4 October Ulcinj (M) – Laç i Qyrsac (A) - Mjedë

 

I leave Ulcinj at around 10.30 a.m. and feel my legs from yesterday. Bad legs, no doubt about it! Too many kilometers yesterday, I am sure.

This town breathes the more Arabic atmosphere, loud Islamic prayer calls from some of the mosques and few women in the streets. Bars with coffee drinking men, cars honking’ and many smaller motorcycles and mopeds. Of course no one wears a helmet and at night quite often they don’t have lights. It’s mostly men on the streets and many young, hanging around, smoking, heaving a coffee, but without a stable job. I sometimes wonder that they are so friendly and curious, often trying to start a conversation. Why don’t they just mug me and steal everything I have? My third-hand bicycle is worth a monthly income of 350 euro’s! This the most southern point of Montenegro, but it already feels like the world I am about to enter even more in Albania.

Through a beautiful landscape of a protected delta, with many wine and pomegranate orchards, some cows, a lost mule and some goats, I am approaching Shkodra.

I can’t resist stopping at a food-stall. The guy who flags me down later appears to be an American. He is already 6 months on the road with a smaller type folding bike and a trailer as a suitcase that can hold his bicycle. I remember, in the hours and days I spend in preparing for my trip, reading his blog. I even considered also travelling with such a combination. But I am glad I did not. It’s not necessary if you don’t want to load your bike on a plane very often.

A woman with good English sells her fruits. The fruit is juicy and sweet. Time to get on the bicycle and move on. After I have passed the border, which is by bicycle a lot faster than by car or bus, I decide to stop and lunch at a small bar. The guys inside speak a little Italian, but a young girl is called and communicates easy in English. I eat an enormous fresh salad and some French fries. I also manage to buy the Albanian roadmap 1:200.000 that I saw earlier. Luckily I have enough Euros, because I haven’t been able to get a hold of the Albanian LEK. (1€ = ca. 140 LEK)

The lunch is 2 Euro and the can of juice 1! The western products also penetrate this country and will most probably destroy the locally produced lemonades etc. I remember this from my trip to the Baltic States in 1993. It seems unavoidable, through the infiltrating communication, then only by TV, but now also by Internet, it creates an image of a society that doesn’t exist in reality. However, it looks promising and everyone would like to be part of it.

fishing with big nets in the Drini at Shkodra

Up to now the roads have been good and the traffic calmer than in Montenegro and Croatia. The only thing lacking are town signs, so you need to ask where you are. But the Albanians are quite willing to explain with hand and feet if needed. They also do not trust maps and that comes from experience. The roads are just a little different than mapped, so you better listen to them!

At 5 p.m. I reach my destination and I stop at a restaurant, owned by a real businesswoman. 

It’s built with natural materials. After receiving info that the only place to sleep is the hotel 2 km back (Mjedë), I bike back. After some bargaining, I have a spacious room, with nice beds, WIFI and shower and check in. I am beat. It’s good I did not go further than 60 kilometer today.

I dine out at the earlier mentioned restaurant, speak with some locals, one being a very loud speaking Army Major. He also owns a gas station and goes to his second job for the night. I ask him about his beret. Why does he wear it when he is of duty? He laughs and wants to know my profession. When I joke that I am also military he asks: “secret police’? No SAS I tell him. Now he is really lost. We have some laughs and he buys me a wine. At nine they leave.

I bike back through a pitch-dark night with my flashlights on my head and on the bike. Don’t want to ride into one of the holes and crash my wheels. The Milky Way enfolds above me. The village is already asleep by 10 p.m. Life starts early here 5.30 at light break. I crash and dream.

3 October Kotor Bay – Budva – Bar – Ulcinj

After goodbyes at the hostel, I climb the first hill of today and come to the main coastal road again. I fear the traffic, but today there is much less and certainly a lot fewer trucks. I pass some places, like Sveti Stevan, a pure Russian enclave I have been told.

I stop for some bicyclist’ food, dried mixed fruits and peanuts in an old Monastery. It’s Orthodox and 30 priests live here. It is beautiful, dates back to early 1300 and breaths solemnity. Listen to a prayer (link) to get an idea. The sounds in the background are from workmen repairing some of the brickwork.

Then further to Bar, where I lunch big and receive some tips where to go in Albania. An English lady, enjoying her pizza next to my table, tells me she has stayed at Mario Mallo in Koman. She calls it: “a beautiful end of the world”.

I talk myself on the bike again and head for Vladimir and Shkoder (Albania). But I make a mistake and end up on the road to Ulzinj. After all not so bad, because it would have been very late when I would have arrived in Shkoder. So after informing at the Touristic Info in Ulcinj, totally disinterested, I end up in a far too expensive hotel, ran by the all deciding typical arse licking, fat and sweating hotel manager. Of course he wears the very appropriate outfit, a cheap but shining suit with a non-fitting tie. Maybe he was once sacked by John Cleese and decided to start his own hotel. I am too tired to look for something else.

Anyway the bed is good and the hot shower – from which the two doors drop out - helps for my sore legs.

1 October Mostar – Dubrovnik – Herceg Novi – Lepetane – Kotor

I get up at 6.15 a.m. to catch the bus to Dubrovnik and Herceg Novi. It takes with all the passport checks more than 5 hours. I ask the driver if he can stop at the ferry crossing. No problem.

We pass the delta and Dubrovnik once again.

Time to work on my blog and meet with some fellow bus travelers. I am sitting next to a young student from Bangalore. First he managed to be picked as one of the 500 from 200.000 applicants (0,25% chance) in a business management school that he has finished.  He has been chosen to do his business management PhD in a German university. He asks where I found the time for 4 months sabbatical and explains that in India the competition to get into university is so intense, that youngsters hardly find free time. To improve there chances they are constantly involved in extra assignments next to their normal school work. This ‘pumps up’ their curriculum, which is needed to get ahead in the rat race of university enrollment. And after graduation it doesn’t get any better if you want to work for certain well known and established (international) firms. Although you might have 6 days a week 8hr/day contract everyone works between 12 and 16 hours a day!

He is wondering Now that he has found two weeks to travel through Europe before his courses start he has been asking himself, if all those hours of professional input were really worth it? “What kind of life is that”?

Marcello and Angelo, two older Brazilians, so my age, are the next I start to talk to. They are so tranquil and do not easily get angry, even when the conductor/driver - who must have had a bad night - gets physical with one of their backpacks, because his opinion is that these belong on the floor, although the bus is but half full.

They are also going to Kotor and have a reservation in the ‘Old Town Hostel’. I decide to check that place out.

After crossing at the ferry as a non-paying foot passenger I get a meal (fish soup and a mackerel) at my former B&B. I pack up the bicycle and am a free man again. It feels great to any moment being able to decide where you want to go or stop. Was that not the same attraction with the private car?

Via a dreamy, quiet back road at the shadow side of the Bay of Kotor, I reach the old town of Kotor (Stari Grad). It’s beautiful, small, old, with streets not wide enough for cars. Transport is by foot, hauling by carrier tricycle, or Golf Cart with trailer. But most people just walk and the tons of tourists just ramble.

  

It’s the Montenegro procedure. Coaches come in around ten and leave at 15.00 hrs. Enough time for a one hour guided city-tour, a coffee, pictures an ice cream, a lunch and some touristic purchases. Some days of the week one or two cruise ships sail in. Small boats put the willing ashore. This makes that Kotor is almost deserted after 16.30. Waiters and shop owners, now bored try to catch the lost tourist.

The hostel is of high standard, not because you have a private room, but because of the two hosts that run the place. One is professor in the Italian language, the other a business marketer and place maker for foreign businesses that come to Montenegro. Both are in their thirties and want to work here for a while. The economic crisis is one of the reasons they took this job. They are helpful and full of tips for the backpackers from everywhere. They know almost everyone by name, but what really makes the place special is the atmosphere they create. One night the host prepared an enormous pan with Montenegrin mussels with bread. So when they are there, you should really check out this wonderful clean and nice hostel.

After dinner together with the Brazilians, I sleep well. Tomorrow is an easy day, to look around and do a lot of planning. I need to decide how and where I will go next. That depends on many things.

2 October Kotor Bay

The good thing about hostels is that you can prepare your own breakfast at your own time. I am taking it easy today and walk up the fortress with the two Brazilians. 

This town is old and the fortress is from around 1400. The walls run up 400 meters the steep solid rock mountains to protect the town.

After an afternoon relaxing and planning the next stages of my trip and working on the blog, we celebrate good-bye with a dinner together. Have a nice trip to Tirana and back my friends. it was very pleasant to exchange ideas.

30 September Sarajevo – Mostar

A rainy day in Sarajevo and I take the 11.00 hrs bus back to Mostar. This is the only connection that will bring me back to Lepetane tomorrow, with a night over in Mostar.

I walk around the city, find out where the European Commission has it’s ‘embassy’, a nice location in a park, with across the pedestrian street a house for girls of easy virtue.

The street, which was the unofficial border and front line during the war, shows still some buildings from that era, but also a eye-catching private highschool.


The park also has a 'lost statue' of Bruce Lee, but no explanation. What the hell did he do here? Just a peculiar visitor maybe, who left his mark?

Dinner in a traditional Bosnian restaurant with dressed up waitresses and waiters. I have a nice conversation with two Americans, both working in health.The man is a first aid doctor and the women a nurse.

They are both not the typical American,

They know both much about the last civil war in former Yugoslavia. They are considering what to do after they retire. The man would like to use his health knowledge where it can really make a difference. They both have learned Spanish. When you want to work with all possible patients, it is no luxury to know Spanish.

I go to my B&B after it dries up. It’s cold circa 8 degrees and I sleep early, because my bus tomorrow leaves at 7 a.m.

29 September Mostar – Jablanca – Konjic - Sarajevo

Just out of Mostar, following the river Neretva, the bus passes through beautiful scenery. It’s Sunday and whole families go out for dinner. The restaurants we pass have goats and piglets on the spit. The valleys are small and steep hills up to more than 2000 meter enfold in an Alpine landscape, if it wasn’t for the Mosques. At 13.00 hours you can hear the call for prayer.

The more we move inland the more the colors become autumn-like. I find this over a distance of less than 180 kilometer from the coast quite remarkable.

Closer to the Sarajevo, a city surrounded by hills, we pass through ugly high-rise ‘plattenbau’, concrete ugliness. The siege lasted long and the killing of civilians by snipers from the hills was a scandal and another sore spot on the blot on the escutcheon of the national community.

Since 20 couchsurfers have not even reacted, I decide to check into The Grand Hotel. Good choice, clean, friendly and just a 300 meter walk to bus and train station. Some luxury is allowed, because I know it will start and keep raining the whole day tomorrow.

 

The first sight is the Latin bridge where Franz Ferdinand and his pregnant wife Sofia in 1914 were assassinated, which triggered WW1 (right). The Museum is unfortunately closed and it’s not easy to see the resemblance today (photo left) of what happened back then.

 

The old town with the souk is nice and the smells of fresh spices and restaurants give me a strong flash back of my Gedaref visits. The receptionist has given me the address of ‘the best’ traditional food restaurant. I find it and can’t resist eating one piece of local bread with sausages, yoghurt and a salad. We ‘ll see what tomorrow brings.

Sarajevo does not make me happy. It’s not so vibrant as I expected and the atmosphere is literally a lot greyer than Mostar’s. I have no idea why, but maybe the tourism brings Mostar more per capita than it brings Sarajevo. Also life seems easier and more relaxed in the smaller town of Mostar.

I have now also discovered that connections are far from seamless. For my SYNAPTIC friends and colleagues, this is a transport jungle! Just the information is already hard to get and can never be fully trusted. So let’s not even think about co-operation between modes. My careful planning goes up in flames, because the planned bus Sarajevo – Herceg Novi only appears to run on Fridays. No way, I will wait 5 days for it. But following the way back isn’t attractive either, because the time-tables do not connect and I am fed up with border crossings. I long for my private transport my bicycle!!

28 September Dubrovnik (C) - Neum (Bosnia) - Metkovic (C) – Mostar (B)

At 8 a.m. I catch the bus to Mostar. First it goes north along the coast. Beautiful islands, some boats and fishing in the bays for clamps and mussels.

We get another treat of border crossings. The borders are crazy and land-locked Bosnia-Herzegovina has a tiny slice of coastline. But there is neither harbor nor a decent road into the hinterland. This led after Dayton to several agreements between Croatia and Bosnia Herzegovina about free freight passage to Bosnia Herzegovina thru one of the Croatian ports in a trade off for free transport of tourists that follow the coastal route North – South and vice versa.

After several ‘uniforms’ have inspected our faces and photos, more and less serious we drive through a surprising delta of the Neretva river. Water is kept in small ponds to use for irrigating the crops. The wine, citrus fruits and vegetables grow abundantly. After the steep coastal range this delta running inland along the river is a real surprise. The farming seems quite modern and the houses are rather new. Here is obviously work, income and economic development.

In the early afternoon I arrive in Mostar. A room is easily found and I wonder off into town. Many tourists visit the ‘old bridge’, now completely repaired with UNESCO funding after being shot to pieces during the 1991 battle. 

 

The sad history of a small city where all ethnic groups lived together is explained in a movie about the destroying of the bridge in the nearby bookshop. Here can one find many books about the reasons behind the civil war. I page through a book about the tribunal hearings on the Dutch UN troops in Srebrenica. One of our ugly recent pain points in political peace keeping missions. The many tourists seem to be more interested in the local souk. Overhearing many conversations very few people have an idea what tragedy took place some 20 years ago.

Not that the war scars can be unnoticed. Still many buildings show the machine gun bullet wholes and bigger shells.

highest tower from Orthodox church

I let it all simmer a bit. There is much to understand, and also so much ungraspable for my Dutch mind.

one of the many mosques