So, after another bout of driving from one end of the former Yugoslavia to the other, we’re now back at Lake Skadar. The main difference is that we’re no longer staying in Doctor Dean’s cave, but in a very comfortable 3-bedroom flat that we’re renting for the next six months or so. The reason? Well, we’ve signed on the dotted line and are now the proud owners of… a crumbling ruin perched on the side of a cliff, 2200 square metres of terraced gardens, two grape vines, 12 fig trees, three pomegranite trees, two plum trees, two tortoises (adopted), one cherry tree and two "japanese apple" trees! You might well ask what a "japanese apple" is. This was Emma's guess at what these strange green orbs were...
...and I have to admit, she wasn't the only one not to know that that's what walnuts look like before they get plonked in Xmas stockings!
We had returned briefly 350 kms north to our house on Vis island in Croatia the previous week to welcome a touring team of cricketers from Chelmsford. For those that don’t know, Vis has a cricket club that was founded in 1809 by Captain Sir William Hoste, a former cabin-boy of Lord Nelson (and scourge of Napoleon’s fleet). It might seem an unlikely place for cricket to have survived, but in the late 90s the club was revived by an enterprising islander and since then has grown from a gaggle of locals having a giggle to a half-decent outfit hosting (no pun intended) touring sides from all over the world on their brand new artificial pitch among the vineyards and olive groves of Plisko Polje in the island’s interior (see www.viscricket.com for more details). As a proud member, I was determined to play my part in vanquishing the touring side as Emma got drunk with the Guardian's Balkan correspondent, an affable chap from Isle of Mann called Ian who was intent on setting up a Serbian/Montengerin cricket club. We may have to stay in touch! Back on the field, I scored 20 and 6 in two matches, took no wickets, dropped one catch and contributed in full to one convincing and one close defeat (my only consolation was that it wasn’t me who dropped their century-making captain when he had made only 1).
As we got back together with some of our old island friends, we lamented to them how we had had to discount Vis as our new base because of the draconian and discriminatory laws that applied to foreign businesses and house-ownership in Croatia (see last week’s blog), specifically the one that stipulated that foreign property owners required a “categorisation” licence in order to rent out their homes – a licence that foreigners were also ineligible to apply for! It rather said it all that neither our lawyer nor a tourist official from the local Inspektoriat could actually tell us how we could legally rent our house out the following year, promising only that they would look into the possibilities for us.“That’s why we’ve decided to start in Virpazar,” we explained almost apologetically. Typically, our cricketing friends reacted to this news simply by giving me a new nickname - the Montenegrin - an epithet they chanted with glee from the sidelines when I smote my only boundary (“Bravo, Crnogorski!”). It was a shame we couldn’t have included Vis more completely in our plans, but it had to be said that we were not unhappy with the alternative. When we first saw the house, we referred to it as “the vine house”. For the last few weeks, even prior to our signing on the dotted line, we’d been calling it “our house”. How’s that for your heart over-ruling your head?
Maybe it’s not the heart at all. Maybe it’s more to do with the stomach, that infamous “gut feeling”, an instinct that tells you when something is inherently right. Gut instinct, though, is a phrase often mis-appropriated, most often used to describe only those situations with positive outcomes – like someone pushing a child out of the way of a speeding car, for example. Instinct is supposed to be a good thing. You’re supposed to be able to trust it, act on it, rely on it to make the tough calls for you, the ones that your brain, with its logic and doubt and sheer sensibleness is incapable of making.
When looking for a property however, either for business or for renovation, you’re supposed to use your grey matter and view dispassionately. It’s far better that way; when one place falls through, you’ve mentally got a decent second choice lined up instead. The truly savvy buy houses like they shop for bread. No wholemeal left? Never mind – there’s a nice white bloomer. It’s not as tasty, perhaps, but it’ll do the job and fill your belly. The moment you get emotionally attached to one house, no others will do, and you’ll pay whatever you can to obtain it (the grocery equivalent of driving over to the Waitrose ten miles away).
Once you've had this you can never go back...
Reaction to our finally closing the deal was positive at least. There were handshakes and backslaps all round, from Dubravka the lawyer, who had come through for us in style to all the local friends (and, it has to be said, potential tradesmen) we had made in the area. These by now included a new social group of very friendly thirty-something ex-pats based around the nearby town of Herceg Novi, most of whom were also involved in Montenegro’s burgeoning tourism industry. We’d made contact by email to have a chat about their experiences in setting up something similar to what we had planned and in that respect we weren’t disappointed. They were a chatty, informative and friendly bunch.
“Lake Skadar eco-tourism? Well, you’ll definitely be the first. You’ll be pioneers!”
We weren’t sure whether that was a compliment or whether they too thought we were nuts.
“Welcome, neighbours!” grinned Doctor Dean when he broke the news to him, insisting that we drink a loza or two to celebrate (loza being the local equivalent of grappa and thus as foul and nasty as any alcohol just a molecule or two different to petrol). On receipt of the purchase price – comfortably more money than he had ever previously seen in his life – vendor Slaviša promptly ordered himself a pair of doubles (!) and took us out for lunch at Voda u Kršu, the famed local restaurant that serves ridiculously massive portions of meat wrapped in meat and served with a side order of meat. We drunkenly teased him about his uncanny resemblance to Robert de Niro. He teased us about our crap Serbian. We took our leftovers home in a doggy-bag and had them for lunch the next two days, during which we began running through our plans for the house and our parallel tourism business in earnest, imagining our new life and getting carried away with some new ideas.
Would you buy a house from this man?
Of course, the party was always due to get pooped ever so slightly when reality popped in for a chat, the smug, unwelcome and hitherto forgotten neighbour you actively avoid because they remind you only of your fallibilities. On this occasion it was in the form of builder Spiros, who after the procrastination typical of the trade handed us a renovation quote that was around 15% higher than we were expecting – or had budgeted for. And he was supposed to be the cheaper of the two builders were had approached! Once again the house plans got rethought and redrawn as we agonised over which parts we might be able to build immediately, and which might have to wait for phase two.
In amongst all of this we had also driven Dean’s daughter Una and her new husband, Oliver, to Dubrovnik airport so they could start their new life in Derby (talk about a life swap). This was a journey that had been in severe doubt for several weeks as Emma had been valiantly coaxing the pair of them through the minefield of stress that was UK Immigration’s online spousal visa applications system. It was also a departure that coincided not only with the arrival for a couple of weeks of Emma’s best friend Jess but also with Doctor Dean’s departure to his day-job, working on an Italian cruise ship for the next seven months. Neither of us had any idea how we were going to be able to cope without his help. Fortunately, Dean’s younger daughter, Sara, was still around to help us with our slowly-improving Serbo-Croat, providing not just invaluable translation assistance but also plenty of good ideas for our tourism business. Speaking to her was exactly the fillip our nervous energy demanded.
“You know, we just have to get the tours up and running for summer,” Emma thought carefully. “We can still rent this flat, and as long as we can put our guests up in alternative accommodation whilst still providing them with an unforgettable holiday, we would have a little more time to get the house right - and enough money to pay for it.”
Kicking around waiting for our second builder to show up with his quote reminded me of how it felt waiting for my exam results to be pinned up on the school noticeboard; two parts fear of imminent disaster (not to mention having to explain said disaster to the parents) but one part impatience at just ending the agony as quickly as possible. In this respect we were finally given some cheerier news the next day when our second builder, a portly chap we shall call Bolimir, finally arrived (a week late). He had previously hinted at a ball-park figure lower than that already delivered by Spiros, and as we knocked back early morning coffee we were delighted to hear not only that he would be able to build our favoured two storey extension for the same price as Spiros’s single-storey estimate, but that he would be able to get the job done twice as quickly, and almost certainly to a more exacting standard. The only caveat was that as usual with Bolimir we had run through his figures in high speed Serbo-Croat. Bolimir had no English-speaking daughter as Spiros did with Natasha - he instead made do with our friend Ivica, whose complete lack of English failed to deter him from attempting translation duties. With Bolimir rattling on in fluent “builder”, Ivica would simply clarify items for us in baby-Serbian, meaning that whilst we reckoned we had found our man, there were still a few things we would have to re-confirm once Bolimir had handed us an English-language translation of his extensive line-by-line. For now, though, it does at least mean our original, more extensive plans stand a chance of being realised...
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