel crew.

Curious dental cafe decor

In the afternoon, I tried to cool off a bit by heading to the beach, which was definitely a see-and-be-seen sort of place. It was like Club Med, only everyone was speaking Russian.

Pretty laundry

Mellower section of beach where I went swiming

Slightly mellower section of the beach where I went swimming

Unable to bear the heat anymore, I walked past the plethora of yachts on the dock and back to the hostel to check in. I had a private ~~closet~~ room with its own bathroom and a dust-caked fan wedged between the wall and the foot of the bed. In the hallway, I met a friendly German guy with a Fantastic Mr. Fox tattoo on his arm, then kindly declined a staff member’s offer of weed (um, thanks but no thanks?). Later on, I rejoined the group for dinner and a drink, but the scene along the strip of beachside clubs was not really up our alley. Overly loud techno music, young women with sky-high heels and obvious plastic surgery, and laughably ostentatious decor. An Eiffel Tower with strobe lights and disco balls? A neon-lit glass waterfall? Really?

Although we were enjoying each other’s company, we called it a night fairly soon since some of us had to leave early the next morning. That night, I had to tip the fan precariously backwards in order to keep my toes from hitting the fan blades in my sleep, which was restless on account of the dust-induced sneezing fits.

In the morning, I tiptoed passed the sleeping backpackers on the couches and the patio tables strewn with overflowing ashtrays and beer bottles on my way out the door. (Needless to say, this was not an A+ hostel experience). I was all too happy to be leaving Budva: I had a shuttle to Albania to catch.

The bus ride from Dubrovnik took much longer than I anticipated. While the bus zipped along for the beautiful views at sunset along the coast, our trip was stalled at the Croatia-Montenegro border for over an hour. After the standard collection of passports for inspection by border patrol, the guards picked two young men -both in scruffy, bohemian clothes- and asked them to step out for questioning and luggage check. I can only assume that they were looking for drugs, because this was not the first border check where I have seen guys with a similar appearance singled out. In the meantime, the bus was shut down, turning the inside lights and air conditioning off: Sweat City. This lasted entirely too long, and I was wondering how much longer it would take, as we still had quite a bit farther to drive and I didn’t bring much food with me. I watched as a family of dogs galloped around the security office like they owned the place.

The men were finally allowed back aboard, and the bus continued in the dark. (Later on at the station in Kotor, there was a huge shouting match between the two guys and our bus driver during which they swore like sailors and accused him of discrimination). The rest of the trip went smoothly, though, punctuated only by the gargantuan yawns of the British backpacker sitting behind me: “YEEEEEAAAAWWWWWWWWWWWW.” After the 7th or 8th of these, she started receiving dirty looks from other passengers. “Whuh?” she countered. “Cahn’t a person even YAHWN in peace?”

Kotor, our destination, is an old city on an inland bay which is often mistaken for a fjord. The road there swerves directly along the water, tracing the multiple inlets of the bay like the petals of a flower. In the dark, only the moonlight illuminated our surroundings. I could see the reflection of the water, the tiny lights from cities across the way, and the eerie blue sheen of the nearby peaks. It would be interesting to see what this actually looked like once morning came. In the distance, I saw rows of bright lights which I assumed was a hotel. As we approached, I realized that it was not a hotel but instead an enormous cruise ship docked at the port in Kotor, dwarfing everything around it. It was almost frighteningly large. The Yawner was also impressed: “GAWD! I cannot even WRAHP my HEAD around the sheer PHYSICS of that thing!”

I had booked a private room with a shared bathroom in the village of Prčanj, which is about a 10-minute drive from Kotor. (I tend to gravitate toward places with unpronounceable, vowel-poor names that end in a silent “J.” They comfort me. Call it solidarity 😉 ). Once at the station, I had been warned to only use taxis which used a meter, so I accepted a ride from a tough-looking but honest female taxi driver named Anđe. I couldn’t get to the room fast enough: I was exhausted, sticky with sweat, and famished. I was welcomed into the apartment complex by Danijela, the daughter of the owners, who spoke in excellent English and offered me some homemade pastries. I almost cried. She showed me to my room, where I declined her invitation to join her at a neighborhood festival in favor of going straight to sleep.

Peach pastries to match my peach-and-orange guest room. Delicious.

In the morning, I got to see what I had missed the night before. Holy cow.

View from the common area

View from my room

Prčanj ended up being the best possible place that I could have stayed; in fact, I ended up booking an additional night (and would have stayed longer had there been availability). The apartments were a two-minute walk from the water. In the village were several small grocery stores where I bought food to cook in the shared kitchen, a few restaurants, several churches, and scattered docks from which to swim. A local bus came by hourly on the way to Kotor and cost only 1 Euro. I saw mostly local tourists (Montenegrin along with several Bosnian and Serbian license plates). Families filled the docks to swim during the day, but the place was quiet and peaceful at night. I was in love.

The waterfront in Prčanj

It was a great place to do nothing. I’d go swimming daily, enjoying the water, which was considerably less salty than the Adriatic had been, and marveling at the enormity of the surrounding cliffs. I could never get tired of looking at them. I took a trip one afternoon to Kotor, which was pleasant but whose noise level made me very thankful that I was staying elsewhere.

Inside St. Tryphon’s Cathedral. Check out the pink stone.

Midway through my stay, I was returning one afternoon from the “beach” and ran into two women about my age in the hallway. I was surprised to hear them speaking English. They introduced themselves as Fernanda, who is originally from Brazil but has lived and worked in the US for over 15 years, and Elena from Italy. Fernanda was also traveling through the Balkans solo and had a itinerary oddly similar to mine. Elena, a surgeon, was completing a shorter trip, but on her motorcycle. Two words: BAD ASS. They convinced me to ditch my plans of staying in for the evening and to instead join them for dinner in Kotor. They had even arranged a taxi, which would be arriving shortly. OK, twist my arm.

By the way, the road along the waterfront to Kotor could be described as treacherous at best. Not quite wide enough for two cars and at points only inches from a dropoff to the water, it created frequent traffic jams during busy periods and games of chicken where only one vehicle would be able to pass at a time. Add that to the curves in the road, and you can see why I almost got hit several times just while walking to the store. Our cab encountered no hassles, though, and I made our taxi driver (another cool woman who was really into classic rock) laugh by singing harmony to “More Than Words.” The three of us wandered the streets of the old town together. It was so nice to have dinner with other people: I don’t mind being alone at all, but company is almost always appreciated!

Those cliffs again. Ain’t they purty?

Mother of Dragons, Montenegro style

Though Elena was leaving the next day, Fernanda would be staying, so we decided to hit the beach together and then get a taxi to visit Perast, a quaint town on the other side of the bay. We didn’t do too much there other than get coffee, but it was a beautiful place to see at dusk. Fernanda and I got along so well that we checked her itinerary to see if there was a way that we could meet up again somewhere in the Balkans. We set a tentative goal of meeting in Albania in the following week. Isn’t traveling fun?