The Best Laid Plans ...

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Geo: 42.2486, 19.0973

It should've been perfect - running a brutal sleep deficit the last little while and coming off an epic day of near-sleepless travel, last night should've meant an incredible night of slumber. Pretty comfy bed (by backpacker standards), A/C, near-perfectly-dark room ... all the right ingredients for a sleep that Rip Van Winkle would be proud of. But no ...

My mistake? Exhausted by 7 PM last night, I fought the urge to sleep, rationalizing that staying up just a little bit later would mean a quicker transition to the local time. But ... I stayed up until about 10:30, which was just long enough to get through that initial period of fatigue, which meant I was now wide awake ... sigh ... after much tossing and turning, i finally passed out around midnight, only to awaken at 4 AM, falling asleep a while later, only to re-awaken at 6 AM, and toss and turn all the way until 8 AM, when it was time to get up. And of course, that was the very moment that I finally was tired enough to pass out ... sigh ... the best laid plans ...

Off to beautiful Lake Skadar - hopped onto the train to Virpazar, the best jumping off point for tours of the lake by boat. The train arrived at Podgorica quite a bit sooner than I had expected, so I asked a number of workers (three, to be exact) if this was the train to Virpazar. Yes, they all replied ... but then ... after the train departed much sooner than expected, I started to wonder. And as the train conductor checked my ticket, he told me that this wasn't the train to Virpazar ... sigh ...

So instead, it was off to Sutomore, for no other reason than it was the first stop on the train line from which I could head back to Virpazar. Thank goodness for the netbook, so I can write this while sitting at the train station's little cafe for 90 minutes until the train departs. The guidebook talks of this killer wild pomegranate juice, which I have been unable to find so far. So instead, I grabbed what looked like OJ out of the fridge, but it's something that tastes more like Tang. Yech ...



The locals are super friendly and curious, definitely not in the chino-sideshow-freak way I'm accustomed to being greeted with. A couple of younger guys from Sutomore thought nothing of plopping down at my table for a chat, as did later an older guy. There must be something in the Adriatic water, because though he says he's 85, the guy looks more like he's 65. It's too bad that the Montenegrin women haven't been as friendly about having a chat with me, as I am happy to report that they look a lot like I remember their Croatian cousins - in other words, near the top of my list of most beautiful women in the world, in a collective tie for fourth with the Netherlands, Croatia, and Poland, and behind only Spain, Argentina, and Uruguay.

Only one of the younger guys spoke any English, and he made a funny comment - whenever i travel, people always ask me where I am from, and I revel in saying Canada, since what they really want to know is which Asian nation I hail from. When I finally gave up the fact that I'm Chinese, he mentioned how my kind are known here as yellow people, for what they consider the off-colour of our skin. It's too funny, because it's not said with any racism or ill will, though it certainly could seem that way.

Finally, to Virpazar ... though a short walk from the station to the actual town, it was HOT. A couple of French girls had borrowed my guidebook at the Sutomore train station, and decided to tag along to Virpazar. Walking to town, we tried getting directions from some French dude who was also heading to town - the two girls were kinda flaky, so when they stopped at a fruit stand the French dude and I didn't hesitate to ditch them.

The French guy had been traveling through Serbia, Croatia, and Bosnia just before arriving in Montenegro, and remarked how things were quite different in this part of the world compared to France. Lack of respect for pedestrians, how commonplace littering was here (ie - restaurants on the river would just dump their trash straight into the water), and how odd it was what we were doing - just walking right on the train tracks, since there wasn't really any other place for us to walk.

The whole point of coming to Virpazar is because it's the best jumping off point in the national park to do a boat tour of Lake Skadar. It's a cute, sleepy little town, but offers little else. i expected tons of tour operators, but there aren't really that many - I spoke with the staff at the TI and ended up waiting over an hour for other people to join a tour, as they weren't doing it just for me. Was just about ready to give up, when the tour guy finally came back and told me there was a tour to join.



Unfortunately, a bunch of others had booked a two-hour tour, which was longer than the short one-hour tour I would have preferred. This part of the world seems to be a huge tourist destination for the French, having met a number of them on my last trip to Croatia, and quite a few so far in my brief Montenegrin travels. A family from Paris, along with a few girls that are friends of the family, were also on the tour - they chartered a boat in Dubrovnik and have made their way down the Adriatic coast, stopping tonight in Ulcinj before heading back north to Croatia, from where they fly back to Paris from Split. That's the way to do it! Charter a boat with friends and sail the Adriatic, living the life of a seafaring hobo, a pirate of sorts! The lake is nice, and dotted with the odd little fishing village, the St. Nicholas Monastery, and Grmozur, an island prison called the Montenegrin Alcatraz.




A long and exhausting day, especially with so much sun exposure, I passed out on the bus ride up to Budva. Stunning scenery on the way but I missed most of it, as I drew the blinds closed to stay cool. It's alright, I'll see it all tomorrow when I head back that way for the day.

It was quite the challenge finding the hostel, even though the directions appeared straightforward - I later found out that most streets in Budva are not named, and that the few with names likely don't have any street signs. Directions to walk 600 metres and then turn right don't mean much to me, as I'm not a good judge of distance. I ended up asking a guy for directions, who asked a taxi driver, who ended up driving me to the place.

A couple of girls from London gave me a restaurant recommendation, but either their directions were off, or I wasn't paying attention, because I walked, and walked, and walked ... and never found it. I later found out that I should've taken a left and then a right, but because I took my first right, I walked for about 30 minutes and ended up at the bus station. Turns out that I could have easily found the restaurant after the fact, but without street names ... it wasn't going to happen tonight, so I settled on a Grill Basta Parma, a place I saw earlier, and a place chosen more for the rooftop patio than anything else. Overall, an excellent meal, all washed down with a refreshing Niksicko Pivo, a local beer.

Tonight was one of those nights where you do ABSOLUTELY nothing ... I still don't have any feel for what Montenegro is really like, as these first days haven't afforded much of an opportunity to see or do much of anything. Hopefully, that changes tomorrow.

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Photos

h
Quite the spread at breakfast with cold cuts (ham, four types of salami), some processed cheeses, some real stuff, bread, killer cantaloupe, cereal, and some mini cheese bureks. Even at 9 AM, it was getting HOT ... so the salami was extra greasy, and the cheese was a bit melted. A queasy start to the morning. The coffee was pretty good, though.

i
Hotel Europa

j
Not the best location, in what was not much more than an alleyway just down from the train station.

r
Exactly the kind of thing you like to read in your guidebook before boarding a train!!!

a
Sutomore - one of the Montenegrins that sat with me at the train station mentioned that it was mostly a tourist destination for Serbians, because it was much more affordable than places like Budva, which caters more to the Russian tourists.

l
Horrific Tang-like drink.

o
Virpazar's cute little town square.

m
Super-cheap picnic - just some bread and processed cheese. The synthetic greasiness was good, as it oiled by throat so that I didn't choke on the dry, hard bread.

n
I thought this was going to be a jam-filled pastry for dessert, but it turned out to be filled with cheese that looked more like earwax, than anything edible. I don't know what earwax tastes like, but I imagine it tastes something as bad as this pastry.

d
The lily pads of Lake Skadar.

e
Apparently, if you were able to escape and swim to the shore from the island prison, authorities wouldn't try to catch you and throw you back in prison.

f
Boat full of French tourists.

p
L'il Buddha came out to play after the boat tour because ...

q
... lacking the foresight to pick up some more water before the boat tour, I returned to Virpazar severely dehydrated and needed a rest and a drink. Orangina ... ahhhhhhh ....

s
Back to Sutomore, from where I would take a bus to Budva - for a town I had absolutely no intention of visiting today, I was here a lot!

t
Dangerous in Budva - huge hole in the sidewalk, along a poorly-lit street.

u
Funny thing - no seafood on the menu, despite Budva being a coastal town. It was all grilled meats, something Montenegrins are VERY fond of. There were seemingly many locals dining here, so that was a good sign. Not seeing anything overly appealing, I settled for the mixed grill - I didn't realize it during ordering, but there was 700 g of meat, a helluva lot of protein!!! It probably wasn't a great idea eating so much so late, but at least it was getting close to Spanish dinner hour, which is something I'll need to adjust to in a couple of weeks time. The steak was tough, the pork good except for all the fat and rubbery skin, and the hamburger patty surprisingly yummy, as were the minced-meat-and-casing-less sausages. The second type of sausage was almost like a merguez, and very tasty. The chicken skewer was killer, perfectly cooked and juicy, with a sweetness to the flesh. The fries were extra and very soggy, a waste of both money and stomach space, though it did offer the benefit of breaking up the meat monotony. There was definitely enough meat here for two people. So far, Montenegrins are showing themselves to be masters of the grill - I bow at their feet.

v
Beautiful little church behind the cemetery.