Going to Kotor – a little Perast for time

Let me start with this. In some ways, our so-called day four was probably my least favorite day of the trip. Before I get into the events of the day, I’ll explain two phrases in the previous sentence.

The first is “so-called day four.” Day four is OAT’s label for this day and technically, it is. I left home Sunday and today is Wednesday. To be fair, OAT isn’t alone in this labeling but here’s my beef: While it was, indeed Sunday in Washington when my flight departed, at my destination, Dubrovnik, it was already Monday (albeit 04:30 but Monday nevertheless). The travel industry counts the travel days to make the trip – and really the services they’re responsible for providing – seem longer than it is. Thus, they can promote the daily cost of the trip based on adding two travel days rather than the days that you actually spend under their guidance at the destination(s).

The second phrase requiring explanation is “least favorite day of the trip.” This is a function of the day’s logistics (which I’ll discuss below) combined with the value and pleasure drawn from the experience. It’s not my intent to impugn Perast, Kotor, Montenegro, or the hospitality of the Montenegrins but from my point of view the experience had me questioning OAT’s decision to include this excursion as part of the trip. Yes, the drive is scenic.

Yes, Perast is a charming little town with a unique attraction. Yes, Kotor Bay is beautiful and Kotor is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Still, I wondered why OAT saw this as adding more value than either a second day in Dubrovnik or a less complicated more local excursion. Perhaps the organizers thought it might simply be nice for the group to say they’d been to Montenegro.

I also wondered if politics could have played a role in limiting our visit to Montenegro to little more than a “drive by.” Because the Montenegrins sided with the Serbians in the nineties wars, they are viewed by the west as the aggressors and it’s noteworthy that Serbia’s also not included on this tour. Perhaps they were merely worried about our safety. It’s certainly not difficult to find unpleasant stories about Montenegro and the Montenegrins during the 1991-1995 wars.

After Serbia and Montenegro became the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (F R Y) and the wars were at the height of their intensity, the UN imposed an embargo on the F R Y. Obviously, this affected many aspects of life in the country one of which was that most Montenegrin industrial production stopped and the Montenegrins turned to another activity to fuel their economy and evade the embargo. Using the main assets available – a favorable geographical location (access to the Adriatic Sea and a water-link to Albania across Lake Skadar) Montenegro became a hub for various significant smuggling activities – primarily the smuggling of user goods.

I’m not simply slinging mud here. For example, as recently as 2007, Italian prosecutors charged current Prime Minister Milo Đukanović who, with his Democratic Party of Socialists (DPS) has led the country for 25 years, with leading a conspiracy involving cigarette smuggling and money laundering in the 1990s – charges Đukanović has, as expected vehemently and repeatedly denied. Simultaneously he’s relied on his diplomatic immunity to avoid cooperating with the prosecution. There are indications that organized crime and government corruption remain active in the country.

Now, I’ll get on with the day starting with

Cats at breakfast.

In a moment of foreshadowing, while walking to breakfast in the morning, I met the hotel’s clowder of cats. I don’t know whether they’re feral or merely reticent around strangers but they shied away when I approached them. I do suspect they’re related, however. Here’s a picture of two of them:.

Folks gathered informally for breakfast sometime after 07:00 and before our scheduled departure at 09:00. Now, without a border crossing, the drive from Dubrovnik to Perast and Kotor along the Jadranska Magistrala – the main seaside road in Croatia – would require about two hours. This makes the round trip four hours without accounting for the border crossings. In our case these added nearly two hours with the longer wait coming on our return to Croatia. It also means that, with plans to return to Dubrovnik for dinner, the maximum total time available to us in Perast and Kotor together was only about five and a half hours. Thus, my gripe about logistics. The day would probably border on spectacular without a border to cross.

What’s in a name?

While we’re on our way to Montenegro, I’d like to parse its name. Those among you familiar with Italian or Latin might be able to derive its etymology into the words for mountain and black in those languages. Now, you might recall that in the first entry I explained that the Croatian Kuna is listed on the exchange markets as HRK because the Croatians call their country Hrvatska. It could be that Croatia is an Anglicization of Hrvatska or it’s an Anglicization some other language’s interpretation of the Croatian word or something else entirely – I haven’t done the research to know. This isn’t quite the case for Montenegro. You see, the Montenegrins call the country Crna Gora (pronounced TSER-nah GAW-rah) which translates to English as Black Mountain.

Historians don’t agree about the origin of the country’s name but it can be traced as far back as the early 1200s, when “Crna Gora” appeared in the charter of Vranjina Monastery to denote the highlands of Mount Lovćen – a mountain near Kotor in southwestern Montenegro. The Italian based Montenegro stuck because this part of the Balkans was under Venetian control between 1420 and 1797. The most common speculation is that once the Venetians arrived in Kotor and traversed the city walls, the next barrier to trading with the inland settlements – particularly with Cetinje – at that time the capital of the region – was the ascent and descent of Mount Lovćen. Observed from a distance, the density of trees make it appear black which is a phenomenon also seen in the Black Hills of South Dakota. Thus, for the Venetians the mainland became the place over the black mountain. Hence, they called it Montenegro and Montenegro it remains.

Interestingly, some version of “Black Mountain” seems to be everyone’s name for the country. For example, in Albanian the name is Mali i Zi. In Greek it’s Μαυροβούνιο. And in Turkish it’s Karadağ. All of these translate to English as Black Mountain.

(A word about pronunciation: In the Slavic languages, the pronunciation of the letter ‘j’ is akin to the English pronunciation of the letter ‘y’ as you would at the beginning of the word yawn. A ‘c’ with no diacritical mark is pronounced like ‘ts’ and the letter ‘g’ is always a hard ‘g’ as in go. Stress is usually on the first syllable. Thus the name of the road we traveled is: YAH-drahn-skah MAH-gih-stRAh-lah and our group leader’s name is DAH-meer although we called him da-MEER throughout,)

Note: In keeping with my 2022-2023 reformation of the blog into shorter entries, backdated to maintain their sequence, any comments on this post might pertain to its new configuration. See the full explanation in the post Conventions and Conversions.