THE HINTERLAND OF MONTENEGRO
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| Industry in the plain of Podgorica |
The bus was on time. We went all the way to Bar by the seaside and then the road went inland and crossed the Skadar lake that appeared all quiet, reflecting the gentle light of the sky and the shape of the surrounding mountains. A couple of fishing boats dotted the water's surface in the distance. On the other side of the lake, the road went through a plain with a few villages and aged industrial buildings that brought to my mind the idea of the Wild West because of the combination of dry grass in the foreground, rusty structures in the middle ground and mountains in the background. Soon we reached the suburb of Podgorica with its grid of roads and streets.
Podgorica is the most recent capital of Montenegro. Until 1946 the capital was Cetinje, located thirty kilometres west. In 1946, Tito moved the capital of Montenegro to Podgorica which, on the occasion, was renamed Titograd until 1992 when the former city name was restored. Podgorica is rather small, with less than two hundred thousand inhabitants, but the attributes of a capital city have made it bigger. It has, though, always been at the crossroads of several trade routes, being at the junction of two rivers. Besides, it has no immediate constraint of space, being in the center of a large plain, so it has expanded easily on both sides of the Morača river.
There is a great disparity between the crumbling Stara Varos, the old town with a few stone houses still standing, and the most recent residences under construction in the city center. The suspended Millennium bridge, all white, crosses the river without pillars, supported only by steel cables anchored to a thick pole by the riverside. Tired looking late-20th-century housing made of concrete is constituting the bulk of the city on both sides of the river.
The grid structure of the streets in the city center has been imposed as a rational form of modern development in contrast with the winding narrow streets of Stara Varos. Of the two rivers in Podgorica, the main one, the Morača, always has water while the other one, the Ribniča, is dry for some part of the year and winds its way through the town center. The Ottomans, who controlled the town between the end of the 15th and the end of the 19th century, built a bath house on its shore which has since been repurposed into an atmospheric bookshop called Karver. It has a few tables on its front terrace outside. The idyllic setting of the winding river was visibly not compatible with city's modern development planning. An overpass bridge has been built across the river right above the bath house. Surely there must have been a lot of outcry going on between those who wanted to keep it and those who wouldn't have minded its going away. Well, now the old bath house has a second roof to protect it from showers!
On the way from the bus station to our accommodation, we found police forces barring access to the town's main street, even to pedestrian. The reason was that the Gay Pride of Podgorica was set to take place in the afternoon and one probably feared it could have triggered unrest as it obviously wasn't a cause to everyone's taste. This is a parade with "special" people, for lack of a better word, had told us the lady that handed us the keys of our flat. Later in the afternoon we saw the parade, very modest, of a few hundred people, walking with signboards behind the truck that was carrying a rather good sound system. A peaceful affair.
Life is a struggle and revenge is sometimes best served cold. A new Orthodox Cathedral was completed in 2014 in the western part of town. It has, on the first floor, in the right corner above the main entrance, a fresco representing famous Communists like Karl Marx, Friedriech Engels and Tito burning in Hell, or perhaps being kept warm until further notice.
The town has a canteen, a restaurant nacional, called Pod Volat which sits right by the clock tower. It is a vibrant place where everyone is going for a good but cheap meal. The crowd was really diverse, very few foreigners and a mix of generations including families. It was Saturday night and we sat next to a couple, he was probably in his fifties with grey hair, she was probably ten years plus younger and visibly enjoying to be taken out for dinner. She wore a white Adidas t-shirt under a fur coat, grey on the outside and patched with a mosaic of vibrant colors on the inner side. Her fingernails were painted in metallic colors. While eating, she was hiding her mouth conscious of her protruding front teeth. They had ordered some meat and some rice. He didn't eat much rice but she was keen on having it. They left as our waiter brought the tripe I had ordered. The next day I tried the lamb cooked under the bell, slow-cooked meat. That was really good. Pod Volat will remain number one in my memories of Podgorica. That and the umbrella we bought between two showers, not that the umbrella was particularly nice, but it really marked the change of weather and the imminence of winter.
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A few yellow leaves were still holding on to the branches of linden trees giving a pinch of color to the facades of the manors of Cetinje's pedestrian street. The light was diffuse as a shy sun wouldn't manage to overcome the veil of clouds floating above the former capital of Montenegro. Cetinje had been founded by Ivan the Black in 1482. The town has now entered a sleepy phase, still dreaming about the glorious hours of the past and of its status of capital of Montenegro during the first half of the 20th century. Though, not everything has disappeared from that past. The President of Montenegro is still residing in the Blue Palace while the government officiates thirty kilometers away in Podgorica. Former embassies and palaces from the 19th century, when Montenegro was still a Kingdom, have been turned into museums and the Monastery of Cetinje is still actively fulfilling its duty at the foot of hill that dominates the town.
We arrived on a Sunday morning and quickly came to the conclusion that most museums were closed. However the main street got progressively lively with people walking to their favourite cafes. In the centre, the number of cafes was significant. We entered the Art Café that looked somewhat off the beaten tracks. It had repurposed furniture, either painted or decorated with drawings. The ceiling was a psychedelic version of a blue sky dotted with small clouds. A death cup was painted on the wall as part of a comic landscape. Above our heads, was a shelf with small african objects. The toilets had, in lieu of wall paper, a series of faces drawn in one single stroke with a black pen on the white wall. Customers, regulars and I should add mostly men, sat each at a table, mostly on their own. One knew each other, but the lebensraum was certainly part of the rule of engagement. Sunday morning should be a chilling moment with a drink, listening to good music. The sound of jazz was what attracted me to come and have coffee there. One guy, seating next to the entrance door had a can of Coke in front of him, but he soon ordered a refill of rum to go with it. He was an early bird! We looked at other cafés from the outside, all of them had a particular style suited to its own crowd of regulars. The sun popped-up briefly coloring the hills in the bright colors of Fall. Opposite the Presidential Residence was a wood with a few bronze statues. They represented important men, all with a moustache whose size of had to be substantial!
A few yellow leaves were still holding on to the branches of linden trees giving a pinch of color to the facades of the manors of Cetinje's pedestrian street. The light was diffuse as a shy sun wouldn't manage to overcome the veil of clouds floating above the former capital of Montenegro. Cetinje had been founded by Ivan the Black in 1482. The town has now entered a sleepy phase, still dreaming about the glorious hours of the past and of its status of capital of Montenegro during the first half of the 20th century. Though, not everything has disappeared from that past. The President of Montenegro is still residing in the Blue Palace while the government officiates thirty kilometers away in Podgorica. Former embassies and palaces from the 19th century, when Montenegro was still a Kingdom, have been turned into museums and the Monastery of Cetinje is still actively fulfilling its duty at the foot of hill that dominates the town.
We arrived on a Sunday morning and quickly came to the conclusion that most museums were closed. However the main street got progressively lively with people walking to their favourite cafes. In the centre, the number of cafes was significant. We entered the Art Café that looked somewhat off the beaten tracks. It had repurposed furniture, either painted or decorated with drawings. The ceiling was a psychedelic version of a blue sky dotted with small clouds. A death cup was painted on the wall as part of a comic landscape. Above our heads, was a shelf with small african objects. The toilets had, in lieu of wall paper, a series of faces drawn in one single stroke with a black pen on the white wall. Customers, regulars and I should add mostly men, sat each at a table, mostly on their own. One knew each other, but the lebensraum was certainly part of the rule of engagement. Sunday morning should be a chilling moment with a drink, listening to good music. The sound of jazz was what attracted me to come and have coffee there. One guy, seating next to the entrance door had a can of Coke in front of him, but he soon ordered a refill of rum to go with it. He was an early bird! We looked at other cafés from the outside, all of them had a particular style suited to its own crowd of regulars. The sun popped-up briefly coloring the hills in the bright colors of Fall. Opposite the Presidential Residence was a wood with a few bronze statues. They represented important men, all with a moustache whose size of had to be substantial!
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The train left Podgorica under a shy sun, running through an area with scattered houses that used the land around them to accumulate objects that would, in other places, be considered as junk but that certainly here had the potential of spare parts. Some buildings looked unfinished with bricks and mortar. Steel rods protruded vertically from the top storey in anticipation of another floor to come when money would be available.
The railway line was following the Zeta river, climbing progressively along the slope of a valley that soon became deep. The views evolved from a rural setting with a cow grazing next a farm in the morning light to a more industrial landscape with a stone quarry that ate limestone from a hill that would soon seize to exist.
The train stopped at mini stations that served nearby villages down in the valley. The station of Ostrog was one of those, a recent building to host the station manager, a waiting room and room with "restoran" written on the door, which was understandably closed in this season. We were the only ones to jump out of the train on that morning.
One million pilgrims are said to visit the Orthodox Monastery of Ostrog every year, it is composed of three levels. The lower Monastery is adjacent to the hamlet of Ostrog which counts a couple of farms. The second level is a church located a little higher up the slope while the upper Monastery is built, two or three hundred meters elevation higher, along the cliff and partly carved in the rock. By the time we reached the lower Monastery, clouds were floating in front of the cliff, wrapping the white facade of the upper Monastery in a mysterious veil. Fortunately as we approached it, the sun came out, bathing the place in a warm glow. Only a few pilgrims had come that day. One could enter inside the shrine past a first gate next to a fountain with curative waters and could access, through a flight of stairs, a second gate that led to the main building carved in the rock and had a white facade, at the end of which is the holiest part: a small chapel built in 1665 where original frescoes can still be seen darkened by the time. There, a Priest sat on a wooden seat at the end of the cave, all dressed in black and wearing a black cap. He was probably about forty as his beard didn't have any grey hair. His armchair was next to an opened wooden coffin that contained precious religious objects. A lady approached, knelt in front of the coffin and kissed it, he asked her name and blessed her. He then asked us where we came from and in the little English he could manage, pointed out the very divine nature of the place where we were standing. The Monastery had a shop with all sorts of religious books and images as well as food products made in the various Orthodox Monasteries of the region. I got a small flask of grape schnapps. We went back to the train and on to Podgorica where the rain awaited us. It went on and off until the next day and prompted us to buy our umbrella and order a cab to the bus station to catch the noon bus to Mostar in Bosnia Herzegovina. The sky was dark. The bus wasn't arriving. People were worried but waited mostly in silence, sternly looking at the darkness of the clouds. Finally we understood that a replacement bus had been dispatched that is why it had come late and the driver seemed a bit grumpy. We took a parallel road to train tracks we had used going to Ostrog the day before. The rain fell so heavily that it felt the night had come by 3.30pm, before we had reached the student town of Niksić. The road went on twisting and turning up and down from one valley to the next. The storm wouldn't ease. This was such a dark way to leave Montenegro, perhaps it had come to deserve its name of "black mountain".
The train left Podgorica under a shy sun, running through an area with scattered houses that used the land around them to accumulate objects that would, in other places, be considered as junk but that certainly here had the potential of spare parts. Some buildings looked unfinished with bricks and mortar. Steel rods protruded vertically from the top storey in anticipation of another floor to come when money would be available.
The railway line was following the Zeta river, climbing progressively along the slope of a valley that soon became deep. The views evolved from a rural setting with a cow grazing next a farm in the morning light to a more industrial landscape with a stone quarry that ate limestone from a hill that would soon seize to exist.
The train stopped at mini stations that served nearby villages down in the valley. The station of Ostrog was one of those, a recent building to host the station manager, a waiting room and room with "restoran" written on the door, which was understandably closed in this season. We were the only ones to jump out of the train on that morning.
One million pilgrims are said to visit the Orthodox Monastery of Ostrog every year, it is composed of three levels. The lower Monastery is adjacent to the hamlet of Ostrog which counts a couple of farms. The second level is a church located a little higher up the slope while the upper Monastery is built, two or three hundred meters elevation higher, along the cliff and partly carved in the rock. By the time we reached the lower Monastery, clouds were floating in front of the cliff, wrapping the white facade of the upper Monastery in a mysterious veil. Fortunately as we approached it, the sun came out, bathing the place in a warm glow. Only a few pilgrims had come that day. One could enter inside the shrine past a first gate next to a fountain with curative waters and could access, through a flight of stairs, a second gate that led to the main building carved in the rock and had a white facade, at the end of which is the holiest part: a small chapel built in 1665 where original frescoes can still be seen darkened by the time. There, a Priest sat on a wooden seat at the end of the cave, all dressed in black and wearing a black cap. He was probably about forty as his beard didn't have any grey hair. His armchair was next to an opened wooden coffin that contained precious religious objects. A lady approached, knelt in front of the coffin and kissed it, he asked her name and blessed her. He then asked us where we came from and in the little English he could manage, pointed out the very divine nature of the place where we were standing. The Monastery had a shop with all sorts of religious books and images as well as food products made in the various Orthodox Monasteries of the region. I got a small flask of grape schnapps. We went back to the train and on to Podgorica where the rain awaited us. It went on and off until the next day and prompted us to buy our umbrella and order a cab to the bus station to catch the noon bus to Mostar in Bosnia Herzegovina. The sky was dark. The bus wasn't arriving. People were worried but waited mostly in silence, sternly looking at the darkness of the clouds. Finally we understood that a replacement bus had been dispatched that is why it had come late and the driver seemed a bit grumpy. We took a parallel road to train tracks we had used going to Ostrog the day before. The rain fell so heavily that it felt the night had come by 3.30pm, before we had reached the student town of Niksić. The road went on twisting and turning up and down from one valley to the next. The storm wouldn't ease. This was such a dark way to leave Montenegro, perhaps it had come to deserve its name of "black mountain".
images:
1/ Industry in the plain of Podgorica
1/ Industry in the plain of Podgorica
2/ Podgorica, proudly Montenegrin
3/ Podgorica, where Tito, Marx and Engels are kept in hell
4/ Cetinje, how to wear a moustache
5/ A cow grazing in the morning sun, Zeta valley
6/ Ostrog Upper Monastery
3/ Podgorica, where Tito, Marx and Engels are kept in hell
4/ Cetinje, how to wear a moustache
5/ A cow grazing in the morning sun, Zeta valley
6/ Ostrog Upper Monastery
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| Podgorica, proudly Montenegrin |
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| Podgorica, where Tito, Marx and Engels are kept in hell |
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| Cetinje, how to wear a moustache |
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| A cow grazing in the morning sun, Zeta valley |
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| Ostrog Upper Monastery |
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