Fishing for squids in Montenegro

A manly farewell hand shake and fighting back girlish tears, I left Aaron in his bed at the shitty hostel we’d stayed at in Mostar. My parting gift was what apparently passed as a blanket, some extra but still insufficient protection against the early morning chill.

I was alone again.

Shivering at the bus depot I contemplated why I was heading to Kotor simply on a whim and a half-remembered recommendation and with no idea of what to expect. Thankfully I was shocked from this grim reverie by the approach of a beanie clad fellow traveller in search of the ticket office, who as it turned out was also headed to both Kotor and the hostel of which I’d been so lavishly informed: the Old Town Hostel.

My chance meeting of Seb proved to be very fortuitous, as when a bus arrived at 6.30am I promptly jumped on it to avoid the cold as he lingered to finish his cigarette. Before long he was feverishly gesturing to me from outside as I reclined in the back seat, stretching my legs. I was on the wrong bus, apparently, and no one—including me—had thought to check my ticket.

Seb fishing for squids

 On the correct bus 30 minutes later we began the 7 hour drive down to Kotor. After just one hour, however, we were at our first border checkpoint where our passports were taken and we were instructed to get off the bus with our bags. Thus ensued the closest thing to a cavity search I ever wish to endure as a sullen Croatian man rifled through my belongings, made me take off my shoes and socks, and patted down every inch of my body while his snickering associate looked at pictures of the Croatian equivalent of page 3 girls on the computer and smiled sleazily when he saw I’d noticed.

By the time this process was completed across the few of us on the bus it had taken almost an hour. This was the beginning of a winding and unnecessarily tedious bus trip that crossed far too many borders and was far too warm.

Thankfully it was, in retrospect, very much worth it.

At last in Kotor we celebrated our arrival by having a mosey around the old town and finding some late lunch before drinking with Travis and Jordi, two Americans cycling through Europe. Inevitably, this quiet gathering escalated and we were next traipsing out of the hostel en masse following the slightly insane Uresh and Alex, the owner-managers.

Fifteen-strong storming into a nearby bar, the bartender was seriously unimpressed with our presence and didn’t take any pains to pretend otherwise. She was even less impressed when I noticed a bowl of fruit on the windowpane and after close inebriated examination, realised it was real and therefore apt for my consumption. As I was tucking in with gusto, the bartender came over and started speaking to me in a language that at least I didn’t recognise as English. I am guessing the gist of it was “stop eating my oranges”, but I paid her no heed and continued to chow down, even snaffling some for the road.

Biking around the fjord

Indeed, as we stumbled out not too long later, Travis and I had our chins running sticky with the juice of oranges eaten like apples. Rad, an American gent of 32 sober years and sporting a manly eurobeard decided to try and one up our orange enthusiasm by scaling a pipe. He succeeded in getting quite high up before a local old man started berating him.  

The next day I awoke feeling like a boiled scrotum and decided a swim was the order of the morning. Duly refreshed, Seb, Rad and I rented electric bikes and went motoring around the fjord.

This was one of the better decisions we could have made. The bikes were tiny and awkward, but incredibly fun as we raced around the bends and up the minor hills, chased by a pack of dogs at one stage and pausing in the autumn sun in awe at the steep cliffs around.

The fjord from the church ruins

Warned the bikes had a range of 25km, we stopped at what we thought to be a distance half that far away at what happened to be the narrowest point of the fjord and which also had the skeleton of a waterside church for us to explore. Once we tried to head back, however, it became apparent that my bike had no more power. With only one gear and a seat too low for comfortable riding, the 12 odd kilometre cycle home was unpleasant.

We stopped at what became a favourite haunt of ours, a local butcher where you could point at a range of meats marinating in the window and have them grill it up and put it in a sandwich with some refreshing salad for the low price of 2.50. Having worked up somewhat of an appetite on the cycle home my speedy consumption of said sandwich was admired by one of the craggy Balkans working there, “You eat well,” he remarked, nodding approvingly.

We followed lunch with a swim where, as tourists in winter jackets walked past, we jumped off a pier into the brisk Adriatic. A passing lady stopped and took several candid photos of us, before we managed to get her to commandeer my camera and snap some for my collection. Seb rewarded her for her kind efforts with a wet but affectionate hug that she seemed to enjoy very much.

Enjoying the Adriatic

 That night as we sat around the common room drinking Uresh said we could go on a fishing trip the next day if we fancied. We did, and by some strange rule of the sea decided we should all shave down to moustaches, as sailors have moustaches. So with much giggling and the buzzing of electric razors, Los Moustachios were born.

6am the next day saw some moustachioed men and women (drawn on with marker pen) board what we grandly called The Ship, but which was closer to shabby dinghy. Cramped with 7 passengers and The Captain, a chain-smoking 21 year old with a fondness for fishing, we began hand-trawling for fish. It soon became apparent we weren’t going to catch anything, something which The Captain put down to the presence of cruise ships coming in and out of the harbour, and so we decided to tour around the fjord instead. Overburdened and under-powered, it was a slow and cold ride around, but still entertaining as the level of banter was high and Uresh’s anecdotes of youthful love and tales associated with various fjord-side buildings endless and amusing.

We ended up on a tiny island that simply houses a church and one minister, which was quite cool, before heading back into the fjord closer to Kotor to continue fishing. Uresh explained we were looking for a “school of squids”, but the squids continued to elude us, even as The Captain chirped out, “here squiddy squiddy squiddy” as we putted along.

The last Franciscan Monk in Kotor

 Post-fishing trip we went to buy a squids to show off at the hostel. Taking pity on our absurd request for one squids the fishmonger gave us a free squids, perhaps slightly concerned by the amount of upper-lip hair that surrounded her. Our savings were collectively lost by Rad, however, as he had a jar of 8 euro cheese flogged to him which he was too polite to return.

After a warm shower and some hot coffee the same crew that had been fishing for squids decided to head up to St. John’s fort for a view of the city and fjord. The view from the top was spectacular and we celebrated with a picnic of beers and snacks, but much cooler still was finding a way down off the fort and going up to the old town next to it. On this craggy hillside there grazed a lone cow and remained but one house. Here we met the last Franciscan Monk in Kotor heading up to the church to pray, accompanied by the last person living in the village, the owner of the stark stone building. After a brief sermon and many team photos taken of us by the last remaining ‘defender of Kotor’, we headed back down for another sandwich and swim, the icy water quite bracing.

Los Moustachios

In celebration of the fantastic quality of the day and our moustaches, it was proclaimed Facial Hair Friday, and much drinking was to ensue. Here things become blurry, but I remember having a delicious calamari salad dinner (one of three free meals that the hostel cooked for everyone), a vat of hostel-made sangria of perilous potency, and much moustache driven banter.

Additionally, one of the gentlemen working at the hostel who also sported a fine ‘tache, informed us that in Montenegro there is a saying loosely translated as “The man with the moustache spits fire in the woman’s loins.”

Church island

We eventually decamped, via a more welcoming bar than the previous night’s, to a turbofolk night club in one of the old town’s walls before somehow making it home in time to pass out.

Parting ways with some excellent company was again sad, but Seb, Rad and Caden were heading south to Albania and I was destined to meet some folks in Budapest in a week’s time, so again with manly handshakes and restrained tears goodbyes were exchanged.

The ensuing 16 hours of transit as I headed to Nis via Podgorica were entirely unmemorable, but a necessary evil if I wanted to enter Kosovo.