Dubrovnik and Kotor

Dubrovnik

The bus ride to Dubrovnik was really rather strange. The bus takes the coastal route, so much of the trip we had a view like this:

Complete with dusty windows.

The coastline in this part of the world is a little strange too. To get to Dubrovnik there's a section of road that goes through Bosnia and Herzegovina (it goes through one of those anyway, but since they're one country, it's unclear right now which one it went through). As we saw when we went through Zagreb, Croatia has a policy of checking passports for every entry and exit from the country. This became a little kafkaesque when we had our passports checked and handed back to us when exiting Croatia and entering Bosnia and Herzegovina, and again less than five minutes later when exiting Bosnia and Herzegovina and entering Croatia again. It felt like something from The City and the City. Of course with a history like the Balkans have, it's no surprise that the border is less than logical.

Dubrovnik is pretty, although within the city walls it felt a little sterile to me. Everything is made out of stone: the walls, the roads, the buildings, the churches, the monuments, and some of the souvenirs. There was rather a lot of Game of Thrones paraphernalia as well, since Dubrovnik is the location for King's Landing in the TV series.

While we were there we visited a few churches, and had a look at the memorial for those who died in the relatively recent siege of Dubrovnik, where the old town was shelled by Yugoslav forces who didn't want Croatia to secede from Yugoslavia. It's kind of amazing that such things happened in our lifetimes, but then I suppose this period of relative peace in Europe is the anomaly rather than the norm.

Speaking of conflict, there's a great – if disturbing – exhibit of war photos. We saw everything from Maoist guerillas in Nepal to Congolese child soldiers, and of course the permanent exhibition with photos of the wars during the break up of Yugoslavia. The temporary exhibition is on the conflict in the Democratic Peoples Republic of Congo, which is neither a people's republic, nor democratic. It's so very sad that a country that should be so rich on paper, is so very poor, due in large part to the mineral riches that are there for the taking. The love of money has some 'splainin to do. As does the international community (whatever that is). Obviously the causes of this humanitarian disaster (I want to use a stronger word here, but the only one that comes to mind that sums up the situation is unsuitable for print) are many and complicated, and the solutions will be more complicated, but humans are good at complicated things... Sorry about the rant, I'll continue.

We wandered down the road a little way along the coast that afternoon, missing out on a boat trip to the island.

Stout as walls.

Bland streets.

Ornate churches

More walls

The walled city almost looks out of place here in the tropical surroundings.

Kotor

The next morning we took the bus, leaving Croatia behind, taking the long and winding road that leads to Kotor. Alright, it's not actually all that long, but it's winding. Kotor is another little walled town on the coast, this time in Montenegro. We were unsure how large it actually was, so made sure to book a place near the bus station. As it turned out you can walk across the city in about five minutes (the old town anyway). We were up about four flights of stairs' worth of stone steps, but I'm getting used to carrying the big bags up stairs. Since it was still the early afternoon we went to have a look at some of the sights.

We saw a couple of Catholic and eastern Orthodox churches, and then decided to go have a look at St. Ivan's fortress. I'm not sure who St. Ivan was, but he must have had great aerobic fitness. It was a 45 minute stair climb up to the top of the hill where his fortress was. We're no slouches either (I think I'm probably fitter than I've been in years – so much walking!) but it still took us the whole 45 minutes that the tourist book said it would. We paid 3 euros each for the privilege, and for views like this:

Actually the view from our window.

Another cruise ship, complete with cetacean-emulating exhaust system.

Parts of Kotor - not including the old town

Refreshing to be able to run around the ruins without safety restrictions.

Some old derelict church.

I'm not sure why a saint would need a fortress; maybe he was like one of those warrior monks.

Kotor was cool, and seems to be an up-and-coming place. Just after we arrived that cruise ship you can see in the photos docked, and like Jonah's whale spewed forth a belly full of cruise ship tourists, many of whom were walking up to the fortress at the same time as us. The tourist book suggests that Montenegro is trying to market itself as a more upmarket destination, and while we were in Kotor we noticed pretty flash shops, which didn't seem to be doing much by way of sales. Admittedly, we weren't there in the height of the tourist season.

The next morning we tried our luck at getting to Sarajevo. Unfortunately there wasn't a bus that went at an appropriate time for us directly from Kotor – we had to take a bus to Podgorica, and then on to Sarajevo. Unfortunately, again, it's really rather difficult to find information about the bus system in the Balkans, so we found out as much as we could about getting to Podgorica in time for what we hoped was a bus to Sarajevo. Podgorica isn't a place that I would normally talk about, but it felt different from Kotor. It was much much less tourist-oriented. It's not on the coast, it doesn't have a quaint stone city enclosed in crumbling walls; it does have a bus station though, and at that station we had this meal for just over 5 euros.

If that's the price at a bus station restaurant, I don't know what to expect in the rest of Montenegro. I imagine that in the non-tourist parts of Montenegro for a small price you can live like a king - a king with arteriosclerosis.

The rest of the bus ride to Sarajevo took us through the mountains, up through the mountain roads – some of which were unpaved. While the roads were in better condition than some of the ones we've been on in Canada, it's probably the worst road that goes between major cities in neighbouring countries that we've been on. Some parts of it are only wide enough for one vehicle at a time, so when we meet other cars we have to pull over and let them pass. As I'm typing this up now, there's a curious mix of 80s hair metal, 90s top 40, and what I assume are Balkan folk, and electronic dance songs on the speakers. The bus stops at random locations in the middle of nowhere to drop people off, who then stalk into the darkness beyond the reach of the warm bus, off into the inky blackness of the starless Balkan night. The laptop is running out of battery. I'm enjoying this part of our adventure.