The “Big Montenegro Tour”

Us at the Njegos Mausoleum Overlook

It was early—8:00 am.  We were sitting on the curb by the taxi stand near the supermarket in Budva.  A sleek black Mercedes pulled right up in front of us and a short, dark-haired Montenegrin leapt out of the driver’s seat to greet us.  His name was Ghorgie, from Cetinje, and he was to be our personal tour guide for the day.

We were supposed to pick up two other guys in Kotor who would join us for the tour, but apparently they got too drunk the night before and decided to cancel.  The Kotor hostel manager came out to greet us and quickly explained to Ghorgie that they got too drunk last night and didn’t want to go anymore.  To emphasize the “bus-like” nature of Gordana that I discussed in my last post, the Kotor hostel manager paid Ghorgie 70 euro out of his own pocket, to cover the cancellations, just so Gordana would not find out and so he wouldn’t have to talk to her on the phone!  Regardless of how it happened, Kati and I spent the day being chauffeured around Montenegro by a personal tour guide.

Our first stop was Lovćen National Park.  To get there the car crept up the steepest, most narrow road I’ve ever been on.  Ghorgie whipped around the hairpin turns connecting the 27 switchbacks we had to ascend to reach the top.  When we finally reached the summit, you could see the entire Bay of Kotor and it was stunning.  Yet we continued up further, to the top of Jezerski Vrh which, at 1657 meters, is the second highest peak in the park.  On top of the mountain sits the Njegoš Mausoleum, where Vladika Petar II Petrović Njegoš, the most beloved king/philosopher of Montenegro is buried.  Before ascending to the top we had a typical Montenegrin breakfast, pršut (prociutto) and smoked goat cheese.  Then we climbed the 461 steps to the mausoleum itself.  The main room in the mausoleum is guarded by two giant stone statues of women that represent the mother and sister of Montenegro.  Entering the main room is quite a sight as it houses a massive black granite statue of Petar II under a canopy of pure gold tiles, given to Montenegro by the Italians.  Below the main room is a very modern (and creepy) crypt holding his body.  We finished our tour of the mausoleum at a nearby overlook from which, on a clear day, you can see over 75% of Montenegro and even the Italian coastline!

Our next stop was in the city of Cetinje, the former capital of Montenegro until it was moved to Podgorica after World War I.  The Cetinje Monastery is very sacred in the Orthodox religion because it contains the three-fingered right hand of John the Baptist and a portion of the cross on which Jesus was crucified.  While these relics used to be available for public viewing, apparently the insensitive laughter of English visitors upon seeing them led the monks to be seriously offended and cover them up.  However, Ghorgie pulled some serious strings for us and convinced the resident monk to let us see them (The other visitors behind us were not too thrilled when the monk quickly shut the top of the wooden coffin when they walked up).  Ghorgie also pointed out another unique church in Cetinje.  The church looks small and plain, surrounded by a black picket-fence, however, the bars of the fence are made out of the barrels of rifles taken from dead Turks when the Montenegrins repelled Ottoman invaders.  Building the fence out of their gun barrels is meant to symbolize the nation’s eternal protection of the Orthodox Church from the “evil” Muslim invaders and non-believers.  After Cetinje we stopped by Rijeka Crnojevića, the largest river that flows into Skadar Lake (The largest lake in the Balkans).

Ostrog Monastery

Our next stop was the one I was most excited about.  In fact, it’s the whole reason we took the Big Montenegrin Tour in the first place.  I had been told that it’s easy to take an organized day-trip from Budva to see the Ostrog Monastery.  The only problem was that nobody bothered to tell me those tours are only in Russian, never English.  Thus, we ended up with Ghorgie, going to see the monastery.

The Ostrog Monastery is built into a cliff-face 900 meters above the Zeta Valley.  It’s one of the most sacred places in all of Orthodox Christianity because it’s where the remains of St. Basil, the most important Orthodox saint, can be found.  The monastery is often referred to as Sv. Vasilije’s Miracle because nobody understands how the monastery was actually built.  When you look at it, the monastery appears to grow out of the very rocks themselves.  In yet another miracle, the second chapel in the monastery was hit by a bomb during World War I but was not destroyed.  You can still see the bombshell in the wall of the chapel as you walk in.  Experts came in a number of years ago to examine the shell only to find out that it is completely functional, leading to the widespread belief that God himself prevented the bomb from detonating to save the monastery.

The rest of our day was consumed by lunch and a few stops at minor viewpoints, like Skadar Lake and Sveti Stefan.  Despite the amazing sights we saw, one of the best parts of the day was simply riding in the car with Ghorgie.  Over the course of the entire day he enlightened us on the history of Montenegro, the political situation (both past and present), and how to show respect in the Orthodox Church.  Additionally, we covered every topic you can think of from how Ghorgie met his wife (a great story for another time) to how he believes the US government is responsible for 9/11 in the same way that the Montenegrin government engaged in race mongering against the Mushahadeen in the 1990s.  The three of us had an absolutely amazing day and I believe that I’ve now garnered a very deep understanding and appreciation for both the country and its people.

Budva – The International Council of Barristers

Budva Beachfront at Night

We had stopped in Budva for about an hour to change buses on our way from Kotor to Sveti Stefan and neither of us were impressed.  The city around the bus station was very much Miami meets Jersey Shore.  It was dingy, trashy, sprawled, and just plain ugly.  Neither of us were particularly excited about returning to Budva, but it is the largest tourist destination in the country and it offered a convenient hub from which we hoped to take a day-trip and visit the Ostrog Monastery.

Sometimes first impressions aren’t accurate.  We definitely found that to be the case with Budva.  Our bus dropped us off right at the gates to the old town—Budva is our last fortified coastal town.   The old town and the main promenade are like two completely different cities.  The old town is essentially a smaller Dubrovnik.  All of the streets are cobblestoned and the entire town is just a collection of narrow alley-like streets weaving between the uniformly stone buildings.  However, unlike Kotor the town was a lot livelier and the food was much better.

It was in Budva that we met the next great Montenegrin character in our trip: Gordana.  As Ghorgie would later describe her, “Gordana is a bus…and then she is a bus.”  That description could not be more accurate.  She owned the hostel that we were staying at, but wasn’t there when we arrived.  Instead, her sister took our passports and gave us a key but couldn’t help us further, insisting that we wait for Gordana, who she was sure would show up within an hour (by 2:00 pm).  We were waiting outside the front door of the hostel when we first met her.  A very large—both in height and girth—came careening down the alley toward us, not even stopping to say hello or ask what we needed, but only saying, “You need help with hostel, follow me,” and beckoning us into the door.

As we later found out Gordana is originally from Bosnia.  She was vacationing in Montenegro in the early 90’s when the bombing started in her hometown, part of the current Republika Srpska—the Serbian section of the country.  She figured it would be over in a few days, but quickly realized she had been completely displaced.  A few years later, while still “temporarily” in Montenegro, NATO and the US began bombing Montenegro.  Gordana was running an old hostel at the time and said she was sure she’d have to go back to Bosnia because tourism in Montenegro would surely be destroyed by the bombings.  Yet, to her surprise, the day after the bombing her hostel was completely booked.  She said it was then that she decided to permanently stay here and create what has become an empire.  She now owns three hostels in Budva, Kotor, and Podgorica (the capital) as well as a dress boutique with shops in Budva and Kotor.  What’s more, she has created a number of excursion tours from those cities to other places in the area.  In a very coincidental discovery, we learned that she has recently become the very first Montenegrin to export anything to the United States, and of all places she exported 20 of her dresses to North Carolina!

We had a very relaxing afternoon on the beach in Budva followed by a cheap Chinese dinner.  Yes, we had Chinese in Europe.  You can only have the same heavy sausage and chicken dishes for so long before you’re yearning for something a little different.  It was fantastic.

What was supposed to be a relaxing evening to catch up on miscellaneous things turned out to be the complete opposite—but still a lot of fun.  The thing about backpacking through Europe is that when you meet other people in the hostels, it’s a very hit-or-miss experience.  Yet sometimes things click and you happen to be in the right place at the right time.  In those situations, you tend to become very close with new friends, very quickly.  Last night was one of those times. 

We shared a hostel room with six other people, four of which we became quite good friends with.  There were three Aussies and an Indian girl from England.  Amy, one of the Aussies, was a deceptive 26, tall, and extremely outgoing.  From what I can gather she worked as a freelance photographer but really just traveled around and did whatever she wanted.  Mick, another Aussie, was a built six-foot “chippy” (carpenter), which Amy assured us explained why he had great taste in music.  The last of the Aussies, Warren, was a 26-year-old “retired” IT technician.  I’m still not sure how you can be retired at 26, but he essentially works whenever he wants—around 4-5 months a year he says—and travels around the world for the rest of the year.  Sukanya, the English Indian, was slightly younger than me and studying to be a lawyer in London.

After going to the store to get a few beers and a bottle of Montenegrin dessert wine, we were quickly sucked into playing cards with the four of them (None of which previously knew each other).  We swapped stories and card games.  Amy broke out her Venetian deck of cards—Italian cards are regional and have different suits, face cards, and fewer cards generally—and taught us how to play Scopa.  Afterwards, I taught them all how to play my Italian card game: Scala 40 (Ladder 40), essentially a variation on Rummy.

When the girls in the two remaining beds went to sleep, we moved our party upstairs to the common room.  That’s where the night started to degrade.  Not long after we moved up there two very drunk lawyers from Uruguay showed up to join us.  They loved me, both because I was a lawyer and because I had no qualms about talking South American soccer “smack” with them.  While we got along well, they were far too drunk and loud for the groove we’d all fallen into for the night.  Not long after they joined us, the larger of the two got far too drunk and some tiny French girl materialized to help him get down the stairs to his bed.  Around 2:00 am Kati and I called it quits because we had to wake up early and tour the rest of the country.

Sveti Stefan

Kati Snapped this of Sveti Stefan Right Before Sunset

August 30--Today was the perfect day.  We departed Kotor in the morning for Sveti Stefan, the crown jewel of the Montenegrin coast.  To get there we first had to take a bus to Budva and then catch another bus to Sveti Stefan.  Altogether, the trip took just over an hour.  I've been looking forward to Sveti Stefan for a very long time.  I don't think you can't find a more picturesque destination anywhere in the world.  To make the day even better, I woke up to find that I had passed the NC bar exam!

Sveti Stefan is a very unique place.  It's essentially an island that's connected to the mainland by a very thin sandbar isthmus (I know, that technically makes it a peninsula, but it's much more island-esque).  The island is surrounded by fortress walls.  At the top of the hill on the island sits the Church of St. Steven and a number of beautiful red-roofed houses cover the rest of the island.  People used to live on the island, but the communist government nationalized the island in the mid-1900s and then sold the entire island to a private company.  The island is now closed to the public and has been made into one of the most fantastic hotels in the world.  I've gotten conflicting reports from Montenegrins, but the cheapest rooms in the hotel range somewhere between 500 euros ($715) per person per night and 2000 euros ($2850) per room per night.  The hotel has monopolized the better beach on one side of the isthmus and, while it is free for hotel guests, the public must pay 50 euro ($72) just to use it!  Needless to say, we stuck to the public beach.

We celebrated my bar success in style.  Sveti Stefan is very much a resort town and there are no hostels there.  Instead, we sprung for a very nice hotel: Vila Drago.  It was one of the best decisions we've made this trip.  It wasn't overly expensive, but it had air conditioning, a refrigerator, and free breakfast at it's incredible restaurant.  Additionally, the view of Sveti Stefan from the balcony was unbelievable!  After a very relaxing day on the beach, we splurged for dinner.  We had some traditional Montenegrin meat dishes, including a lamb and chicken dish and a unique take on veal cordon bleu.  Of course, we choose the meat to match my celebratory bottle of wine: a very nice Vranac, a uniquely Montenegrin grape and the best the country has to offer.  The wine was fantastic, as was the food.  I can't think of a better way to celebrate finding out that my miserable summer wasn't wasted and that I still have a job when we return to the states!

Our day was so great that we tried to stay in Sveti Stefan for two more nights, but unfortunately our room was only available for one more night and if we stayed we wouldn't be able to make it to the Ostrog Monastery.  Thus, it's off to Budva in the morning.

Perast & Gospa od Skrpjela

Gospa od Skrpjela (Our Lady of the Rock)

The reason I wanted to visit Kotor wasn't actually because of Kotor at all, but because of two islands located in the bay off the coast of nearby Perast.  Perast is a tiny town of 400 people.  After visiting it, Kati and I agreed that we would have rather stayed in Perast than Kotor, as it was even more picturesque and the food was better.

Perast is only 14 km away from Kotor so we caught an early morning bus there.  When we got there we were very excited to discover that one of the only cafes in the town served omelets for breakfast!  It was quite the treat.  After breakfast we struck out for the islands.  There are two islands: Sv. Dorde (St. George's Island) and Gospa od Skrpjela (Our Lady of the Rock).  St George's Island is home to a monastery and is closed to the public, but we did get to visit Gospa od Skrpjela.

The story behind Gospa od Skrpjela is incredible.  In 1452, two brothers were rowing in the bay when, on a rock jutting out of the bay, they miraculously found a painting of the Virgin Mary and Jesus.  Finding this painting was immediately seen as a miracle and she became known as Our Lady of the Rock.  In honor of "the Lady," the people of Perast purposefully sunk old ships near the rock so that they could build an entirely artificial island.  They then started hauling rocks out and dropping them into the 20-meter (65-foot) deep water. It took the townspeople over 200 years to finish the island and construct the first chapel on it!  In honor of this tradition, every July 22 the townspeople send a boat out to the island to continue construction.

Yet there is a second chapter to the story.  The nearby St. George's Island and Perast itself were always under Kotor's control.  In the 17th century, the people of Perast, in a rage over Kotor's control of their islands, took the bishop of Kotor out to St. George's Island and killed him.  In repentance for their actions, the people of Perast expanded Our Lady of the Rock and built a larger church in the small chapel's place.

The church is really cool.  The walls of the church are lined with various sized silver reliefs, all of which were given to the church in honor of the Lady.  The attached museum contains even more items given as offerings to the Lady, ranging from paintings and gold to old sewing machines and pieces of old boats.  Not only is the island incredibly beautiful, it's crazy to think that the whole thing is man-made and that it's a man-made island in 65-foot deep water!  All-in-all it was a great morning in Perast.

Montenegro and Kotor

From Dubrovnik we caught a bus across the border to the tiny nation of Montenegro.  Montenegro is unique in the fact that it is the only Balkan nation that maintained its independence during the Ottoman Empire's conquest and control of the peninsula.  It's strange to think that such a small country that only had 100,000 citizens at the time, and had no official army until the 20th century, could maintain independence while every nation around it fell to the Turks.  Twice Montenegro seemed on the verge of being consumed by the Ottoman Empire, only to have the Russians step in to defend the only remaining bastion of Orthodox Christianity in the ever-expanding sea of Islam.

On the Ferry Across the Bay of Kotor

The bus ride took us 2.5 hours, but over one hour of that was consumed by border control!  I don't know what was going on, why it took so long, or why we had to go through so many different checkpoints, but we finally made it into the country.  We even got a nice little surprise on the bus trip--we took a ferry.  It was pretty cool.  Our first stop was Kotor, a coastal town in the far north of the country, located on the Bay of Kotor.  The Bay of Kotor is widely recognized as being one of the most beautiful bays in the entire world!  Kotor, like its Croatian coastal-brethren to the north, is a fortified city.  The old town is almost like a miniaturized Dubrovnik in a slightly different setting.

We had heard getting a bus from Dubrovnik can be tough, so we opted not to book the only hostel in the city and just show up.  As luck would have it, the two (obnoxious) girls in front of us took the only remaining free beds in the hostel.  Yet the hostel-owner told us that he would make a call and find us somewhere to stay, along with the two other couples in line behind us.

Enter: the Godfather of Kotor--as we would soon come to call him.  The hostel-owner called a mysterious man to come pick us up and find us lodging.  He was over six feet tall, dark, and thin, yet built.  Everything about him commanded attention.  All six of us walked in-tow behind him as he briskly walked us around the town, constantly making calls as we went.  The Godfather also seemed to know everyone we walked by and anybody we passed would stop him, as it would seem, to present some kind of problem.  First he took us to a house outside the old city walls.  One of the couples with us choose to stay there, but we politely declined seeing as we wished to stay inside the old town as did the remaining couple.

The Godfather seemed a little perplexed by our wishes but got right back on the phone and quickly walked us back into town to an old lady's apartment.  It was here that we dubbed him the Godfather.  He kind of barged into the apartment to begin with.  it had two rooms, we got the outer room because we were staying two nights and the other couple got the inner room because they were only staying one night.  The old woman, at least 65 or 70, was in the apartment when we arrived but the Godfather sternly looked at her and told us that she would "make the beds and then disappear."  I didn't have cash on me at the time and I asked the Godfather if I should pay the lady or him.  He responded, "It does not matter.  You pay me or you pay her and I get it from her."  As we found out the next day, the old lady actually lived in the other room of the apartment and it appears that the Godfather had kicked her out of her own room for the night so the other couple could stay there!  After assuring me that he could find me a motorcycle to tour around the country, we parted ways.

While everyone else we've met has loved Kotor, we were less than impressed.  The town itself is great.  It's like a smaller Dubrovnik and is an even more manageable size--even better, it lacks the outrageous number of steps present in Dubrovnik's old town.  However, the few shops in Kotor sell complete garbage--even when compared to the tourist-centric tacky souvenier shops of most cities.  But what's worse, we couldn't find a good restaurant in the city!  First we had a somewhat disappointing lunch before walking around the town and spending the afternoon at the beach.  Then, we went to the Hotel Astoria, which is renowned for its location in Budva, Montenegro.  The menu looked great and the place itself was very "new-age chic"--definitely my kind of place.  Sadly, the food was more than disappointing.  Even the gelato, which is fresh and unique in every city we've been to, was completely pre-packaged, not fresh, and just plain not good.  I believe that, had it not been for the crummy food, we would have loved Kotor.  Alas, it was not meant to be.

While we spent the first half of our second day in the area in nearby Perast (Which I will discuss in a forthcoming entry), we climbed the Kotor fortress in the afternoon.  The fortress was pretty neat.  To reach the top we had to ascend over 1300 meters by climbing over 1200 steps!  It was exhausting, but the view was well worth it.  Kati and I agreed that, while the food in Kotor is uniformly awful, our experience climbing the fortress partially redeemed the town in our eyes.