Reverse Gear

Recent traumas notwithstanding, believe it or not we have had some real progress on the house this last week. Renovating Villa Zabes has been a little like Norwich City Football Club’s current plight; we’re showing signs of recovery and promise late in the day, but it’s unlikely to be enough to rescue our season. Replacement balconies have been installed, floors begun, electric wires hang all over the place and we even had the minor miracle of an accidentally extended weekend away where nothing disastrous or idiotic happened in our absence (well, apart from a crucial support beam that is not itself…erm…supported…). Having had a minor automotive mis-hap on our way to a party in Kotor, we returned a day late to find Tuzi the cat still alive and showing welcome scavenging skills and best of all, builders on site. Given our build history, every day we’re away from Virpazar we fear the worst, so it was actually with some relief (not to mention surprise) that on our return we didn’t have anything to scream at Bolimir about. Given my car history, it was actually with some relief (not to mention surprise) that the consequences of this breakdown weren’t worse.

“What am I going to complain about if there’s nothing to complain about?”

We’d been kept in Kotor a little longer than we’d planned thanks to a snapped throttle cable on Saturday night. This incident pained me for more than the obvious reasons, for I am – or at least back in the UK was – a frustrated car nut, and like the frustrated cricket fanatic who’s forever embarrassed by his ineptitude at the crease (yep, me again), there is little sadder than a car nut who doesn’t really know anything about cars.

A COMPLETE HISTORY OF MY AUTOMOTIVE FAILURES

1991
Renault 5

Bought for: £250
Sold for: scrap
Notable features: A 750cc engine that couldn’t accelerate up-hill and two holes in the floor for the “Barney Rubble” braking technique.
Any good? The throttle jammed open on my way to University, the tailgate blew off on the A47, one door rusted so badly opening it broke the hinges and after one year of ownership the steering rack had slipped and the brakes had ceased to work.

1995
Austin Metro

Bought for: no sensible reason I can fathom
Sold for: £300 initially, subsequently refunded
Notable features: Quadruple spotlights up front, leather steering wheel, “classic” vinyl roof.
Any good? The clutch burned out in a multi-storey carpark, the coil went pop on the A47 (again), the quadruple spotlights never worked and the sub-frame was so badly rusted it disintegrated entirely – at 50mph - on the (you guessed it) A47 one week after I sold it to my brother. Hence the refund.

1999
’67 MGB GT

Bought for: £3,800
Sold for: £2,500
Notable features: Floor-mounted high beam switch, red leather seats, hand-pumped wash/wipe, wire wheels that were a b****d to clean and twin 6-volt batteries in such an inaccessible position under the rear ”seat” that changing them was a two hour job.
Any good? To look at, yes. To drive? Sort of. To own? I spent £5000 over 5 years keeping this heap on the road, and every month something new went wrong. The true low point was when a “new” dynamo broke and I got stranded in a town called Baldrick. Or when the steering wheel broke my nose.

2004
Peugeot 205 1.8 GTDT

Bought for: the petrol in its tank
Sold for: the petrol in its tank (yes, I actually broke even)
Notable features: A car so uncool I could leave it in SE24 unlocked without worrying about theft, it sounded like a tractor when it was stationary and clonked over every bump when it was moving (this turned out to be because the drivetrain was on its way out, a nugget that only came to light once I had punted it on to my Dad…). Faster than it looked, mind.
Any good? It was a free car. What do you think?

2006
Ford Puma 1.7

Bought for: £1,700
Sold for: £1,350
Notable features: A boot-lid that dumped water into the boot every time it rained, headlights so weak we never drove it in the dark and a ride so hard I swear I could have driven over a 10p piece and told you if it was heads or tails. And everyone thought I was a hairdresser.
Any good? Actually, yes, it was a cracking drive. It never broke down, and only let me down once on (you guessed it) the A47 – a road I should probably avoid for the rest of my life - when the lack of a spare tyre one Xmas Eve proved embarrassing.

2008
Honda CR-V

Bought for: £1,500
Sold for: open to offers
Notable features: Unique 2WD system - the rear differential dropped off at the top of Mount Lovćen after an unfortunate rock incident in Rumania, permanently disabling any 4WD capabilities – and over 140,000 miles on the clock.
Any good? It groans, it moans, it squeaks and it’s not too clever on steep hills now that the system that transfers power to the rear wheels when the front wheels slip is no longer connected to the rear wheels. But it’s been driven for 9 months in Montenegro and is still going. Just.

2009
Renault Espace

Bought for: £1,300
Sold for: still got it
Notable features: Free-spirited automatic transmission, a bootlid that won’t open and handling like a barge. Corking stereo, and alpine air-con, though.
Any good? Days after we bought it it cost us 500 quid in repairs. The jury’s still out.

To this miserable roll of honour I must additionally fess up to two motorcycles (both crap) and no fewer than five Italian scooters, the fates of which I can reel off a bit like the details of Henry VIII’s wives (nicked, crashed then nicked, nicked, hit by double-decker bus, left gathering dust in a garage).

The only thing about Blighty that I miss

When it comes to motors, I either buy pups, or raise them - which was why I was so relieved that Tony’s mate Nenad the Mechanic fixed that throttle cable for a mere €50, including picking the car off the side of the road on a Sunday. You try getting that sort of service from a UK garage (Old joke - what's the law of mechanics? "Nah, mate, not till next Tuesday"). Given that the Honda also had its rear diff whipped off in an hour and a half for just €40 back in November, I think I can say - unequivocally - that Monte mechanics are ace. And with my automotive judgement, it's just as well.

Incidentally, Tony, Laura, Katie and Tim, this is a) why it’s a bad idea for me to get into sailing and b) why I should never buy a boat…

Beautiful whatever the season

The view from Virpazar bridge in summer (left) and winter (right)

Lake Skadar from the mountain border wih Albania in summer (left) and winter (right, with Suzo)

The vista from Besac fort in Virpazar in summer (left) and winter (right)

Is a caption truly necessaryfor this picture?

Villa Zabes from the old road to Bar in the summer (left) and winter (right)

Virpazar and Crmnica Polje from Rasho's viewpoint. Yep, summer's on the left and winter on the right

That's why we came here. Sometimes, with all the building work going on, it's easy to forget.

Chasing the Dragans

The first rule of Project Virpazar is that you do not talk about (what is going wrong with) Project Virpazar. The second rule of Project Virpazar is that persons by the name of Bolimir will shortly be barred from Project Virpazar. The third rule of Project Virpazar is…well, you stand a much better chance of employment with us if your name is Dragan.

It sounds pretty hard, the name Dragan. Men answering to this name sound like fierce warriors. You can imagine them with either a sword or an assault rifle in hand, ready to decapitate their enemies, or at the very least to give them a bloody stern talking to. What those not so familiar with the ex-Yu countries might not realise, however, is that Dragan mean “beloved”. Just as in Africa you meet people called Heaven, Precious, Happy and Gift, in the ex-Yu countries you might come across people called Dušan (“friendly”), Slobodan (“free”), Dragica (“beloved” – again) or Sunčana (“Sunshine”). Our particular favourite is the slightly more brutal name of Nenad, which literally means “no hope” and is seemingly the second most popular men’s name after Dragan, which is basically like being called John. And that means that a lot of people with whom we’ve come into contact go by this name (we also know three Nenads). Mix in the fact that we often forget people’s surnames and you can see how this might get confusing! The last two weeks have, therefore, consisted largely of us over-using the “d” button on our mobiles as we try and organise our various “majstors” in an attempt to get our house watertight.

Dragan Plumber – An affable chap, this Dragan has been absent for a while as we’ve had other jobs to finish before we recall him to add second fix items – and to sort out a screw-up perpetrated by Bolimir’s half-wit Christmas building brigade (roll of honour thus far reading one window in the wrong wall, two windows the wrong size, one doorway in the wrong place, one doorway the wrong size and a toilet pipe that they didn’t bother to extend into one of the bathrooms).

Dragan Doors – we’d told our softly-spoken carpenter that we’d be ready for his nicely finished doors and windows mid-March and would thus be able to free up space in his workshop. We hadn’t much been looking forward to telling him that despite his work being ready on time Bolimir had ensured we were still weeks away from the installation date. Fortunately for us (although less so for Dragan Doors), after bumping into him on an errand in Podgorica we found out he’d sliced the end off of one of his fingers and was off work for two weeks anyway. This might enable us to get to work varnishing the doors (as we have the windows) as, unaccountably for a carpenter, Dragan Doors seems to think varnish unnecessary…

Majstor Dragan – Bolimir had given his previous building crew the boot, telling us in “confidence” that they hadn’t been any good. We were a) inclined to agree and b) inclined to tell him that neither was he, especially as he had had them working on our house under his watch for the best part of four months. After three lovely days where no workers of any description were on site, it was a relief therefore to find a new crew working on our new beams and boards, headed by the eponymous and knowledgeable Majstor Dragan. The week he’d been the new foreman heralded an event so incredible I can barely repeat it, even at the keyboard – for seven days in a row we had three/four workers on site putting in 10 hour daily shifts.

Like me, you may need a moment to process so momentous a piece of information. Breathe deeply now before moving on to the next Dragan.

Electric Dragan – this might sound like a new make of scooter built somewhere in China or Korea, but Electric Dragan – who replaced the phone-phobic Vlado a few weeks ago – has been the very epitome of professionalism, suffering our painful S/C/CG/MJ explanations patiently and then taking us through every installation recommendation step-by-step. He then got further into our good books by giving Bolimir a piece of his mind when they clashed over the way the site had been prepared for an electrician. His quotation seems reasonable enough, but we know now to double check it every day anyway just in case. Electric Dragan put in a 12 hour shift yesterday, working on well into the night, so, so far so good.

American Dragan – American Dragan is not, in fact, American at all, but his wife is. We’d got in touch with Podgorica resident Christine through this very blog, and it turned out that her husband was also in the building trade, so we arranged a meeting with them in Pod for a very pleasant coffee and a chat. If it was a relief to speak English again, it was of even greater relief to be introduced to the American Resource Library (new books to read!), let alone to finally meet a tradesman with as sound a command of the language as “American” Dragan. The prospect of actually working with someone we don’t have to mime to has its appeal, so we’ve asked him to pop over to Virpazar and have a look at the outstanding jobs that we’re not willing to let Bolimir have a crack at.

And Bolimir himself? Well, his moods continue to swing wildly from bizarre bonhomie to dark mutterings and back again. In the space of a week, we’ve had him ask us if we wanted 2 years interest free credit again (no way), if we could import a Massey Ferguson tractor for him from England (!) and had him pop round our flat unannounced and drunk at eight in the evening to ask us to lend him two grand (very definitely no way).

House apart, the highlight of the last couple weeks or so was being invited to a St. Patrick’s day party over in Kotor. We’d been asked over by a lovely Dutch girl called Laura we had met in November whilst watching the rugby in the little Irish pub in Budva, and it turned out that she was part of an extensive Kotor-based ex-pat network. As the Lake Skadar ex-pat network basically consists of – well - us, this was a welcome treat. We’d already been in touch with a few of them via email and had met others briefly in that same Irish bar; it was, all in all, a great evening thanks to the efforts of host Peter Flynn. Beer was sunk, a few too many fags smoked and a good deal of excellent Irish stew greedily wolfed down. We also took the opportunity to get to know two other like-minded couples trying to set up a new life in Montenegro, both of whom might in fact have been us in certain parallel dimensions (in that they’re both attempting something adventurous and interesting here in Monte without having to head home for a stretch).

Katie and Tim’s adventures on board the Monty B and Den and Steve’s eco-resort project made us aware that not only can such ambitious things be done, but that perhaps our biggest miscalculation was leaving ourselves only seven months to rebuild a stone house form near scratch…apart from hiring Bolimir, of course.

The real frustration is that now that real progress is finally being made on the house and the unseasonably bad weather is finally lifting, we are once again being reminded of why we chose to come here in the first place at the same time as knowing that soon we will have to leave – however temporarily. We’ve managed to hike from Zabes (our house) to nearby Godinje, finding another amazing view we hadn’t seen before, and also made a visit to the gorgeous Poseljani, with its collection of über-cute disused mill-houses running down alongside a succession of rocky waterfalls.

The one thing that has not changed is our conviction that Lake Skadar is one of the great undiscovered natural wonders of Europe. In our next post (coming very soon), we’ll be able to show you why.

Oh, and in case you were wondering, the photo at the top of the page is the moon rising over the lake from near our house. It had been a really trying day, and yet the second we glimpsed this scene all building problems melted away in favour of a lingering gawp. Just beautiful.

Life on Mars

First of all we had the rainiest winter Crmnica Valley had seen in a decade. Then, following brief week of sunshine, we had the heaviest single snowfall for 30 years, a slightly excessive 70cm in 24 hours, most of which is still hanging around and thawing only gradually. The result is that our build is now a further week behind; if the workers can’t get to the site, it’s not like they can do much!

This enforced intermission has left us without an awful lot to do, especially as sitting snowbound in our rented flat with only sporadic water and electricity only exacerbates the feeling that Monte is actually the land that time has forgotten. There are no cute baby dinosaurs roaming our hills, but it’s at times like these that you come to realise that living in Montenegro is a bit like living in England in the 1970s…Detective Inspector Gene Hunt would love it.

WHY LIVING IN MONTENEGRO IS A LITTLE BIT LIKE LIVING IN BRITAIN IN THE 1970s (and no, I couldn’t think of a snappier title):

ATTITUDES
- “Pušenje ubije” (smoking kills)? Not in Montenegro it doesn’t. Life expectancy around the lake is somewhere over 90, and there’s not a man, woman, child or dog who isn’t on at least 10 a day.
- Everyone’s a little bit phobic. If you’re gay or non-white, chances are the locals here won’t have any idea what to make of you. This phobia stops just short of being an –ism, but at best they might have some rather out-dated, preconceived and ignorant opinion about you. That said, just like their British counterparts from 30 years ago, these attitudes are a) changing fast and b) mostly confined to the older generation.
- Overt sexism. Montenegrin men are gentlemen. They will open doors for ladies, hold their coats and generally behave with the epitome of charm. Just don’t think that they don’t really prefer women chained to the stove at home cooking, cleaning and having babies. In a glam-rock era pub in England, women were only allowed to drink Babycham. In Montenegro, bars are for men and the reputation of a woman can be forever tarnished if she is seen drunk in public.

FOOD AND DRINK
- You can have any kind of bread you like as long as it’s white. Wholegrain? What’s that? Wheatgerm? Eh? It’s bread. What more do you want?
- Angel Delight is not only still advertised on TV, but is considered a sophisticated dessert. Jaffa Cakes are prized as an exotic alternative to a jam roly-poly.
- The national cuisine in general is still uninfluenced by that international relief for the palate: immigrants. Food is eaten through necessity, not pleasure, so consequently it resembles in some detail British delicacies during the pre-Thatcher years; meat, more meat, boiled veg and the same flavours no matter what you happen to be eating. If you love curry, as we do, you’ll have to rely on DIY and a lot of imported spices.
- Spam. And Gouda. Every supermarket stocks twenty different varieties of each of these 70s staples. I genuinely had no idea there were twenty different varieties until we moved here.
- No McDonalds. At all. I actually love this about Monty, but anyone who remembers the times before the Super-sizers set up on English soil will still have occasional nightmares about having to force down a Wimpy burger as a “treat”. Well, for Wimpy, here read plješcavica. And you don’t even get any cutlery.
- Home-made grog. Back when moustaches were still cool, we still hated the French and wine-drinking was for “poofs”, most people either drank beer or brewed their own alcohol. Montenegrin gardens are filled with plums, grapes, figs, cherries and pomegranates, all of which get distilled into a selection of vile brandies. The only difference – and it’s a major one – is that Montenegrins get delicious Vranac wine for €2 a bottle. We had to endure Paul Nicholas and a bottle of Rougemont Castle - or Matteus Rosé.

Er, no thanks

WORK
- Montenegro has 30% unemployment. Like under Mr Callaghan there’s not much work going about, and what there is is heavily reliant on the mining and tourism industries.
- Smoke-stained offices with no computers. Most just don’t have them. Now I remember an office reliant on the fax and nothing better than Word 3.2, but that was back in 1996, practically another electronics age.
- Almost complete absence of on-line facilities. If you want to find something out, you either have to ask someone you know or go and find it yourself. Yellow Pages? If JR Hartley had lived in Montenegro he would have died of old age long before finding his tome about fly-fishing.

CULTURE
- Small ads half hour on national TV stations trailing everything from second hand cars to where to get your wood-burner and the location of local restaurants (“just around the corner from this cinema!”)
- Non-stop talking in cinemas. We’ve had people nattering their way through Quantum of Solace and Benjamin Button as if they were watching in the comfort of their own lounge. On one occasion it was so bad that I felt compelled to ask a local friend how to say “shut the f*** up” in Srpski. Odeon cinema etiquette is still some way off.
- Dubious fashion trends. Beards and bell-bottoms may have been a pretty horrible combination, but in Monte they’d stand a chance of admission to the style council. Actually, Montenegrin fashion has more in common with the 80s than the 70s – big hair, big slap-on, glitzy jackets, shoulder-pads, violent highlights and shellsuits. More Ashes to Ashes than Life on Mars, if you will.
- Starting a family young. My parents got married and had children in their early twenties. So do Montenegrins. As thirty-somethings without, they think we’re weird.

PRACTICALITIES
- Lack of central heating. When the mercury falls to below zero, all you can really do is retire to the one room in your house/flat that contains the wood-burner and settle down for the night. In winter, our room in our rented flat is simultaneously our kitchen, dining room, living room and bedroom. Which reminds me of when I was a student, living in a bedsit that hadn’t been redecorated since the Bay City Rollers were top of the pops.
- Just like in the heyday of British Leyland, a company that would have struggled to make toast (when its workers weren’t actually on strike), staple private transport in Montenegro is one or both of the following; crap and/or knackered. Crumbling old Yugos trundle about with ubiquity. Some are so ancient they’re based on a 1950s Fiat that was itself crap, but they appear unkillable, which has to be about the only reason anyone still drives one of the few motors ever to make an Allegro look quality. Yes, you do see the occasional upmarket German saloon (the Balkan equivalent of the sort of ropey old Jag that Terry used to drive in Minder) but the most popular vehicles are 20 year old VW Golfs. If only everything in life was as reliable as a Volkswagen, eh?

The all new Yugo - better than an Allegro and you get a free girl!

- Drink driving. There are rules, but like those about smoking, no-one pays them the slightest bit of notice. Had eight pints down the local boozer? Well, you’ll either be driving or walking, and with mountains like these, you can guess what most locals plump for.
- Driving without your seatbelt on. Together with the above, a winning combination! And yes, by law you’ve got to wear one, but guess what…?
- ATMs. Remember when you got your first bank card and could actually take money out of the cash machine? Remember how you had to drive to the next town because that was where the nearest one was? No? Ask your folks, they will. Debit cards, credit cards and ATMs are all recent developments here.

So how do we cope living in the dark ages?

Well, much as some of the local customs might be considered a bit, well, backward in the UK, we’re with Sam Tyler on this one – it’s actually a lot of fun.

Sadly, not for long. Our departure date of mid/late-April should still hold (unless Bolimir somehow engineers a 2-week delay working inside the house), so soon – with our usual impeccable timing - we’ll be back into the rather weird realm of CV updates and job-hunting. Argh…have we made ourselves unemployable or have we still got something to offer the rat race? Or like Sam, will we remain stuck in the 70s after all?