MONTENEGRO
The trip was fine, however I wasn’t sure when we crossed into Montenegro. I just know that the bus driver took my passport we stopped a few times and then I got my passport back.
We got into Budva the plan being to catch a cab to the hostel. I then realized that I hadn’t written the name of the hostel down. I had the address so the plan was to give it to a cabbie and hope to get to the right spot.
But first I had to grab a map turned out I had to pay for it. I grabbed a 20 out of my pocket, luckily in Montenegro they use the Euro. This particular 20 had been turned down a couple of times because of a tear in it from where I’d had it folded and stored under the sole of my shoe. Thankfully she accepted it without looking at it too hard and gave me some change. I exited fairly quickly.
Getting a cabbie to take us took some bickering but eventually one of them agreed to take us. After a short trip and 5 Euros we got to a massive wall with a small opening. Down there he said. Drew and I just looked at each other shouldered our packs and set off.
We had no idea where we were going and were just asking randoms if there was a hostel near by. We ended up stumbling across a random late night tourist information centre. Convenient. They gave us a map. The taxi man had dropped us close but in a slightly wrong spot. That was ok though and we set off along the right road.
We found nothing. Except a costas coffee place with free wifi so we sat in there. Grabbed a coffee and jumped on the net. The hostel had good directions of how to get there. It was 20m from the tourist information center. We set off back down the right street. And got to 20 m from the tourist centre.
There was no signs for any hostels anywhere. “It’s not here!!!” I screamed in mock panik. Soon a head popped out of a window above us. “Are you guys looking for the hostel? It’s that door there” and he pointed at a bare door with no sign on it. We walked in and started walking up stairs sticking our head inn door untill we met them.
I’ve forgotton his name and her name, but they both work at different hostels, and had been hired to come here and start up this hostel which had opened 2 days ago. We’ve got the whole 6 bed room to our selves.
Our bags have exploded too. It looks so funny you could easily believe that the room has 6 people in it. We’ve been here less then 24 hours and we’ve made the place our own. At the moment drew’s cooking alphabet soup. Haha. He thought I was joking when I said I’d bought it. Haha, he learnt his lesson the hard way that’s for sure.

Day 90
Friday 30Oct
0850 (31Oct)
I woke up yesterday morning at 6 to find that the door to our room had been left wide open. I thought to myself “I love it when drew does this” and went back to sleep. I woke up again at 8 and got up. For some reason Drew had decided to sleep on the bed above mine. No idea why.
I grabbed my stuff and headed down to costas where I spent an hour working out how I was getting from Athens to Madrid. I’d finally sorted out my flights and went to pay for them. I’d left my card at home but I have the number stored in my computer any way so I used that. It didn’t work. I ended up walking all the way back to the Hostel grabbing my card and heading back to costas. The problem wasn’t with the Credit card either. I hadn’t entered my middle initial in the card holders name slot.
0950 (31oct)
The morning was awesome. Drew and I went for a long walk up the empty beach, then lay on the end of a pier for about half an hour. We then went and changed into swimming shorts and did the same on the beach for another hour.
The wind was being a pain in the ass though. It would be dead still but probably once every 10 minutes out of no where an absolute gale would appear and we’de have to cover our eyes from the debris which was being thrown around.
At about 4 I went to go to the supermarket to grab some stuff for tea. I’ve hardly been making my own food at all for the last two months, as I’ve been saving heaps with the couch surfing. I got all the way to the supermarket before I realized that I hadn’t checked what we had to cook with. I had my head phones in and was loving it so I didn’t mind the extra walk anyway.
Back at the hostel we just chilled for the arvo. Drew went up to use the internet at costas and I did some sit ups. Drew came back at 6 and cooked dinner. I didn’t realise how complicated it was possible to make instant packet soup, but drew soon worked it out. It was hilarious. Totally failed when it came to estimating 1L, he had at least 2L in there and absolutely destroyed the integrity of the little alphabet pieces. I said to just heat it up and maybe let it simmer for 5 minutes. He just boiled it for at least 20.
Never the less it tasted great.

Day 91
Saturday 31Oct
1330
We’re sitting in A furgon. It’s a Balkan form of a minibus, just smaller then the ones were used too. It’s more like a massive van, and it’s as old as the sun. a fitting age descriptor for a bus which is also painted bright canary yellow. It’s on struggle street too coming up these hills. The driver has the foot flat to the floor and we’re purring up these giant montenegran hills. It’s no wonder that these hills helped make Montenegro the only Balkan country to not be conquered by the Ottoman Empire.
I woke up this morning at a relatively early time of 9am. I went and sat in costas for a bit trying to write in my diary but I was way too tired so I ended up going back to bed. Laying there in a half daze until 1130.
In the morning when the weird old guy came up to pay he insisted we tried one of the fruit that was on the TV stand. I thought they were just ornamental. They weren’t bad thought, the inside was like corn except really sweet.
The funny thing was when he tried to turn the tap off. It wouldn’t stop at all and eventually the tap snapped clean off. He ended up holding it there while he tried to turn the tap off at the mains.
I ended up giving him a hand. He was hopeless, trying to turn a tap with a pair of pliers. I grabbed the pliers and turned the thing off. On that note with our kitchen flooded with water we left. Pack on backs.
1200 (1Nov)
We grabbed some Burek on the way to the bus station. It was about a 20minute walk in total. Drew was on struggle street, I’d walk for 50, and Drew would have fallen behind 20m. We were in luck at the bus statioin, there was a bus in 5 minutes so we grabbed it.
The drive for about the first 70% was really beautiful. Then we hit the plains of Podgorica and then inevitably Podgorica. There’s no point sugarcoating it, Podgorica is a dump. I’d prefer to die of cancerous aids then live in Podgorica, Don’t ever go there. Ever. I wish I’d listened to one of the million people who’d told me it was more like the end of the earth then a city.
At the bus station I bought a map and we headed towards the centre of town where we were meeting Slobodan, our host. We headed towards a green place on the map, a park and a statue. It was the ugliest park I’ve seen in my life, and I couldn’t see whatever the statue was, it was probably under the overgrown grass somewhere.
We skipped the park and just wandered through the city centre. It reminded me of the scene from Eurotrip when they accidentally hitch hike to Bratislava. I was expecting to see a dog with a Human hand in it’s mouth. At one point we walked past a house with two ladies out the front. They were screaming at each other. But I think they were actually wishing each other good health and a happy day.
We walked into town and sat in a surprisingly nice café. Slobodan met us here and we had a coffee. Slobodan or Slobo as he gets called, is an interesting guy. He’s Vegetarian, and he doesn’t drink or smoke. He meditates and he even gave us some cards with some sort of words of wisdom from his Guru. Dispite all his short comings he did make us a fantastic pasta, and we destroyed a good portion of it.
We walked to Slobo’s place, which was about 40m from where we were having coffee and sat on the couch watching VH1 while Slobo cooked. One of his friends came around too, a girl called Jovanna. She’s studying French, Russian and English, so she was pretty keen to practice.
It was pretty funny again talking to them. Drew is hopeless and I was again asked multiple times to interperet what he was saying for them. We ate and drank until about 930 when another couple of Slobo’s friends turned up.

Reminnder; Never go to Podgorica… ever.