Blogs from Montenegro, Europe - page 26

Hello everyone. I would like to take this moment to dedicate this blog entry to Joyce, because it's her birthday in 5 days (the big 2-3! :)), and also because she would like to see my room. So here it is -- my room. Actually, it's a room I share with all the hostelers and couchsurfers, though we haven't had any of the latter as of yet. We've only had 3 hostelers so far -- 2 from Spain (I'm sorry, one from Spain and another from Catalonia, lol) and 1 from the States. Let's see...what's it like, here in Podgorica? Let's find out! For one thing, it's so DAMN COLD here. I'm afraid icicles will crystallize in my hair if I stick my nose out the window to the test the temperature. Seriously -- it gets ... read more

Greetings from Montenegro! Well its been a couple of days. I'll try to pick up where i left off.... we enjoyed one last night in serbia. stayed up pretty late chatting with the guys who run the hostel, talking about random stuff. One guy was telling us all about the NATO bombings in Belgrade in 1999. He was living in the city, and they had built all kinds of shelters underground in case bombing started. And so it did. apparantly a lot of the bridges in the country were destroyed and they figured those in belgrade were next. i think most survived, but they did start bombing certain buildings in teh city. he said you could see the missles coming up over the river then honing (is that really a word?) in on governmet buildings. the ... read more

Country number #20 of the trip and back in the EU.... sort of! Well they use the euro. Montenegro is the world's newest country after a referendum passed in 2006 to separate them from the union of Serbia & Montenegro. We took a bus from Dubrovnik to the town of Kotor, built on the largest inland fjord in Europe. The ride was beautiful as we wound our way down the coast from Croatia. There was an interesting whirlpool-like thing in the Bay of Kotor that looked like an underwater spring. The old town of Kotor was yet another pedestrian-only, walled Roman city (will it never end?). However, this one was quite unique as the wall was built straight up the mountain cliff immediately behing the city. On top of the cliff was an ancient Illyrian fortress ... read more

The taxi driver in Tirana have family in Boston and have visited 3 times before so we had a good conversation about life in his country and how he still have no ambition to live with his parents in America, he hopes Obama wins. The Shkodra bus took a good 2 hours including delays due to bad traffic accident. When I arrived in Shkodra, taxi drivers immediately took notice of me and offering to take me to Ulcinj in Montenegro from 20 to 30 Euros, I pretended to be sight seeing and said will be back i have to think it over, these guys told me no bus goes to Ulcinj from Shkodra, i should have known better, i arrived at 230ish pm and the bus according to Ilir from Tirana backpackers, it leaves around 3pm, ... read more

Zunächst seien an dieser Stelle noch ein paar Worte über Ohrid gesagt, denn auch wenn es bisweilen so scheinen mag, verbringen wir ja nicht die ganze Zeit im Auto und diese schnuckelige kleine Stadt, welche in einem pittoresken Bergpanorama am gleichnamigen See liegt, verdient es wahrlich, ein paar Worte über sie zu verlieren. Neben zahlreichen orthodoxen Kirchen und einer auf einem Hügel gelegenen Burg, ist auch die Altstadt äußerst sehenswert. So habe ich dann auch meine kulturdesinteressierten Mitfahrer dazu überreden können, einen ausgedehnten Spaziergang zu unternehmen, und ich glaube, sie haben es nicht bereut (auch wenn wir es, ob Stephans Weigerung Eintritt zu zahlen, beim von außen Anschauen beließen). Also Leute, fahrt nach Mazedonien, es ist eine Reise Wert und man kann für wenig Geld viel Urlaub kriegen! Der heutige Tag sollte uns einmal quer durch ... read more