Breaking stones, breaking bones

“Hallo, Ben.”
It was Peko, our site foreman.
“Možete li vi doći u kuce, odmah?” Can you come to the house, immediately?
Ah nuts.
Over the last two weeks we’d been struggling to keep the build on schedule, mostly due to some very stubborn – and thick – flagstone in the konoba that needed to be removed in order for Dragan Water (as opposed to Dragan Doors, our chippy) to start laying the house’s waste pipes. We’d also had issues to resolve over the height of our main entrances, the height of the new konoba floor, the height of the terrace floor, the need for a lightning conductor, the extra concrete that’s been required to make the terrace itself (which of course we will eventually have to pay for), the exact method we’re going to be using to get our water supply from 50 yards down the hill into the house…each day has brought a potential obstacle requiring a lot of thought and the occasional compromise. It’s also needed careful co-ordination between our builders and sub-contractors – all of whom have jobs to do in the near future and need to be kept informed as to what stage we’ve reached. Most of these things tended to be routed not through our majstor, but through Zdanko, his trusty lieutenant. When Zdanko called, it usually meant we had to sharpen our fingernails for a good bout of head-scratching. It also meant we’d have to drink loza with him – and if you’ve read my previous entries you’ll know I’d rather gargle 4-star.

We got into the car and drove to the house. Zdanko and Srđe, the truck driver, were already there. To our relief, they were grinning.

“Hajde, Ben, Emma!”

They chattered away to us. Did we know that huge boulder that was sitting in the excavations for the water reservoir?

Boom, shake, shake, shake the...excavation

Yes, we did.

Would we like to see them blow it up with dynamite?

Would we ever.

And thus we received our first lesson in the use of basic explosives thanks to Srđe and Musa. First you drill three deep holes into the boulder. Then you pack a small amount of explosives into some cardboard, and stuff it deep into the holes with a broom handle, with the detonation wires attached (I’m aware that this may not be an entirely “by the book” approach). Next ensure that both live and negative wires run a good ten metres distant (more if you’re blowing up something really big), and when ready, attach each wire to the corresponding terminals of a 12 volt car battery. Oh – and make sure you’ve already taken cover. I was briefly reminded of that brilliant chapter in Captain Corelli’s Mandolin when they find the unexploded mine on the beach – like Carlo, the boy inside me also has a deep love of a decent explosion. In the event, the two we set off were more “paff!” than “BOOM!”, but they certainly did the trick. The boulders in question – or at least the remains of them – could at least now be hefted out of the way and added to our growing collection of decent building stone. I had wanted to post a small video of the event here, but – wouldn’t you know it – despite having a camera at the ready, the batteries ran out seconds before Srđe set the dynamite off. Boo!

So there’s been progress, then, but only of the qualified variety. We’ve been rather busier on the more cerebral aspects of our new life. It therefore gives me great pleasure – drum roll please! - to introduce our new company logo, as modelled by the reverse side of our lovely business card:


We’ve still got some legal things to do to set up and register our company, but at least we’ve now found ourselves some local lawyers with a half-decent command of the English language. You try reading through the Tourism Ministry’s 20 pages of requirements in a language you speak only to primary school level! We’ve also set up our first website page and even scored our first “gig” as English proof-readers for a local German NGO. In return for our labour, we get to look at the area’s new hiking and biking maps well before the publication date, which will be a huge help considering that these will be core activities for our guests next year. We’re also hoping that they’ll give us some help with addressing the litter situation in the area. Until then, we’ll keep amusing the locals by going on regular litter-collecting trips. It’s our hope that we can set enough of an example to see the habit catching on. The problem at Skadar is that there are not enough rubbish bins, and not enough signs to tell you where the ones they do have are (maybe they got shot?). The result is that there’s rather too much fly-tipping going on, as well as plastic bottles and cigarette packets that keep getting chucked out of car windows.

As Skadar is a National Park there’s always a tidy-up before summer season – but during the winter we hope to convince the locals that it might help them more to prevent the build up of rubbish in the first place. With over 270 species of birds nesting here, Skadar has huge potential for winter tourism among the twitcher fraternity; it would be a shame if they were put off by something so eminently fixable. That of course is assuming that the global credit crisis hasn’t bankrupted our potential holiday-makers for next year anyway. With the £/€ rate now at an all time low of 1.19, we’ve been silently blowing out and raising our eyebrows; with rare foresight, we changed the last of our Sterling over to our new Montenegrin € bank account a couple of weeks back at a rate that has saved us about two grand, give or take…

A currency trader, yesterday

Montenegrin life is otherwise suiting us quite well. We’re well-known in town now and have already attracted a good many local well-wishers, all of whom have been supremely hospitable and eager to dispense help and advice in equal measure. The one thing they have all done without exception is hand us bag after bag of mandarins, apples, walnuts, hazelnuts, Japanese apples and grapes – so we’re not going hungry. Additionally, with good wine on tap and Montenegrin TV proving unexpectedly entertaining, the long winter nights pass quicker than we had expected. Special mention should go to RTCG’s “weird-film night” on Mondays, where Spooks (“Operativci”) is swiftly followed by a lucky-dip flick with a bafflingly good cast that even a movie-nerd like me has never heard of. Anyone seen Perfume, Weapons of Mass Distraction or Where the Truth Lies? Well, Ben Kingsley and Gabriel Byrne will probably be grateful you never saw the middle one, but the last sees Colin Firth do a bloody good David Niven impression…and the subtitles have helped us to learn a whole new load of swear words.

Oh, and the broken bones?

Well, that’d be Shalja. And me. Shalja - one of our workers - walloped his own foot with a sledgehammer whilst wearing nothing more protective than a worn out pair of Converse All-Stars. And me? I found out I'd broken my little finger. It had been painful for a while – ever since Vis, in fact, when I’d hurt it dropping/stopping a full-blooded drive by one of the Springfield cricketers – but after considered medical opinion (ok, Emma and the internet), I have now accepted that the “bruise” should really have healed after eight weeks. It’s now been splinted and bandaged. I’ll need all ten of those fingers to start tiling and carpentering next January.

And finally…by popular demand, a video of Virpazar’s fightiest, bitiest, daftest juvenile feline. Enjoy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEvkZ7xHPjg