ONSIGHT: MONTENEGRO / JULY ‘24
My girlfriend and I crossed the mountain border between Bosnia and Herzegovina and Montenegro in our little hire car and descended into the Bay of Kotor, blindsided by the view and evening light. Despite the warnings of how the bay had turned into ‘the new French Riviera’, a quote from our Bosnian AirBnB host – so maybe to be taken with a pinch of salt, in reference to the high restaurant and accommodation prices – we headed on. The first night, in all honesty, did live up to this expectation, and there was nothing to write home about – apart from the stunning setting.
The bay is located on the edge of the Adriatic Sea and winds inland, creating a vast channel, suitable even for cruise ships, that cuts through the mountains. Around the edge of the bay are narrow strips of usable land, home to medieval towns and a perimeter road that is now completely unsuitable for the amount of traffic it receives. Despite the area having been settled since antiquity, it is often hard to remind yourself that it is a World Heritage site, with the vast number of tourists flooding the small ports of Kotor and Herceg Novi.
But if you look just a little beyond the prescribed tourist trail of the bay, you will find a couple of gems. As we drove the perimeter road, heading towards our night's accommodation, we stopped off at a small oyster shack. The Bay of Kotor is known for its oysters, and it was only right to try them. The shack overhung the water, with a jetty of sorts protruding into the warm waters. The gentle bob of the restaurant lured you into a comfort, a heady mix of nostalgia – reminding me of climbing treehouses as a kid, the sway and cracking of wood against wood, the evening summer light, and a cruise ship passing close – like a silent elephant.
We ordered oysters – twelve of them, six fried, six fresh – and ate them in what may be the quickest time I have ever been served, chewed (or the lack of chewing), and consumed food. Incredible. Not allowing our sun-soaked bodies to digest, we decided to order more. I looked over my shoulder and gave the waiter, who was also the owner, a look. ‘You like my oysters?’ he said. We sure did. ‘Another six.’ Much to our disappointment, the wait was going to be a minimum of fifteen to twenty minutes. Confusing, when you literally just have to open the thing and chuck a piece of lemon on the side. We reluctantly agreed, as our stomachs bemoaned the situation.
And just like that, in the magical way travel does, the situation shifted from mild annoyance to one of the best dining experiences I’ve ever had. The waiter, the owner, the main man, walked to the end of the jetty and took off his T-shirt. He looked over the water, the sun glistening against it, the mountains framing his silhouette perfectly. He knelt down on one knee, like a commando checking their compass, splashed his chest with water, and put on a snorkel, in what must be the most powerful way I’ve ever seen. He dived into the water and swam out. He wasn’t just the waiter, the owner. He was the oyster catcher too. We watched him place his catch onto the jetty and rinse them in a makeshift sink, opening the oysters like an oyster shucker from early 1900s America. Yes, maybe it was partly the experience, but those oysters were the best I’d ever had.
Later that evening, we travelled from the shoreline to our accommodation that, on the map, was seemingly very close by. As the crow flies, it was probably a few minutes, but alas, we were not crows and instead had a vertical ascent of the best part of 800 metres, in a hire car. The road was narrow and, in places, unpaved. It wound itself around the mountainside with sheer drops and the occasional sinkhole, testing my driving and potentially the insurance policy of the vehicle. After thirty minutes of climbing, we arrived at a clearing with a church. Just as we pulled in, a car sped up behind us and rolled down the window. ‘Hello, I’m Srdjan, you must be staying with us. Leave the car here and walk up the path,’ and before he could barely finish his sentence, the car sped off into a cloud of dust.
As we walked the path, the dust began to settle on the ground. We passed chickens and pigs, and the increasing sound of crickets coming from within the bush. At one point even a goat joined us; it felt like we were in Babe the movie. The goat put its head in my carrier bag, in search of cherries, Pringles, and the coconut biscuits we had bought earlier in the day. We reached the buildings, and Srdjan, a gentle giant of a man, greeted us with a beaming smile. ‘How long did it take you to drive up here?’ he asked. ‘About thirty minutes,’ I said. He laughed, ‘It takes me five.’ We shook hands and followed him to our room.
Curiously, the goat also followed, and I thought it best to address the situation now. ‘Is this your goat?’ I asked. ‘Yes, her name is Cappuccino – she’s my pet.’ Cappuccino was quite a nice goat, but I’d never interacted with the species on a ‘pet’ basis before, and I pondered if it would be nice to play fetch or snuggle up on the sofa with a goat to watch Netflix. As we walked, she interrupted my thoughts and continued to headbutt my side, as if she wanted to play, but to be frank, I wasn’t entirely sure that was what she wanted. I turned to Srdjan and asked, ‘How should I act around a goat?’ ‘Just be yourself,’ he said.
The accommodation was a beautiful farmstead, nestled in the mountains. In places completely dilapidated, in others quaintly decorated, in an old-fashioned chic that I’m sure could be marketed on Airbnb as an ‘authentic Montenegrin farm stay’. It was Srdjan’s family home, generations of which had lived here before being displaced by the Bosnian War. Srdjan himself had been a refugee in Spain as a child and had repurchased the property upon returning to his homeland after the war. But this was not his home. ‘Would you say you are Montenegrin?’ I naively asked. He answered me with the softest ‘I guess so…’ that I have ever heard from a man of his stature. He was Yugoslavian. But after an era of war, the rehashing of boundaries and nation-states, he was now, in this modern definition of Europe, Montenegrin. No matter your understanding or thoughts on Yugoslavia, or what it stood for, the denial of one’s identity is a hard thing to swallow - especially as a child.
Our room was the old wine cellar. It was dim inside, minimal and without the mod cons of 21st-century living. Just the exposed stone and linen curtains separated us from the balmy evening outside. Peering through the window, I could see Cappuccino terrorising another couple with her horns, albeit they seemed a lot more familiar with how to behave around a goat. A sepia photograph of Mostar, a town in now Bosnia and Herzegovina, stood alone on the mantelpiece. I later learnt that Mostar was the birthplace of Srdjan’s grandfather, another reminder of how these now independent nations used to be one. As I thought of times gone by, Srdjan popped his head through the doorway to the old wine cellar and offered for us to join him in the kitchen.
None of the rooms in the old farmstead were connected, which created a fluid experience, transitioning between being indoors and nature. The farmyard animals coming in and out of the rooms also helped this. We followed Srdjan to the kitchen, which looked like something from a hundred years ago. He lined up homemade Rakija, and the three of us took shots, whilst he talked of his work in permaculture at the Research Institute of Montenegro and redeveloping the farm. Whilst we drank, mountain bells rang, and a herd of goats passed the kitchen door, barricading us inside. The stream was continuous, like a salmon run, and happened twice a day, as the local farmers moved them from various grazing patches to a watering hole. As the goats passed, Olga, Srdjan’s partner, almost fell inside the door. Introducing herself, she said, ‘My friends are here from Russia and we would like to invite you to dinner tonight.’
‘Olga is from Russia,’ Srdjan said. ‘We’re an international couple.’ I could tell he really loved Olga. He loved her as much as he loved the old mountain village, permaculture, and ‘nature’s authentic atmosphere’. ‘We love each other,’ he said. ‘I love the place, our animals, our 3 dogs, 3 cats, a goat and pigs — our life.’ Srdjan reeled off a list of things he loved like a well-oiled machine, as if he’d told everyone who stayed the very same line. In fact, when familiarising myself with the spelling of Srdjan on his Airbnb account, I noticed that this very line, this description, was the exact same wording as his bio.
We sat under darkened skies, illuminated by a makeshift barbecue roaring in our peripheries, in the remains of the farm outbuilding. Only the stone part of the structure remained, the wood frame and roof now gone, but enough to shield from the wind and elegantly frame the Bay of Kotor in the distance. Around the table sat an eclectic mix of people: Srdjan and Olga, a heavily pregnant young Montenegrin woman with her very English home county male counterpart, a Russian French teacher, and a nuclear physicist at the University of Moscow. Oh, and not to mention Cappuccino, a huge German Shepherd and the most disabled dog I’ve ever seen (that could stand upright). The mongrel looked like a sausage dog and a terrier had been stitched together in a backyard lab. It wore a cone around its neck and a support mechanism on its back legs – helping it drag its poorly fused rear around the cobblestones of the farmstead floor.
We dined, happily for hours, with lots of red wine and meat from the barbecue, talking away the night with the usual international topics of Brexit and how shit the UK is. Our bodies began to tire and the first departures of the night said their goodbyes. We were down to three of us: the Russian French teacher, the nuclear physicist from the University of Moscow, and me – even the animals had retired. The conversation slipped towards the topic of Russia. As much as this is predictable and obvious for me, I would like to point out that it is rare you are speaking to potentially the very man who may be responsible, along with Putin, for nuking everyone. It was my duty to get drunk with him and stop the red button from being pushed, or alternatively encourage him to push it sooner.
I started easy, masking my question whilst topping up his glass of wine, and asked what specific parts of nuclear physics he was interested in. I got back a very diplomatic answer of ‘policy, energy and defence’. It was obvious where this was heading, and he jumped in with a question, ‘Do you like British politics?’ This was a clever question to ask, as it either positions me as quite nationalistic or sets up a conversation about being from a country that you may not necessarily agree with ideology of. For me, it was the latter, and I confessed that I had very little support for anything the current Conservative government was doing. ‘Do you trust them?’ he said. ‘Not at all,’ I replied. He sipped his wine and smiled. ‘Politics isn’t about trust,’ he added. ‘It’s about telling your narrative, and this is our narrative, of the Russian people.’ I found this quite hard to intellectually understand, and to be honest, quite confronting. ‘It’s all a narrative, a story we tell, we pass down from generations. Take Crimea, it’s part of our Russian narrative. Yes, it may have been part of Ukraine’s narrative too, but narratives change and stories progress.’ From the little understanding I had of Crimea, the land had at one time been gifted from Russia to Ukraine, and I think what the physicist was implying was that now the story should be that the gift is returned. I hid behind my glass, not knowing how to respond, wanting to dive deeper, but also trying to avoid the conflict (that I was involved in creating) at all costs.
At this point, the French teacher politely said goodnight and left the conversation. ‘Do you think Putin will stay in power?’ We sat there, our eyes locked, the fire dancing as shadows across our faces. ‘I’d vote for him again.’ ‘Why?’ Suddenly, I had the urge to really brush my teeth too, and wished I’d left when my girlfriend had. I could see her in the distance, lit by an exposed lightbulb and covered by a half-hearted attempt at a curtain in the outdoor bathroom. ‘Putin will stay, I don’t trust him, but it’s not about trusting, it’s about telling the people what they want to hear, and when you hear what you want to hear, you feel like you’ve been heard. Politics, like life, is circular…’ and with that, he traced the outline of a circle, or maybe an atom, onto the table. At this point, I was certain that he would get back to Moscow and nuke the entirety of the West – so I wrapped up the conversation by guzzling down the remainder of my wine and wished him a goodnight. ‘Come and visit Russia when you have time,’ he said, holding his glass up to me.
I got into bed, the full moon coming through the window, and settled into a bit of Reddit time. I researched the capital, Podgorica, for things to do. Without diving too much into it, I have to say it is potentially the most boring capital I have been to in all of Europe. Not even the extremely damning Reddit thread was enough to warm me to this.