Kotor, Montenegro

 

Welp.  Time to leave yet another great apartment. 

I’m not even going to complain this time since it’s my fault I’m still nomadic.   The only reason I’m trying to spend three months in Montenegro is because I’m a chicken.  I had every intention of staying in Albania for a full year as you can do that with an American passport.  But … the logistics were freaking me out.  I want to get an apartment and a bank account and inform the government that I want to work remotely in the country.  I was afraid I was doing it wrong and wasn’t sure who to contact and argh.

I’m going to figure it out. Tons of people before me have done it so I know I can do it too.

In the meantime, it was the usual routine.  Get out of the apartment with all my stuff and after a quick breakfast, try to flag down a cab.  Uber still doesn’t exist in Montenegro and I haven’t figured out the bus system.  The buses are pretty slow and unreliable anyway, it’s hot in the country (not as hot as the rest of Europe, but still), and I just wanted to get the transfer done as quickly as possible.

Or not as the cabs repeatedly ignored me.  I got tired of waiting by the main road and decided to walk to the taxi stands that were in the center of town.  And boy, was that fun.  Sidewalks here are sporadic and sometimes badly damaged.  The heat was made even worse by the extra effort and my growing annoyance.  Several rest stops along the way and I kept getting ignored by cabs.

I finally walked the full mile to an official taxi stand, sweating bullets as my colder groceries melted through my trusty Pingo Doce bag, only to find the stand abandoned.  Yeah.  I don’t want to do this anymore.

A taxi did eventually appear and the guy agreed to take me the 10 or so miles to Kotor.  Now, much like in Tivat, there’s only one road in and out of Kotor.  So, as could be expected, traffic got increasingly heavier as we approached the city.  Even at noon on a Monday, it was bad.  I can’t imagine what rush hour looks like here (if there is such a thing).

We spent most of the time stuck in a dark tunnel just sitting.  When we exited and made our way through town, I quickly realized why the place is such a tourist draw.  This place is so gorgeous I can’t get over it.  And I thought Tivat was pretty with all the flowers and green everywhere and the mountains surrounding the bay.  But Kotor takes it to a whole new level.

My new home for the week wasn’t actually located in Kotor, but just past it in the city of Dobrota.  My cab driver had spoken directly to the host as the place is hard to get to and I’d soon find out why.  The host came to meet me and help me get all my crap down a steep, rocky driveway, down some ancient stone steps, and up even more stairs to get to the apartment.

And I understood why the place was so cheap.  I still do not like studios.  They’re too cramped and this place was no exception.  At least the other ones had a proper seating area and not just this one recliner.  But it was available and I wanted to visit other cities while in the country.

As for the bathroom … I think I’ve mentioned once or twice my many issues with European bathrooms.  But what in the bad design is this?

Why on earth would anyone think it was perfectly fine to have the entire bathroom be the shower?  Even with the curtain closed, the toilet is right next to the shower head.  It was a contortion trick just to keep the water from hitting it.  Just … why?

And because the window was open before I even got in the place (no screens, of course) I spent the week being dive-bombed by mosquitos.  Sigh.

But there was one big draw to the place.

On the balcony I shared with the British family that moved in about an hour after I did, was a table set up with a view of the bay framed with grape vines.  Gotta love Montenegro.

It was a long, hilly, scenic journey to the water, about a 10-minute trip.  Like Tivat, the shore is dotted with tiny beaches of various sizes with the biggest being the closest to the apartment.  Heading down the narrow one-way street that line the shore, there a couple of restaurants along with a small convenience store.

My first full day in the apartment I took a walk along the main street back towards Kotor.  It’s not the greatest walk in the world, more cracked sidewalks when there are sidewalks at all.  I got to a point where the sidewalk just disappeared and travelling along the busy road became increasingly dicey.  Fortunately, a lady was walking behind me and made a detour to the left behind a building.  Figuring she knew something I didn’t, I decided to follow.  Sure enough, the sidewalk continued behind the building and over a bridge beside the street.  In no time I was in Kotor proper after about a 1 ½ mile walk.

Restaurants, vendors, a great park, lots of vibrantly colored flowers and tourists for days.  The ancient part of the city, on the UNESCO world heritage list, sits behind these gates.

It reminded me of Budva with the same windy walkways through the shops and restaurants. 

After three years spent mostly in Europe, I have embraced the slower pace of life here.  Two-hour lunch breaks are awesome.  If you want to sit in a café for hours over a single cup of coffee, no one blinks.  The waitstaff won’t try to rush you off so they can get in more customers, they won’t pester you to buy more food.  They just leave you to stare at nothing if that’s what you feel like doing.  I very much love that.

But if I don’t work, I get no pay.  The last six months have felt completely consumed with my transcription job.  It’s frustrating and often upsetting as these are court cases where no one’s having any fun.  And it doesn't pay much.  But, after being so focused staring at a computer, maybe I can take a little bit of a vacation.  Radical concept but … Kotor is really pretty.

I took one day to go to the beach.  Bathing in the bay was so lovely I could imagine for a while that the world wasn’t falling apart.  Watching all the Montenegrin kids playing around me made me think of how awesome it must have been to grow up surrounded by all this beauty.  Sure, you’d have to deal with all the smelly tourists roaming around, but it seems a small price to pay to have access to the bay whenever you want.