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?