Touristy Budva and Stunning Kotor, Montenegro

Crazy bus journeys and odd business practices aside, Montenegro has some spectacular scenery.  Budva is a full on Mediterranean beach tourist town.  The water front is lined with restaurants, bars, and shops selling tourist tat.  The narrow beach is filled with rows of beach umbrellas and lounge chairs and visitors of all shapes and sizes bake in the sun in the skimpiest of bikinis.  The old town is now a shopping mall inserted into medieval buildings and packed with visitors looking for souvenirs.

Budva in the evening twilight

Tourist on the beach

Beyond the tourist trap, Budva did have some attractive sights.  The old walled town was very pretty with wonderful views of the bay.  There were a glut of restaurants to choose from and we ended up eating at a nice Chinese restaurant one night and a Thai restaurant on another.  We had tried one that specialised in Montenegrin food but were not impressed.  Though to be fair we did not give the local food a fair go.  At one point we had a surrealistic travel moment of sitting outside a 15^th Century Venetian walled city along the Adriatic coast of Montenegro, eating at a Chinese restaurant with a Japanese name while listening to a couple at the next table speaking Danish and a group of musicians on the waterfront playing Pink Floyd. 

The walls of the old town in the moonlight

The narrow streets of the old town

The piazza outside the walls of of the old town

Full moon rising over the bay

  On our second full day in Budva we decided to hire a car and drive to Kotor, about 30 minutes north of Budva.  I wish we had decided to stay in Kotor.  What a stunning place!  The town is located in a fjord like gulf that is absolutely breathtaking.  It also has a medieval walled city but the walls climb up the hill and at night are lit up in a dazzling display.  

The fortress walls of Kotor climbing up the mountain

Sadly we were in Kotor only in daytime but I borrowed nighttime photo from the web.  

The waterfront at Kotor

We walked around the waterfront and checked out the small marina for future reference.  It had reasonable rates but limited facilities.  There were also several anchorages around the bay. The walled town was very pretty and not nearly as touristy as in Budva.  There were lots of funky artistic touches throughout the town.

There were funky sculptures on the ramparts of the walls

 

Even the bollards were funky

We had a nice lunch in the walled town before driving on.

Inside the old city

Harry Potter perhaps?

After lunch we drove around the gulf through magnificent landscapes; beautiful clear water was surrounded by striking steep mountains.  

 

We stopped at Porto Montenegro.  Here was a very upmarket marina whose rates were double that of Kotor.  The area was surrounded by exclusive shops and the beautiful people.  Not really for us but it was fun to stop for a cold drink and people watch.

The marina village at Porto Montenegro

It was a delightful day exploring the area and we agreed that Kotor and its Gulf is definitely on the list for a return visit.

The Sad and Sorry Tale of Balkan Buses and Accommodation – Argh!

For our land travel through the Balkans we had planned to take relatively short bus hops up the coast of the Adriatic.  However traveling by bus in this part of the world has its challenges.  

View from the bus outside Budva, Montenegro

Our first bus ordeal was the trip from Durres, Albania to Budva, Montenegro.  When in Durres we did internet searches and asked staff at our hotel and at travel agents about the best way to get to Budva.  They all said that we would have to get the bus from Tirana and there was only one a day that left at 8 am.  This meant that we would have to take a taxi to Tirana (30 minutes away) as the shuttle buses from Durres to Tirana took about an hour and didn't start until 7am and we would miss the connecting bus.  So we arranged for this, getting up very early to have plenty of time.  The taxi took 20 minutes to get to our hotel after we had called it and the driver looked a few sandwiches short of a picnic.  The hotel staff gave him detailed instructions to the bus station of Tirana but you could not see too many sparks firing with comprehension.  Of course he spoke no English so we couldn't even check that he understood what we wanted. 

We made good time to Tirana but then when we entered the city the cabbie drove through the early morning traffic and parked at a taxi rank in the centre of the town.  He then went to another cabbie for a chat.  Bob got out of the taxi to see what was going on and everyone just stood around doing nothing.  Meanwhile the clock is ticking and our bus is due to leave in 20 minutes.  I get out of the cab and walk over asking what is going on.  The  other cabbie (who spoke good English) says it was too late for the bus and an alternative is to take a taxi to the border for 100 euros.  I tried to get the Tirana cabbie to give our cabbie instructions to the bus station anyway.  The Tirana cabbie shrugged, showed no urgency, and said we could try but it wouldn't do us any good but just to show how helpful he was, we could come back to him if we wanted a taxi to the border - yeah right.  

We get to the bus station (which it turns out we had passed on our way through Tirana) and the cab parks just outside the gates of the station while Bob and the cabbie go in to investigate.  I am told to stay with the cab.  I wait wondering why we didn't just get our bags from the boot of the taxi, pay the cabbie and go into the station.  So after about 5 minutes I see the bus we are suppose to be on pull out of the station.  I grab Bob's day pack and leave the taxi to find Bob and the cabbie in the bus station.  We had missed the once a day bus and were not happy.  We were conned but there was no way we were going to be further conned and take an overpriced taxi any further.

So we asked around the station for any other buses going to Budva.  We found one company with a bus leaving at 6 pm and had almost resigned ourselves to spending the day in Tirana until we found another company that had a bus leaving at 10.30 am. (So there were at least 3 buses a day, not one as we had been told numerous times.) The staff for the 10.30 bus were pleasant and helpful, a nice change, and suggested we go around the corner to a nice cafe for a good breakfast which we did and calmed down.  

So at 10.30 we get on our bus and settle in for what we were told was a 5-6 hour trip.  Then we notice the bus is going on the same road we took from Durres.  We assumed at some point it would stop going west to Durres turn off the main road and go north towards Budva, but no.  Thirty minutes later and 4 hours after we left Durres, we are back in the town bus station.  By this time we are ready to bang our heads on the windows or laugh at the absurdity of the situation.  Then to add to this absurdity, the bus goes three quarters of the way back to Tirana on the same road we had been on two times already that morning, before we turned off to go north to Budva.  It just made no economic or logical sense to backtrack the route like this, especially as there are shuttle buses every 30 minutes to Tirana.  Ah, the vicissitudes of travel, but we resolved to be much more careful about sorting out our next bus trip.  

Budva Bus Station - finally arrived - a five hour trip taking 10 hours

Well the best laid plans cannot overcome the lack of helpfulness of surly staff at the bus stations.  One of our first tasks when reaching Budva was to get tickets for our onward travel in three days time.  We asked about buses to our next destination, Mostar in Bosnia, at the station ticket counter and were given monosyllabic replies and grunts to our questions, were grudgingly told there were two buses a day, one at 7 am and the other at 11.40 am and they would take 7 hours to go the 150 km as the crow flies to Mostar.  We decided on the early bus and our tickets were literally thrown at us with a scowl. 

So on the appointed day we got up very early and headed to the bus station in plenty of time.  We check out all the buses parked in the bays and none said they were going to Mostar.  We asked the staff about the bus to Mostar, they looked at the bays, shrugged and said, 'not here - five minutes'.  We checked every bus that came in but none said anything about Mostar.  We asked staff again several times and each time got the same reply.  When the bus was now 15 minutes late we asked again and were told in surly dismissive grunts that the bus had left.  When we expressed our incredulity they just stonewalled us with the broken record phrase that 'the bus was gone' - no explanation, no apologies, no offer to rectify the situation.  Finally Bob went to the ticket office, staffed by the same woman who told us 'five minutes', and after much toing and frowing we were able to get replacement tickets for the 11.40 am bus with an extra 4 euro processing fee.

Hum...Traveler beware

After waiting 4 hours in a café for the next bus we returned to the station and the grumpy attendants were much friendly and told us they would make sure we would not miss the bus.  This bus was 20 minutes late and we were beginning to panic, but it came, 8 people got on and off we went zig-zagging across the country taking the most circuitous route one could imagine.  I felt like we were back on Songster tacking against the wind.  During the whole 8 hour trip to cover what turned out to be nearly 300 km, we never had more than 10 people on the full sized bus.

Not the route we thought

The green line was the road we thought we would take to Mostar. Instead we tacked our way through Montenegro and Bosnia

Our experience with our accommodation in Budva has been equally incomprehensible.  We had booked a room through Booking.com as we always do.  When we arrived at the hotel there was an empty desk in a bare lobby.  We looked around, called out hello and shrugged our shoulders.  Finally a little old lady who did not speak a word of English came to greet us.  We showed her our booking confirmation email which she waved away in disgust and continued to prattle on in Montenegrin (which by the way is the Serbian language and the lingua-franca of all these countries but since the war in the 1990's the individual countries of the Balkans have started to call their Serbian language by their country name).  The old lady eventually finds a young girl who speaks English and we were shown to a room, given the key and left to our own.  

Our hotel in Budva - nice room but odd business practices

The next morning the little old lady knocks on our door and starts prattling away in Serbian.  We have no idea what she is on about but did recognise the universal sign that she wants money.  We asked where was the bill or paperwork as we had not yet had any registration into our accommodation, but of course there is no comprehension.  We found a young man downstairs who spoke English and asked if he could help us.  As suspected the little old lady wanted us to pay for our room.  We told her, through the young man, that of course we would pay but we needed an invoice as we did not want Booking.com charging our credit card.  The little old lady looked very aggrieved that we would ask for anything like an invoice or receipt but grudgingly said we would get one tomorrow.  

The next day we searched out the little old lady to see if she had our bill made up.  (There was still no staff in the hotel other than this little old lady, live in caretaker)  There was a middle-aged lady with the caretaker who spoke some English and we eventually sorted out that we needed to go to a restaurant on the waterfront with the same name as our hotel and sort out the bill there.  So we walked the half kilometre to the restaurant and after some confusion were able to pay our bill.  We requested a receipt which again was greeted with a bit of annoyed imposition but given the paperwork.  

We have no idea what was going on.  It was very strange that we had to go to such lengths to pay our bill.  Are these hotels just a front for the mafia or a tax dodge?   They are certainly run very oddly.  It was perhaps one of the dodgiest operations we have yet come across and we have stayed in quite a few hotels in over 40 different countries.  

We have several more bus journeys in the Balkans before we fly to London and we are bracing ourselves for any eventuality.  But the compensations are that we have seen some of the very beautiful countryside in this mountainous and sparsely populated area.

 

 

Views from the buses

Durres, Albania

We had left The Boat Club in Chalkoutsi in the middle of a heatwave with temperatures soaring to 45 degrees C.  We had all day in Athens trying to keep cool until we could board our overnight bus to Albania at 6 pm.  I had thought we were planning a fairly relaxing European tour of some of the countries we haven’t been to.  It was only as we were waiting to board the overnight bus to Albania that I realised we have planned to visit 10 countries over the next 6 weeks!  The overnight bus was fairly torturous and I had some serious doubts about our sanity with this peripatetic lifestyle.  

It was with much relief that arrived at our very nice hotel in Durres, Albania.  We spent three days in Durres, an interesting holiday spot on the Adriatic.  Durres has a large port making it one of the most economically important cities in Albania.  It also has some nice beaches, which the locals flock to, and a smattering of historical ruins.

The view from our hotel room

Beach Mediterranean style - we are spoiled in Australia

Plastic lounges on the waterfront

The country of Albania has quite an interesting history.  Like all of this part of the world, Albania was occupied by the various powers of the time but seems to have fared worse than many of the other countries in the region.  Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Venetian, and Ottoman empires ruled the area.  Then from the early 20^th Century, Albania tried to assert itself as a sovereign nation with limited success.  During WWI, Albania was occupied by the Italians and the Nazi’s during WWII.  By the end of WWII Albania had a long way to go to be a viable country.  

 

One of the major factors, to my mind, in Albania’s difficulties to nationhood was the fact that Albania never had schools which taught in the Albanian language.  All the occupying regimes established schools in their own language, excluding the vast majority of the population from education.  As a consequence, by the end of WWII, 85% of the population was illiterate.  After the war the strongman, Hoxha, established a harsh Stalinist regime and killed or imprisoned anyone perceived as a threat to his power.  A secret police extended the reprisals to the family members who were banished to remote villages after their loved ones were killed or imprisoned.  Life was pretty grim under this Stalinist dictator.

However during this despotic reign, Hoxha did do some good.  He advanced education and the literacy rate of Albanians is now equal to that in any Western country.  He also advanced the rights of women.  The traditional code of law in Albania described women as “a sack, made to endure as long as she lives in her husband’s house”.  Today more women than men attend university.

Hoxha died in 1985 and Albania began its transition to democracy and economic reform.  Sadly corrupt and greedy officials brought the country to bankruptcy in the 1990’s through a national Ponzi scheme.  Nearly two-thirds of the population invested in these schemes and collectively lost half the value of their GDP.  The collapse of the pyramid schemes led to a year long civil war.

Today Albania seems to be a modern European country; a bit poorer than most but with all the conveniences of modern life (for better or worse that this entails).

A pier that seemed a bit of a commercial folly and the commercial port in the background

Major road going to the mosque and the town square

Waterfront with the Royal Villa on the hill

We spent a relaxing three days just taking in the atmosphere of Durres and the Albanians.  We checked out the Venetian tower and ancient Roman city walls.  We walked along the waterfront and through the streets, saddened by the lack of urban planning and rather soulless concrete blocks of apartments but intrigued by the statues and monuments. 

Patriotic statue with tower blocks behind

Venetian tower in the middle of road works

Roman amphitheatre

Bob with a bronze fisherman

More statues and concrete tower blocks

We climbed up the hill overlooking the sea to the Royal Villa of King Zog (love the name!).  Zog, although an aristocrat, was a self-proclaimed king.  He became prime minister in 1922 then  declared himself King in 1928.  He built his summer residence on the hill above Durress.  The residence is not open to the public and a bit derelict but the views from it are quite impressive.

Royal Villa

View over Durres and the Adriatic

Roman ruins and modern port

As in all these Mediterranean countries, the towns come to life in the evening.  In Durres, the women put on nice dresses and everyone walks along the waterfront with their partners, friends and family.  They all gather at the sea lido to watch the spectacular sunset and stroll through fun fair, munching on roasted corn cobs, ice cream or popcorn.  It seemed a lovely, happy community time.

All the fun of the fair

Sunset over the Adriatic