I’m not sure I’ve ever been quite so thrown by a question, apart from possibly the time a girl first asked me if I’d like to see her naked. We’d just been discussing arms and human organ trafficking (from an appalled-at-how-it-can-happen point of view rather than from a position of involvement), a conversation that was itself prompted by previous mention of the recent Balkan conflict and the book that I happened to be reading in the garden, As Used on the Famous Nelson Mandela by Mark Thomas, a witty exposé of the arms dealing world. On the day that Serbian “warlord” Radovan Karadzič was finally apprehended we had just about managed to steer clear of the former topic. In this part of the world it was just as well.
Although each side seems to have begrudgingly accepted the existence of the other, raking up the past in the former Yugoslavia only turfs up awkward political viewpoints. In this case, the delicacy required stems from the fact that in the West Karadzič is viewed as a war criminal. In Serbia – and thus also Montenegro – he’s regarded as something of a hero, rather like General Ante Gotovina is in Croatia (Gotovina is currently already in the Hague having been discovered having plastic surgery in the Canaries a couple of years ago). To their supporters, these men drove out aggressors and liberated the people under their protection. To the independent observer, however, matters such as apparently ordering their unit to round up a group of Serb civilians and have them shot (Gotovina) or alleged complicity in the horror of Srebrenica (Karadzič) cannot be overlooked. Sometimes, though, you have to tiptoe around these issues and accept that the bias of international news coverage can sometimes mask several truths, not all of them ones you think you know. I was an unabashed critic of Hugo Chavez’ government in Venezuela (where my mother and half my family lived for several decades) until I read a hugely credible biography that exposed to me the extent to which the media – in this case the US media – is sometimes able to distort the facts. For the first time in many years (some might say for the first time ever) I was forced to perform a mental volte-face and confess that I had gullibly swallowed the CNN line on Chavez just as I had the views of my family, who as part of the privileged “elite” in Caracas were, I suppose, hardly well-disposed to receive his sweeping social reforms aimed at educating and rehabilitating Venezuela’s poorest citizens.
In the case of Karadzič, I would like to keep an open mind, but Srbrenica does rather skew popular opinion against him. This was of course the massacre of 8000 Bosnian men, women and children that first gave rise to that horrendous term “ethnic cleansing”. Dean had met with him several times and although their professional paths had not exactly crossed, spoke of him as an enlightened, educated man on a personal level. The thing is, war breeds monsters from all kinds of stock, and the truth of the matter is that not every war criminal is a straight-forward bloodthirsty thug like the infamous Arkan.
Radovan Karadzic. Spot the difference?
Thus the conversation got nudged into a slight detour towards one topic most men can converse on without recourse to argument – appreciation of engineering excellence. Thus we meandered from motorbikes to cars, to the art of creating wooden stocks for shotguns (Dean is a keen winter hunter) to Vespas and German-modified Land Rovers – and how to import them. Montenegro, unlike Croatia, has no import duties for foreigners, which means it’s often worth bringing a car or two into the country and flogging it on as they can be more expensive to buy locally. In a country with only 500,000 people, most influential figures are childhood friends, or friends of friends, which would explain how we had already met the Vice-Mayor of Podgorica whilst admiring some Aprilia motorcycles and how Dean was planning to speak directly to the Montenegrin Interior Minister to help his daughter’s planned marriage to an English national. There’s no six degrees of separation in Montenegro – it’s more like two. This would also explain how Dean had managed to get wind of the intended sale of a 100m long ex-Croatian navy diesel submarine that was going on the market for what he assured me was the bargain price of €600,000.
Now I don’t know about you, but if it comes to cars and what they might be worth, I’m on pretty familiar ground. Property – especially around here – well, that’s a little more difficult, but I can at least rely on a few rules of thumb. But submarines? I’ll readily confess that I’ve no earthly idea what the going rate might be. €600,000 seems like a lot of money to me, but this might well constitute a bargain to those in the know. So if, by extension, anyone out there knows of anyone who has their own private lake (or navy) and could do with an extra U-boat, be sure to let me know.
What else can we tell you about Monte (and you have to love a country with that nick-name)? Well, we can confirm that a combination of single-track hairpin bends, lack of road barriers and daredevil local drivers who have an aversion to seatbelts has ensured that driving in Monte takes some getting used to; there are memorial plaques and plastic flowers at alarmingly frequent levels commemorating those whose most foolhardy manoeuvres resulted in fatal accidents. We can also tell you that if you’re a vegetarian of the no-fish-either variety, you will most likely starve to death here. Montenegrin cuisine consists of meat, fish, meat and more meat – to the point where it looks very much like the plate that’s just been placed in front of you is actually for a family of four rather than just for one (and at a remarkably low price). 
No wonder Montenegrins are so tall. We can also confirm that contrary to expectations the recent ban here on smoking in public places has been dealt with with far less difficulty than you might imagine in such a nicotine-fuelled society. Basically, it’s ignored!
In the meantime, we’ve been busy as usual. No, we haven’t quite left Lake Skadar yet, but that’s only because we went and made an offer on a house that the irrepressible Dean had heard was just about to come onto the market, without the encumbrance of an estate agent.
So what have we gone and fallen for this time? Well, as some of you may have seen from our pictures, it’s an old stone house of about 100 sqm perched on the side of a hill that overlooks both mountains and the lake, and yet which is only a two minute drive from Virpazar, the lake’s only town. The price has been agreed and now we just have to set the legal wheels in motion, being assured that the purchase process is far more straightforward than it would be in, say, Croatia! The house itself comes with around 1500sqm of terraced, overgrown garden, two outbuildings, six fig trees, two plum trees, three wild tortoises and it has its own stream. Sadly what it doesn’t have is any current sanitation as it’s not yet connected to the water supply, and the house itself needs complete – and by complete we mean everything but the walls – renovation. Only the konoba – the ground floor – is serviceable at present, with gorgeous stone arches and wooden beams in reasonable order. Our plans would be to build a two-storey 25sqm extension on one side and then add a decked terrace onto what would, eventually, be a four bedroom villa (those of you who’ve seen Emma’s sketch on fotopic.net will have a vague idea of where we’re going with this). And then of course we’d have to get landscaping. For around two years.
Of course, there’s always a down-side. In this case the caveat is a big one – the work required would more than likely hoover up every last penny that we’ve scraped together (damn the crashing pound!). And it’s not like we’ve really got a contingency fund…However, given the way the market here at the lake is rising – and rising fast – were we to sell we’d likely make a tidy 70% profit if we brought the job in on budget, so it’s a calculated risk with due reward on offer at the finish. Alternatively, of course, should we manage it, we’ll run it as our promised eco-lodge. Despite the staggering natural beauty and the huge variety of activities you can do around here, Montenegrin marketing has ensured that at present, almost nothing is on offer at all. At the truly hopeless Tourist Visitor Centre in nearby Vranjina, the employees appeared to be completely unaware not only of what was already being advertised elsewhere, but of what you might be able to offer if you’d ever given it a few seconds’ thought. The area is absolutely ideal for kayaking, caving, trekking, mountain-biking, horse-riding, wine tours, gastro tours, fishing, windsurfing, swimming and sunbathing…and yet pretty much the only thing on offer at the moment is pleasure-boat trips. We plan to change that…it isn’t like there’s anyone else on the case...
We’d already been on a short excursion over to the north side of the lake to check out what we reckoned might be the only serious competition to our eco-lodge-to-be. This is where you will find Plavenica, which proudly bills itself as the lake’s first eco-resort. Of course, over here the word “eco” is rather more loosely appropriated than is usual in the UK. Quite apart from being the name of the country’s leading petrol supplier (EKO gas stations line the main roads at comfortable intervals). Plavenica’s branding would get any normal trade descriptions union in a bit of a tizzy, being as it is a no-expense-spared complex that comes across as a half-finished country-club resort. Built over the water like a collision of Roman villa, Russian dacha and Intercontinental Hotel – and no doubt over the top of the nesting sites of several ousted birds - it boasts two marinas, several restaurant/bar areas and a massive swimming pool. And yet Plavnica was completely and totally devoid of tourists. In mid-July.
The pool had no water in it. The marinas offered pedallos, canoes and pleasure boats which lay knocking gently against their moorings. The restaurant/bar areas were deserted. Most had chairs stacked up neatly around the decking leaving the overall impression that this was a place that wasn’t quite yet ready for business – but which had, bafflingly, already been open for eighteen months. So where were the tourists? Em and I may not have warmed to the complex’s overall design - one of the bar areas was a tasteless circular building with a billowing twin-skirted roof arrangement a bit like those whirling dervish dancers and a hideous smokestack-style tower poking out the top – but it had clearly been constructed at considerable cost. The furniture and general finish were top-notch, even if the solid marble window frames looked oddly like plastic pretending to be marble and the polished wooden floors needed a little more protection against wear and tear. As we wandered around what looked like observation platforms for birders, we marvelled at the time, money and effort spent on such an undertaking only to have such a low profile that almost no-one outside of the local area had ever heard of it (Montenegrin marketing at its finest again). I wondered if the owners had put quite as much thought into running the place as they had into designing it. It was clear that making a profit wasn’t a major consideration – after all, no-one has an empty pool in mid-summer if they’re hoping to have anyone stay there.
“You know, it’s not that bad,” Emma mused as I climbed up a birder’s platform near what looked like a wetlands enclosure. “I mean, it’s not quite to our taste but it could have been done a whole lot worse. It reminds me of an African safari lodge out of season.”
“You’re not that far off the mark with the African comparison,” I replied. “This wetlands enclosure isn’t a wetlands enclosure. It’s a pen. And it’s got a hippo in it.”
“A hippo?”
And it was. In a pen. At an “eco” lodge. In Montenegro. And there’s not much more I can add to that. Whatever else you may think, it’s a hell of a USP. Or perhaps just a UP.
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