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Zminje Jezero

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Crne Jezero (Black Lake) near Żabljak, Montenegro, September 2019.

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Żabljak

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Żabljak

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Trash! Everywhere!

Apart from food, there are two main problems with Montenegro: trash and derelict, abandoned buildings. Trash are everywhere and many places, also of historical value, are turned into dumpster sites, stinking beyond measure. This is truly a dark side of this country. Below, trash left by tourists in the Kotor city walls and dumpster pile left by the locals at the Spanish Fortress in Herceg Novi.

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Moving onto Zabljak through some long tunnels running under mountains.

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Savina Monastery interior, and the vineyards of the surrounding areas. Herceg Novi, 2019.

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Streets of Herceg Novi.

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Spanish fortress in Herceg Novi. Some elements were added to the fortress much later on, by other forces.

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Fauna and flora in Herceg Novi is impressive!

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Herceg Novi

Next, we moved to Herceg Novi.

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Food in Montenegro

One of the main questions about the cuisine of any Mediterranean country is: is there anything good to eat there, or not much? You’d imagine the region with mild, warm climate to present itself with a variety of fruits, vegetables, all fresh and affordable, and coastal cities to boast with variety of fish and seafood that you’d be able to easily satiate your palate with.

For now, Montenegro surprised us with striking lack of its own cuisine - sure, it has Pljeskavica, you can buy Burek, and so on, but those still aren’t breathtaking, and this is one of those countries where people ignore it all and just go for pizza or a hamburger. Most meals are served with chips (for you, Americans, by this I mean “fries”) instead of any sort of vegetable, even ordinary potato. Okay, Montenegro is not in the European Union (and does not benefit from its single market) and most of its land is not possible to use for agriculture. That somewhat explains the lack of fruits and vegetables, hard to believe as it is.

What is not easy to accept is lack of fish. Okay, they are there, but incredibly expensive - while pizza costs 7 EUR, not far from our northern standards, fish start at 11 EUR if you’re lucky. Most fish meals cost 14-16 and they can go way up to 40 EUR.

For those of you with fat wallets, in Montenegro high price hardly ever equals quality. If you pay that 16 EUR, there is not guarantee you will get a high quality food. It still is pizza, pasta and hamburgers that dominate even nicer restaurants. A total repetition from Romania and partially Kazakhstan. Though so far, with food, Montenegro ranks probably last of all places I have visited so far.

PS. except the startng pizza. That one was great!

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Ladder out of the fortress

This ladder surely tested anyone with fear of heights. It was just a wooden ladder, very steeply leaned onto fortress walls. It gave you access to fantastic landscapes and a quaint ruin of a medieval church. But if it fell off, you’re falling many metres down, together with that ladder, and the spot the ladder was attached to was maybe thirty centimetres wide!

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Three types of tourists

I can see three types of tourists. The crawlers are backpackers that go and explore, spot by spot.

Then of course you have the selfie enthusiasts, mostly youth with their smartphones and the old people with their cameras. Sometimes the other way around. Sometimes also backpackers!

And the rich ones, detached from all around them.

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People in Kotor. A tourist resort

Some of the questions I get right now are how are the people, are the girls pretty, are the southern guys handsome? Are the tourists loud, do you hear the Americans or Italians? Do they speak English or Russian?

The locals are a little hard to distinguish from the European tourists at first. You mostly do it by hearing them talk Serbian, but if - following my book guide - “half of Serbia comes here for vacations”, then distinguishing a local from a tourist might be hard. Forget the restaurants - here even the police in full uniforms spends time there!

This is a matter of taste, and I don’t normally focus on people that much during my travels, but here are my answers:

- The girls are pretty. Though they do not strike me as pretty because of an inherent beauty or any friendly attitude, but just because this is a sea resort and they’re sporty and half-dressed. Local girls are also quite tall - 1.7m or 1.8m or taller girls aren’t anything unusual here. There are blondes here, and even if dyed, they do not stand out much. - In turn, girls will like it here, men are tall and very bulky, lots of them are 1.9m+ tall. I wouldn’t want to get into a fight in here. Tanned skin works well for them. Again, there is lots of very fit, sporty people, as expected of a hot country and a sea resort.

Of course there is a bunch of northerners burned to a crisp. Well, that might be me...

People here in general are nice and polite. From what I hear, the flood of tourists that drowns Croatia did not arrive in here yet. From tourists, you hear a mixture of all languages, mostly Russian, but also UK English, American English (LOUD!), German, French, Spanish, you see tourists from Asia (Chinese and Japanese mostly, judging by language), and even some black people. I did not spot anyone that would look Hindu or Middle Eastern, I saw South-East Asians with American tourists only. I met Poles too.

Shop owners and cashiers are pleasant, but increasingly bored of tourists and annoyed by them. People speak sufficient English to do their job. In restaurants, they often speak good English. I didn’t test their skills in Russian, but I see some signs and posters in Russian, so I assume they know enough of Serbian and Russian are mutually intelligible enough to ignore translating.