Ate and cafe worked around Krakow. Visited the museum at Auschwitz. Remotely attended a ODS Co-op OGM. Bussed to Warsaw to see friends. Ate and touristed around Warsaw. Visited for the second time the Warsaw Rising Museum, and the Palace of Culture and Science. Made plans for the rest of April, and half of May. Surprising plans. But leaving space for this to take shape explains why I was blocked on figuring out what to do after Warsaw for so long.
Hung out, cafe worked and ate in Warsaw. Failed to get a cholera vaccine, or a new laptop cable. Nightbussed to Bratislava and holed up in a nice apartment for a few days. Watched all of Cowboy Beebop.
Cafe worked around Bratislava, and ran and wandered. Day trip to Vienna for stuff. Went to Dubravka to move into H & B's hillside container house, sans plumbing and wifi. Settled in to look after the garden, and Beny the cat and Aila the dog for a while. Read Tiamat's Wrath and rewatched Discovery. Enjoyed the woods and the sunshine. Hiked to Devin Castle and back over the hill.
Lived in a container house in the side of a hill in Dubravka, cat-and-dog-sat, went for lots of walks in the woods, fetched water from the spring, looked after the garden. Things sprouted! Occasionally cafe worked in Bratislava or Vienna. Ran to Sandberg and back. Relocated back to Bratislava city.
My travel plans and no-fly rule took an unexpected turn this month when I decided to visit Elizabeth in Zimbabwe. Having spent the last two years begging friends and family to take advantage of my various temporary residences in Europe, I was sympathetic to her plight of struggling to persuade people to visit in Southern Africa. I try to put into the world the energy I'd like out, so I tracked down return flights from Vienna for less than $500 with Ethiopian Airlines. I also really wanted to hug Elizabeth. Life In Zimbabwe, it is sunny every day. I was there at the start of winter. The sky was consistently brilliant blue, and the temperature was mostly in the late 20s Celsius. The climate is basically vacation-perfect. Never raining does not bode well for the crops though, and even though the temperature was good on paper the sun felt hotter and closer and more vicious than I've ever felt it anywhere before. Harare is a super green city, with lots of trees, bushes and maize or millet fields filling the wide open spaces between roads and blocks of buildings. Often the maize was looking dead and dried up, while decorative plants in public spaces or peoples' gardens are alive and well. Roads are concrete or dirt, scattered with enormous potholes in both cases. I was frequently a passenger in cars that needed to steer all the way around a hole rather than dipping into it or going over. The CBD is fairly built up, with some tall office buildings and malls, although I only passed through in the car a couple of times. Most of my time was spent taxiing between little pockets of reasonably well maintained commercial areas in the various suburbs. The self-enclosed bubbles of shops and cafes, supermarkets and cinemas, which depend on cars to travel between reminded me a lot of the US. It seemed like the other form restaurants and bars took were as stand alone properties in what felt like residential buildings in the more upscale residential areas. Many have lots of outside seating, surrounded by trees and statues and generally pleasant environs. In the northern half of the city houses are pretty big, with gardens, balconies, sometimes pools; massive driveways and huge security gates, often with guardhouses. I dropped by the homes of a few of Elizabeth's friends while I was there, and whether local or expat they were all preeeetty fancy. On the other hand, there's an ongoing energy crisis which affects all areas of the city. Whole neighbourhoods have scheduled power outages for load-shedding, which is documented on a website but not always reliably. While I was there, Elizabeth's power went out for three days straight, unscheduled. When visiting a friend's to charge my laptop, their power went out too one day. Fortunately they had a generator. The lack of electricity is, I believe, due to a combination of fuel imports being from Mozambique (recently hit by a devastating cyclone), lack of money and corruption and inefficiencies in the government. Everyone is similarly affected by the fuel crisis. Fuel queues were pointed out to me often; people line up in their cars for hours at a petrol station when they hear it has fuel. One friend queued for 3 hours only to find they'd ran out by the time she got to the front of the line. There are some stations which only accept payment in USD (not Ecocash) so if you have enough of that you have a better chance of filling up, with less of a wait. Obviously this benefits foreigners, people who work for embassies, and those recently arrived with a fresh batch of cash. One day on the radio I heard that the country had petrol for a month and diesel for 23 days. Groceries and household goods are not cheap. Things like cosmetics and furnishings are particularly expensive. There's relatively little light pollution at night - especially if you're in a neighbourhood with a power outage. So there were plenty of stars and an often brilliant moon to gaze at. On both Sundays I joined Elizabeth, Sarah and Andrew at church. It was a totally different church experience to the cold, formal, boring CofE affairs that had been imposed upon me by my schools as a child. There was lots of singing and dancing, but also a slightly unnerving occasion of laying of hands, and the messages conveyed by the sermons were definitely at odds with things that make sense to me from Buddhist philosophy. The theme of the month had been fathers, and some members of the congregation across a range of ages gave very moving, funny, and heartfelt stories of the ups and downs of their paternal relationships. Food Zimbabwean food mostly consists of sadza, an enormously filling cereal (maize) mush that definitely expands in your stomach after you've already eaten too much, with greens (rape/canola) and beans, usually accompanied with a meat stew, chicken or fish. You can read about all the vegan food I found here. Transit Harare is not particularly solo-non-driving-traveler friendly. For the first few days I felt pretty trapped by my inability to move around independently. The city is very spread out in itself, and natural sights and hiking trails are really far away. Places are linked by wide, poorly maintained dusty roads that mostly don't seem very pedestrian friendly even if it was safe to walk around alone. I was told repeatedly that public transport is not safe for different reasons (dangerous drivers, dangerous passengers, ..) and even if it wasn't I don't know how I'd have figured out how to navigate the fustercluck of marshrutka-style packed private minibuses with no signs or numbers. Fortunately E already had some trusted taxi drivers on hand, plus a few very hospitable friends with cars. Still, not even feeling comfortable to walk to a shop or a cafe by myself from the house is not my favourite. Advice I got about which neighbourhoods and distances were safe to walk varied drastically between people I talked to. Money Another thing I don't love a ton is dependence on a mobile phone. Fortunately I have a moderately functional HTC One to use while my Fairphone is still out of action, otherwise I'd be pretty helpless. ATMs and credit cards basically don't work here, and it's illegal to change money. The official currency was changed to USD a few years ago, but also in circulation are Bond notes, aka RTGs, at a variable rate from 3.5 to 4.7. Most places accept USD, but with poor conversion so the price is higher than paying with Bond. The best option, used universally, is to set up an EcoCash account and find someone who will send you EcoCash in exchange for a fistful of USD (also illegal). Setting up EcoCash required purchasing a SIM (2 bond) and filling in a form with a local address (I used E's) and providing ID. They photocopied my passport, didn't need most of my info in the form, and misspelled my name when setting up the account (henceforth, Amy Huy). I topped up 100 USD, and bought some mobile data too (350mb for 1 week for 10 bond). After that I could pay anywhere, from streetside fruit vendors to the farmers market to chain supermarkets and restaurants with EcoCash using USSD codes. Market stalls have their numbers scrawled on pieces of paper on their tables. That is, typing *151*1*1*{mobile number or merchant code}*{amount}#, followed by a prompt for a confirmation PIN which I set when I made the account (in plaintext). It displays the name of the recipient so you can increase your chance of not sending it to the wrong number before you commit. The recipient's phone goes bloop, and I immediately receive an SMS confirmation of the transaction, plus my new balance. This is horrifyingly insecure, but also a bit cool. There are small fees for each transaction depending on the amount you send. It's not a percentage, there are brackets of fees. Another thing that was kind of cool while I was there was that Ecocash were running a promotion; for every 20 bond I spent I earned a point, and every 5 points gets me entered into a monthly prizedraw. The top prizes were a house and a river cruise in South Africa; but the better ones were goats, cows, generators, and school fees. I was checking the t&c to find out when the prize draws happened, but made the even better discovery that goats and cows may be requested live or dead; if dead, you have to pick them up from an abattoir of your choosing. If alive, you must pay the necessary transport fees. I'll find out if I was a lucky winner in the first week of June and I'm psyched to make Elizabeth take care of a goat in her yard for me. If you're gonna be here a while, you can also hook your mobile EcoCash up to a bank account, and get a swipe card to pay with too. At one point, the network glitched out and Elizabeth was a victim; her EcoCash stopped working for sending money, claiming she had reached her daily or monthly limit when she clearly had not. This was a mahoosive inconvenience; we went to the Econet store to try to troubleshoot, and they did not solve the problem at all and there were a ton of other people in line experiencing similar issues. Centralisation at at its finest. By the end of my visit, the exchange rate had fluctuated so much that it was now cheaper to pay for things in USD. I naturally had just topped up my Ecocash right before the surge; the digital currency I held lost significant value overnight in terms of what I could trade it for. What a nightmare to live like this every day. Many (most?) local people are paid in bond, hold their savings in bond, and as the exchange rate changes their salaries do not. Coders in the suburbs I was fortunate to meet Peter and Alana from the Sprout Coding project at a party one night. Their organisation, based in 'high density suburbs' of Harare, teaches locals to code and to teach, and then the locals go into schools to teach kids to code in turn. They invited me to visit and talk with their tutors. I spent one morning at their premises in Dzivarasekwa, sitting in on an informal meeting where the tutors had some forms to sign and got their final pep talk before classes with kids began the following week. I heard amazing stories of how each of them had got into code, including from some who learned with paper and solar panels, without access to electricity or internet for the most part. I spent some time with one of their earliest recruits, de-mystifying git. I asked as many as I could whether they were in it for the teaching or the coding, and everyone I asked said they just loved teaching. The next day I joined them in Kuwadzana for a braai. This was super fun, and I spent time with the group talking about privacy, surveillance, encryption, and hacking, while we ate sadza and greens. Dzivarasekwa and Kuwadzana are a far cry from the residential parts of Harare in the north. The roads are still wide and dusty, but there are no more security fences, gardens or driveways. The houses are single storey unpainted brick and breezeblock, often with small vegetable patches in whatever area around them is available. There are many makeshift food stalls, 'tuck shops' and the like, with hand painted signs, or just a table at the side of the road staffed by an entire family. The braai in Kuwadzana was under a tattered awning beside what appeared to be a large shed or market-type building that contained a bar (and pool tables). Besides the bar, the building also hosted meat and vegetable stalls, as well as the people who would prepare the produce you just bought for immediate consumption, and a sink with soap that we could all use to wash our hands before we ate. Adventures My first grand adventure was with E's Finnish friend and his Russian guests. We drove to Lake Chivero nature reserve, less than an hour west of the city. In a totally inappropriate small car, we crawled through the trails spotting zebra, impala, wildebeest and even a giraffe. Periodically we had to get out of the car so it was light enough to take a particularly jagged bump or canyon in the road. We took one trail that dwindled into nothing, and got out and walked to the lake where we saw lots of monkeys and interesting birds. Later we found our way to the park headquarters and talked with the rangers. They offered to take us on a little walk to see some more animals. The ranger Gladys guided us, and after five minutes we practically tripped over a rhino. He stayed snoozing in the undergrowth, and we moved on. A few minutes later he changed his mind, and charged us. I fell over, thought I was going to die, and Gladys rescued me. I posted more detail about the rhino story closer to the time. Later we saw more chill rhinos, and ostriches by the lake. One evening I joined the Fin and the Russians in climbing a small hill in the south of the city. I'm not sure what it was called. It was a reasonably well maintained public space, with trees and walls and a small sculpture like thing at the peak. From there we watched the sun set. In the distance, Harare looks like any other city, with high rises in the center flattening out to residential suburbs around the edges. The Harare Botanical Gardens are somewhat in a state of disrepair, but they contain many interesting trees and not much signage about them. Still, nice to wander through for a couple of hours for the low entry fee of 3 bond. We considered taking a nap, but the ground-level insect life deterred us. Just outside the city are balancing rocks. We got there and they wouldn't accept our ecocash, and we didn't have enough USD between us. Not to mention the USD price was more than 10x that day's bond price, according to that day's exchange rate. Harumph. So we took some pictures of the ones we could see from the carpark and the road, and left. I spent an absolutely beautiful evening with Elizabeth and Andrew at Domboshava, a granite hill formation about a 45 minute drive north of Harare. The perfect time to go is in the hour or so before sunset. There are incredible views in every direction of the surrounding countryside, as well as balancing rocks and other geographical phenomena, and cave paintings. It is an incredibly peaceful place, even despite all the other tourists who were around. Longer trips I considered but failed to arrange were Great Zimbabwe, Paradise Pools, and Victoria Falls. Great Zim is an ancient abandoned city that looks way cool. I was pretty disappointed not to be able to make it happen, but the fuel crisis meant none of E's friends were up for driving that distance (about 4 hours) and I couldn't put together enough people at the last minute to make a guided tour good value. Paradise Pools was also a victim of the fuel crisis, after a friend sat in line for hours and wasn't even able to refill. Vic Falls would have been great but required some planning ahead on my part. It's at least a four day trip - one full day on trains and buses to get there, two days to appreciate the city, and a full day back. I could have done it when E was at work (might have been a good use of those days without power at home) but visiting Elizabeth was really the point of the trip and our time hanging out in the evenings was way more important. Photos Photos and more notes are as follows: Chill weekend at markets The Rhino Story (Lake Chivero) Botanical Gardens Markets, sunset Dzivarasekwa and Kuwadzana with Sprout coders Amazing views from Domboshava Sunday BBQ Last days
There was only one vegan place listed on happycow (V Delights), and I went there and it did not exist. The sign was up, and their website says "Restaurant is currently closed however you can still enjoy these meals by enroling to our Vegan or Gluten free Cooking classes as an individual or group!". Maybe it'll be back in the summer, who knows. The next best place for intentional vegan food (with a well-labelled menu) is Avocado Cafe in Sam Levy's Village. They have several dishes that are or can be made vegan, and plant milks for their variety of fancy coffees and latte drinks. They have energy balls which are vegan too. Maasdorp farmer's market is every Wednesday and Saturday, and I ended up going three times. It's a great place for handmade souvenirs and local produce. A nice lady sells homemade cashew cheese in blocks for 14 bond under the name BConscious. I bought one with jalapenos and one with olives and it was so good. Some of the best I've had. She told me about her imminent store opening (Vegan Vibes), the day after I was due to leave of course. Across the road from the Maasdorp farmer's market is another market and a Chinese grocery store. At the grocery store I found all kinds of tofu, fresh in big blocks as well as dried and flavoured. It's super cheap. At the market outside are freshly fried noodles and vegetables. You can choose your fillings, and there's even a bowl of seitan, and watch it get mixed up in front of you, then eat it on one of the benches in the market. They had vegetable bao, too. Ethiopian food is always a safe bet for vegans; I ate at Queen Makeda twice and it was delicious. The vegetarian menu is distinct and varied. The Ethopian coffee pot seems to be bottomless. Thai and Indian food are usually good options too; I ate Thai food at Chang Thai, which has many obviously-vegan vegetarian dishes, and was pretty good. On my last night, really amazing Indian food at Spice Lounge. Especially the milkless masala chai, which was properly spicy. And towards scraping the bottom of the barrel.. I got a pizza without cheese no trouble at Elmo's (a chain that can be found all over) and the toppings for the vegetarian one were pretty good and dense. At Little Eataly the only option was pasta with tomato; to be fair, it was really good. Amanzi is a restaurant and bar with a really nice outdoor area; we went to the Wednesday quiz, which has a constrained menu (the only vegan option being tomato soup, requested without cream). We did convince them to let us look at the regular menu, and there is one vegan option on there - a very expensive broccoli steak, which sounds good but I wasn't 16 USD hungry. The fries there are great too. At Cafe Veldemeer near the UN offices there were a couple of vegan-isable salads, but I went for butternut and leak soup. It was pretty expensive. Best of all is always local food thought. Zimbabwean cuisine is heavy on the meat stews, fish and chicken. But they always come with a side of greens (canola/rape), beans, and sadza. This can be ordered on its own for a mere 10 bond (depending on the day's exchange rate, 2-4USD) at Gava's, and is enormously filling by itself. Sadza is made from ground maize, and is a mushy ball that you grab a piece of between your fingers and use to scoop up the beans and greens to shovel into your mouth. At Gava's you can substitute regular sadza for sourghum (which is grey and gritty, super delicious and more nutritious) or peanut rice (which is obviously epic). Sadza is a staple food, so at the very least if you go to any local restaurant or a communal food gathering like a braai (bbq) in Zimbabwe you'll be able to get sadza and greens or other veggies. Just be careful at a braai where someone else is preparing the food that you can get the green separate before any meat gets mixed in and cooked together with them. What else I did in Harare other than eat.
Note-took in interviews for ODSCo-op developer hiring. Did some work on flatten-tool. Walked a bit around Bratislava environs, and went to Vienna again. Finally said goodbye to Bratislava, and then Europe.. and flew from Vienna airport to Harare, Zimbabwe, via Addis Ababa (Ethiopia). Reunited with Elizabeth in Harare. Learnt all about the complicated currency situation, and got set up with EcoCash. Spent the weekend and markets and cafes and low key parties and generally chilling. Attended a very musical and colourful church service. A member of the congregation pegged me as a lost soul and took me aside afterwards to reassure me God is looking out for me. Saw Avengers Endgame again. Caught Elizabeth's cold, I think.
Chilled with Elizabeth and friends. Went to Lake Chivero Nature Reserve and got chased by a rhino. Toured Harare markets and cafes, saw balancing rocks, and the Botanical Gardens. Watched the sun set from a hill in the south of Harare. Enjoyed a 5 day wifi outage and 3 day power outage. It's cool I didn't want to do any work anyway. Visited Sprout Coding in Dzivaresekwa and then joined them for a braai in Kuwadzana; chatted about web dev, encryption, hacking, privacy and surveillance. An inspiring bunch! Watched the sun set from Domboshava. Chill Sunday BBQ.
Got my hair dyed green as a souvenir from Zim. Had final food adventures, and departed Zim for Vienna via Addis Ababa. Spent the day in Bratislava, picked up some stuff I left at H&B's place in Dubravka and visited Aila and Beny. Ate at lots of my favourte places once more. Took a night bus to Zagreb via Vienna (VIB interior is entirely closed now apparently, and my bus was late, not entirely fun on a cold midnight), and a day bus to Sibenik. Some very hot days and a little rain in Sibenik; hiking, swimming, mooning around. Nice to be back in the Balkans.
Bussed down the Croatian coast from Sibenik to Dubrovnik. Spent a night and a day in Dubrovnik, dodging tourists, eating, sitting by the sea, climbed a hill. Bussed from Dubronik to Herceg Novi, then a little bit further to the next month's home in Montenegro. Settled in in the Bay of Kotor. Spent half a day exploring Herceg Novi old town and surrounds. Went on a boat ride around the Bay; saw Mamula island, the blue cave, old torpedo tunnels; only rained a bit.
I spent a month total with the Bay of Kotor as my base, broken up by a week-long jaunt to Sarajevo because I got too close to resist. I picked a perfect spot, the small town of Bijela. It has enough tourists from its handful of hotels to not feel like an alien, but not enough to crowd you out, and isn't a primary destination by any means. There are plenty of nice spots to swim, and it's well connected to the rest of the country. Typical of the whole bay, it's surrounded by moody mountains, sometimes shrouded in clouds, other times reflecting the sunset back at you like a mirror. One of the things I particularly enjoyed about Montenegro is the somewhat hectic nature of the buses. It's a tiny country, and you can get anywhere in less than 3 hours, but it usually involves standing at the side of the road to flag down long distance coaches run by a plethora of private companies and hoping they stop. busticket4.me has an approximation of most timetables, but the buses don't necessarily have scheduled stops everywhere so some maths is involved to work out when it's going to pass where you want to catch it from. I found it helpful to memorize the bus companies that were going to where I wanted at a particular time, because there are many private or chartered tour buses too which will not stop for randoms, and you can't necessarily tell these from the long distance coaches from a distance. They also don't always have all of the destinations listed in the front window, so don't necessarily refrain from waving one down just because you can't see your town written. Especially in the Bay of Kotor, or anywhere along the coast, there's only one main road, so if your destination is on it, you can persuade a bus driver to stop there. The only exception being that some buses going down the coast skip the bulk of the Bay and take the ferry across to Lepetane, so don't try to get one of those to Risan or Perast. The way they usually work is you board and take a seat (checking with the driver he's going your way) and then someone comes to take your money and provide a handwritten ticket once the bus is moving again. A regular local Blue Line bus north goes to Herceg Novi for 1eur in about 20 minutes, which has an old town with forts and a harbour with boat trips and a main bus station with international connections. It's also easy to get to Mt Orjen for hiking from here, though I didn't do that. I took a 3.5 hour boat trip from there (for 20eur, once they'd gathered a few other people to join) to see sights along the Lustica Peninsula; Mamula island (abandoned prison, soon-to-be hotel), the torpedo tunnels, the Blue Cave, Zelanija beach and Fort Arza. I also spent an afternoon walking around the bay via Igalo and back. <a href="https://i.amy.gy/20190506-me/IMG_20190604_181948.jpg" class="w1of2" alt="Giant I <3 Herceg Novi sign next to a palm tree in front of a distant bay view of a town, with thick white clouds over the mountains" title="Herceg Novi from across the bay"> A 30 minute walk (or a 5 minute bus) in the opposite direction from Bijela took me to Kamenari, a very small town whose main feature is the ferry across the bay to Lepetane. The ferry is free for foot passengers, and €4.50 for a regular car. It runs continuously, all day and night, departing as soon as it's full, and the next one begins loading at once, taking about 15 minutes. You don't need a ticket if you're on foot, just wander on and watch out for the vehicles boarding at the same time. Lepetane is another very small town, but with lots of holiday apartments. From here there's a local Blue Line bus to Tivat for €0.70, about 15 minutes. It's not an unpleasant hour walk to Tivat too, though the road in most places is just designed for cars. Not that there's a whole lot of traffic. Following the coast around in the opposite direction from Tivat is also nice, with plenty of places to stop off and swim. At the peak of this particular peninsula is a picturesque church, and a view towards Our Lady of the Rocks at Perast. Tivat is super fancy, full of superyachts and shiny hotels and brand new fancy apartment blocks. The area of Porto Montenegro is surreal; a pedestrian zone of designer shops and hotel restaurants with €10 smoothies. On either side of Porto Montenegro is a bit more normal, but not especially nice; it's mostly beach bars with thumping music and lots of holidaymakers, though you can find some more quiet places to swim if you try hard enough. I didn't go much into the town center, but it starts to feel more normal the more inland you go. There's a place that supposedly has real pita, Bosnian-style, but when I went to check it out they didn't have any krompirusa left. There are various trails from Lepetane and Tivat or in between that will lead you through the Vrmac mountain range and to Kotor. This is a half-day hike, or a full day with plenty of opportunities for detours if you have the energy. I started at Lepetane, and the trail is more or less marked, though not particularly well maintained, and I lost it a few times. There are a few more or less unoccupied small villages or single houses on the way; nowhere to stop for water or supplies. A long stretch of the trail overlooks Tivat. I didn't try to get to any of the peaks because the weather was either too hot to function, or a sudden torrential downpour. Fortunately the extended thunderstorm occurred while I was on a particularly straight and wide trail, not when I'd been clambering through undergrowth. Fort Vrmac itself is underwhelming. It isn't especially old and looks more like an abandoned factory. From there there's a seemingly endless switchback down to the water, just around the bay from Kotor, and then a 30 minute walk to the old town. The view from the trail down is beautiful. Kotor itself presents a great starting point for plenty of great hiking opportunities as well, and it has a nice car-free old town to wander around, plus the whole bay for swimming and boat trips. There are an abundance of museums in the old town, none of which I visited. Given that I stayed around the corner for almost five weeks, it's kind of shocking how little time I spent in Kotor. By the time I'd hiked there from Lepetane, it was sunset and time for dinner and a bus back to Bijela. My other visit was an afternoon, on my way out of the country. I did find time to climb the Ladder of Kotor, a switchback up the side of the mountain behind old town, and to return via the Fortress. Perast is nestled in the bay between Bijela and Kotor, a tiny picturesque old stone town wedged up the side of the mountain, and ram-packed with tourists. I spent an afternoon there, which included a swim and some hours napping in the sun, so that's plenty of time to see everything I think. It's famous for the Our Lady of the Rocks church on a small island which you can take a boat out too, but it's not that exciting, and also looks nice from a distance. Spending €1 to climb the church bell tower is much more worthwhile. I spent a day hiking across the Lustica Peninsula, from Krasic, to Rose. This is the bit of land that sticks out in front of Herceg Novi, and home to some wild beaches and attractions like the Blue Cave and torpedo tunnels, and lots and lots of forts. The trail I followed didn't reach any of the peaks for epic views, but there are many small towns along the way to break up the wilderness. Next stop around the coast is Budva, a pretty big town and serious tourist destination. Even though it is packed and crazy during the summer, I didn't find it too obnoxious. Maybe I'm biased because the only vegan restaurant in Montenegro is there, conveniently located between the bus station and the beach. The area between the main beach and the main road is pretty nice, with lots of open green spaces, and footpaths. The beach is crowded with restaurants and deckchairs, but around to the north - after the pretty nice Old Town - are the Mogren beaches, reached by a neat path etched around the cliff faces. They're still busy, but have more shade, and more north and some rock clambering still are quieter areas to swim, or jump off rocks. To the south is Sveti Stefan; about a 2.5 hour walk or a 15 minute bus €2 from the main street. On the way are more small beaches which become increasingly exclusive ("Use of beach set mandatory. Beach set €120" was the peak) and extremely fancy hotels (€1500 - €6000 / night type things). You can't get onto the Sveti Stefan island - the whole thing is a resort hotel - but there's a bit of beach tucked away next to it available for the plebs. Bar is unusual because it's old town is in ruins instead of packed full of restaurants and souvenir shops. The main part of the town is centered around the port with international ferry lines; I didn't linger there. There are nice beaches a little north at Susanj. The old town is up the mountain a bit, and a narrow restaurant-filled street leads up to it. The whole thing is a museum with a €4 entry, and it's super cool. It's actually massive, with loads to see, creepy cellars to sneak in, towers and walls to climb, and views into the valley on the other side. I spent at least two hours there I think, and that was only because it kicked out at 8pm. The last big town on the coast is Ulcinj. I didn't dig the vibe, it was very touristy and obnoxious. The old town is half-done, with some in ruins and some restaurants. The sea didn't seem particularly clean. I ventured all the way to Long Beach at the south too but the whole strip was covered in beach restaurants and deckchairs as far as the eye could see. I swam at a smaller beach to the north, after a scramble down an under-construction path, which was fine for a while but then there was definitely boat fuel in the water. Moving inland, Niksic is the second largest city in Montenegro. It's a nice easy to navigate semicircle shape, and has churches and a big palace, and a pleasant town square, but I'm not sure what else. It was on the way to Ostrog Monastery, which is squashed into the side of a high cliff in a valley, with many winding mountain roads and amazing views required to get there. It's free to enter, and there were quite a lot of people by about 10, but not so many as to crowd us out completely. Inside, you can see mosaics and paintings made directly onto the rock face itself as part of the inner walls of some rooms and corridors in the monastery. It's actually a working Monastery, so most of it is not open to the public. The capital of Montenegro is Podgorica, but there doesn't seem to be a lot going on there. It was okay to stop for lunch and check out some parks. There's a big hill that I would probably have climbed if it was less insanely hot. Maybe it's just a good place to get away from tourists. Skadar Lake is in the south of Montenegro, crossing the border to Albania. It is beautiful, an enormous national park conservation area, with many small villages along its coast. The main place to stop is Vipazar, which is a tiny cute town entirely populated by people trying to sell you a boat ride. The standard rate seems to be (in June at least) €25/hour for two people. Totally worth it to see the amazing diversity of flora and fauna around the lake. Having a car (or hitchhiking - but we didn't see much other traffic) is the only way to get along the road that heads towards Albania along the lake. The views along it are spectacular. Stayed the night in Donji Murici and woke up for sunrise by the lake side, to continue the drive in daylight the next day. The road almost reaches the border, with a viewpoint across the mountain range that points into Albania, then sharply turns back towards the coast. Overall I think I seriously lucked out with Bijela as my base, though if (when) I come again I'll look for options in Kamenari and Lepetane too I think. Somewhere not so close to a busy road, and maybe close enough to the sea to hear the waves. Don't forget to read about everything I ate, and all photos are here.
Food in Montenegro is a combination of Mediterranean and Balkan I think. Bakeries abound, often with many accidentally vegan pastries and ingrediants on the labels if you can read the language. But there are no real buregdzinica, so I was disappointed to find krompirusa did not live up to anything close to Bosnian standards. Pizza is widely available, and salads are generally good, although more on the tomato-cucumber side and less cabbage-oriented. My favourite, a common side dish in Croatia as well, is Dalmatian potatoes, which is just boiled potatoes and chard, and magically delicious. As far as I could tell there is only one fully vegan place in the whole of Montenegro. This is Paradise Foods in Budva. As well as making delicious, abundant and unbelievably cheap hot and cold meals, snacks and desserts, they also make seitan and tofu and other things in-house and supply many health food (zdrava hrana) stores around the country. I was fortunate enough to be staying behind one such store, Ibis in Bijela, so I got to eat Paradise Foods seitan and tofu, not to mention delicious small cakes, every week from there. I went to Budva twice, and Paradise is conveniently located between the bus station and the beach, so I could stop for an extended lunch on my way in, and then get there before they closed at 9pm to pick up more supplies to take home on the way back. One morning I worked from there for a few hours, eating continuously; they have wifi and a couple of power outlets, though not a huge amount of indoor seating. In Bijela itself is a place called Bura, a mostly-fish restaurant that has a good selection of salads and potato sides, plus a tofu salad which is large balls of battered deep fried tofu on the side of a large seasonal salad. The tofu inside wasn't seasoned at all, so it was kind of mediocre, but it was nice that they tried. And the location by the sea, plus power and wifi, makes it a good place to hang around nonetheless. I found a couple of places with vegan cheese for pizza. One is Ombra in Kotor, who have a whole vegan menu (pizza, pasta and a sandwich) but the pizza was really good. Another is Olive at Sveti Stefan; initially the waiter said they didn't have vegan cheese, and it's not listed anywhere, but I'd read a review on happycow from the week before to say they did. He discovered that they did in fact, and I got my vegan cheese on pizza in the end. They also have pastas and salads that can be veganised. It's not the cheapest, but that's to be expected in the location. In Herceg Novi are two cafes side by side, next to the water if you follow the boulevard around towards Igalo from the old town. One is Peter's Pies and Coffee, which is vegetarian although without a lot of vegan options. Some energy balls, one main dish that is probably vegan, and plant milks for drinks and smoothies. Along further is Barbarella, which is an omni place but with a whole vegan menu. I tried quite a few dishes as they are fairly small (but the prices match), including varenyky dumplings (potatoes or cherries), pasta, and couscous. In Podgorica I stopped by Republic of Good Food. They have a vegan section on the menu, which includes a chickpea dish, and avocado pasta. They have a lot of juices and smoothies too, and everything that is vegetarian is labelled. I'm sure more of their vegetarian dishes are already vegan or could be veganised, but I didn't ask. I couldn't find vegan cheese anywhere in the whole country. Asking for 'biljni sir' at the cheese counter in Idea or Voli will get you a plant-based pizza topper cheese (Alpenland Topsy, from Greece I think) but it contains casein so it's not actually vegan. Even the fancy 'green bazaar' store Bonella in Tivat didn't have vegan cheese. The nearest place I think if you're desperate would be Bio & Bio in Dubrovnik, but I like to adapt my diet to what is available and it feels like needing to use my passport to get vegan cheese is kind of cheating. Things I did in Montenegro that weren't eating.
Finalised BODS internationalisation / translation workflow stuff. Explored around Lepetane, across the bay by free ferry. Hiked to Kotor from Lepetane, partly in the rain, takes 6 hours or so.
Explored a bit more of Herceg Novi, walked around the bay through Igalo. Did some work on flattentool. Spent an afternoon in Tivat. So fancy, such yachts. Spent an afternoon in Perast. Very quaint, many tourist.
Spent an afternoon in Budva. Touristy and tacky but not objectionable. The only vegan cafe in Montenegro. Got caught in Sarajevo's gravitational pull, and went for the rest of the week. (worked on flattentool) All the usual Sarajevo stuff. Ate cabbage, went to Karuzo, went to Prana, met some cats. Went hiking near Bjelasnica. Made excellent gains at the flea market.
Still in Sarajevo, hung out with occrp peoples. Ate krompirusa, etc. Bussed back to Bijela. A day of adventures to Niksic, Ostrog Monastary, Podgorica, Skadar Lake. Spontaneous stopover in a random village on the lake shore. Road trip back up the coast, via Ulcinj (meh) and Bar (ooh). Watched lots of Twin Peaks.