« In Which I Reach A New Country.. Literally | Home | In Which Tito Would Feel Very Much At Home »
In Which The Credit Crunch Reaches Montenegro
September 4, 2008 by Mike
Route: Kotor - Tivat - Rosa - Budva - Petrovac - Sutomore
Croatia maintained a healthy tourist industry during the years of Tito's Communist Yugoslavia. Montenegro, further down the coast, did less well, but boyohboy does it have a pearl of the Adriatic here in Kotor and the bay -- Boka Kotorska. Fantastic yesterday evening; startling last night as a forest fire...
.. illuminated the very top of one of the hills overlooking the town (though I'm not a fan of forest fires, you understand; and pretty danged good this morning when I eventally surfaced and wiped my blinking eyes.
The walled town is crowned by a jagged line of fortifications running up the the saddle of stony hillside in a series of uneven steps and out of sight. Looking back after I'd circled a mile around the bay, I couldn't see where fortification began and mountainside ended, so blended and natural are the colours of the ancient walls. The white walls and dust-red roof tiles of the town fringe the emerald sea that twinkles in the sunlight, the landscape dotted with pine trees and the ultrabright white yachts on the waterfront.
--
Holiday and retirement property is big business here. Or maybe (hopefully?) the credit crunch has destroyed all these companies, but the firm that takes down company signs is so busy these days that they haven't got round to these ones yet. Throughout the old city I noted: Montenegro Real Estate, Montenegro Living, Montenegro Prospects, Adriatic Pearls ("Turn dreams into Reality"), Matkovic Montenegro Property and others besides.
Notice anything unusual?
The names -- they're all in English. Now I've been out of the UK for so long, I notice the occasional words in English much more readily than I might if I was away for a week's holiday. I'm not used to seeing words that are familiar, if that makes sense. So the incongruity of these company names is very noticeable. But no, it's not 'unusual', come to think of it -- I've seen the same thing from Tallinn to Portugal and beyond.
What was a little bit unusual were the signs for holiday property written in Roosian (I know what it was, because the phone numbers for information were in Moscow and St Petersburg.) But then my mind went back to the up-market jewellery shops in Malaga and St Tropez with signs in.. Roosian. "The Roosians are coming!"..? Nope.. they're already here, armed with long-range interballistic credit cards.
The idea that property might not be theft after all clearly hasn't won all the hearts and minds yet, mind.
The biggest square ("trg") of Kotor, just inside the main gate, is called Trg Oktobarske Revolucije -- see, you can speak Montenegrin! -- and the gate itself (which must have seen Ottoman, Venetian, Serb, Bosnian, Montenegrin, Croatian and Napoleonic forces come and go) is crowned these days with a quote from Tito and the date the town was liberated by his Partisan forces in 1944.
--
I continued all the way around the bay, pleased as punch that I hadn't taken the short-cut ferry that would have knocked 50 gorgeous miles off the journey. The road gets thinner and unkempt and it lifts off into the clouds.. don't be tempted to turn off or back.. this little slice of tarmac will deliver you to my new house. A couple of hundred metres above the bay (that feels so close you can reach out and touch it.. but if you try you're going to fall tumbling over steep cliffs into shallow waters and they'll only blame me if you do so please don't) it sits, slightly tumbledown at the moment; a dear old woman who I 'spoke' to as she stood on the balcony of her house a couple of hundred metres to the south.. we had about three words in common but managed to make each other smile.. she'll be a good neighbour; the roof leaks a bit in a few places.. when it rains, which is never, of course.. the garden cold do with a bit of watering, mind.. olive trees and space for some vines.. and a swimming pool.. and all I have to do is go back one day and buy it:
--
Madonna's playing in Montenegro in a couple of weeks. The billboards advertising the gig were one of the outstanding and memorable features of the coast road through Croatia. Not quite enough to tempt me to stop in the town where the gig is. I suspect Budva is where the Beautiful People congregate, and I'd hate to stand out.
I didn't even stop in the next little bay, busy beaches either side of the church and old town of Sveti Stefan, despite the postcard-sending potential. (Stephen, it was a close call but you got away with it this time!)
Something was clearly driving me on, so that even though the town of Sutomore was on the face of it less attractive.. more Blackpool than St Tropez.. fast food fumes; fat families wedged into too tight costumes and shoe-horned together on a pebbly beach; a big motorbike rally starting here tomorrow and.. oh, right, that'll be it, then.
Comments
Leave your comment
Latest comments
- By robert and peter in Diary
- By Wayne in Diary
- By Boris in Diary
- By Sandy from Leeds in Diary
- By Sascha in Diary
- By clive marie goldwing in Diary
- By carlos pascual in Diary
- By Erkut Dora in Diary
- By david gwilliam in Diary
- By Nick in Diary
- By Mike Bowyer in Diary
- By Dick With in Diary
- By Gordon in Diary
- By KC in Diary
- By steve in Diary
- By Mike in Diary
- By Sascha in Diary
- By P Dawson in Diary
- By Mike in Diary
- By Helen in Diary
- By Mike in Diary
- By KC in Diary
- By Sergiu in Diary