Day 6: Rain, Podgorica, rain, rain, bus, taxi and serpentines, separate dormitories, Atlas Shrugged

This day started with us really wanting to eat something good, fresh, not cooked on our small cooker. We got up and slowly packed our things, enjoying a quiet, solitary morning at the beach. After a while a group of about 30 “whales” arrived (by tourist boat), so we left a bit faster. We luckily hitchhiked back to Virpazar and started our hunt for the good food - fish! After the delicious meal we hit the road again.

Morning views on the Skadar lake

We wanted to travel directly to Prokletije mountains, but the road in the direction was so infrequent that we couldn’t get a ride. We went to Podgorica instead. It was also raining quite heavily every half an hour.

Welcome to Podgorica

We were looking for what interesting there is to see in Podgorica, but didn’t find anything. On Tripadvisor the best appraisal of a thing to see in Podgorica was “nice”. We didn’t want to go to the mountains either because of the weather (it was still raining - more like pouring), so we decided we would visit the Ostrog monastery instead, where they also offer free beds for pilgrims. Ideal, we thought.

Ostrog Monastery it is

Staying just one night at the monastery offered us so much food for thought! My impression of the people we met there (other guests) was that they were not very friendly. This really surprised me. Most of them didn’t look into my eyes when we met on a hallway as if they were scared. They didn’t talk to us and responded briefly when we started.

The pilgrims dormitory

Another experience was this woman who was taking care of the common room / kitchen. Me and @mor wanted to read a book, which we couldn’t in the dorms. We have just one copy (btw. It’s Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand and we are both loving it! We will have to make another post just about the book..) and the dorms are separate for men and women. The kitchen seemed ideal for it, except it was full of cigarette smoke, which we find very discomforting (by the way I was so surprised how many Montenegrins smoke. I realized that even though addiction might be something like a sin for me (or at least a vice), it doesn’t need to be a sin for them… I realized that while my goal is to constantly improve as a person, for them it’s probably good enough to just follow the Bible and they don’t really care what’s good and what not). So we opened the window and got to the reading, but then this woman came, closed the window saying it was too cold, and left, even though we were the only people in the room. And there were more situations like this. She was just overly organizing unimportant things - the way people were making their coffees, using the dishes, etc.

The monastery itself was also quite a strange experience for us. It was this type of consumerism in church. People were buying all these items, necklaces for praying, putting candles everywhere and putting money everywhere. It was a ritual.

Religious consumerism

This candle-lit prayer room was actually quite nice

We even have (quite by chance) visited a chamber with some saint’s remains. In the room there was a small coffin with the relics and an orthodox priest with a cross in a hand reading prayers. It was quite weird because he was reading them only to himself, not to the people who were praying there.

Icons on a cave wall

Prague Monk ;-) (@hr1)

After this visit we tried to return to Podgorica. We wanted to hitchhike back to the highway so that we wouldn’t have to pay for the overcharged taxi, but it was terrible. Our first bad experience while hitchhiking. All the christian people were passing us by in their empty cars and looking either angry or looking away. We nearly gave it up when a friendly Montenegrin teacher picked us up and drove us to the highway.

Our taxi

Escape to the Mountains

We then returned to Podgorica by bus and decided to travel to the mountains right away. It wasn’t supposed to rain anymore. Our plan was to start in the Prokletje mountains at the Montenegro side (in Vusinje) and cross the borders to Albania in the mountains.

On our way to Plav we had to wait for about an hour on the road because there was an accident in front of us. The Montenegrins are probably not much used to wet roads because we’d seen another mild accident before we arrived to Plav. With the delay the bus ride took over 5 hours so we arrived to Plav after 8 PM and were awfully hungry and a bit desperate. We needed to get to another city closer to the mountains and there was no bus going at this time. The people there tried to use our situation up and they wanted to charge us by 5 euros for a ride where they charge only 1 euro to locals. We were a bit sick of it.

Good Bargain

We bought some food for the mountains in the supermarket and then wondered what we should do. We were extremely lucky again because we met a boy who grew up in the US but was from that village. He was really helpful and told us how much we should pay for the taxi and many other things.

This way we managed to get overcharged by only 1 euro. And then a miracle happened. We found a non-smoking restaurant and had a great dinner there and also had some wine, and some rakija.. Then we walked cheerfully closer to the mountains so that we could build our tent. We found a half hidden spot behind an information center and ended another crazy and tiresome day.

See you next time, @hr1 and @mor

If you liked this post, you might also wanna see the Introduction post about our travel. Or see the previous day of the journey.