A bit of a Krapfest

To many, mid-September is just that odd month between summer and autumn, a weird inbetweener when football and cricket are played concurrently, a month where that faint glow of summer is still tangible as the days get shorter. It’s when the kids go back to school. It’s when many businesses plan their annual budgets. It can set the tone for a six month period that most people in the Northern hemisphere spend drinking hot chocolate and remembering to put the central heating on. September is important - not least because it was in mid-September 2001 that Emma and I first met.

It was also in mid-September – this time in 2008 - that we completed the purchase of a dilapidated centuries-old ruin sliding off the side of a hill on the shores of a lake no-one had ever heard of, in a country most people couldn’t find on a map, just before the middle of the wettest European winter in years and right in the middle of the biggest global financial crisis for a generation. And the time scale we gave ourselves to renovate this heap and make a new life for ourselves running an eco-tourism business? Seven months.

You can hear Kevin McCloud tutting already, can’t you? Needless to say, we did not make it. After our first builder put doors where they were not supposed to be, hiked his costs by 200% without informing us first and took four months to get our roof on, we were forced to fire him and return to the UK, our dreams dashed. But we bounced back by getting new jobs and more importantly, managing to hire possibly the best builder in the whole of the Balkans. Things worked out ok after all.

Until we got to mid-September 2009, that is, when in a freakish turn of events I got sacked by text message. This was clearly not a positive development, but then things bizarrely righted themselves again. I got another job almost immediately, Emma scored an even better one and once again we were back in business. Sure, we had spiteful neighbours bent on destroying Zlatko’s beautiful border wall, but we fought them off and are now just a slip of legal penmanship away from being able to finish it. Sure, it was tough project-managing the ongoing build from a different country, but Zlatko’s work was outstanding (if a little delayed) and his workers dedicated and skilled. And sure, it was a blow that we didn’t meet our revised end-date of May 2010 as planned, but by summer we’d begun a rather more important project, with our first little Heywood due to arrive on Valentine’s Day 2011!

Something tells me it's going to take a lot longer to finish this project...

In our mind’s eye, then, we had always had mid-September 2010 down as our final finish date. It had a certain symmetry about it – two years more or less to the day that we bought the house – and it would also be the last time Emma would be able to fly anywhere until the spring of 2011. Communication between us, Zlatko and American Dragan indicated that we might be right on schedule. And then my employer went bust owing me two months’ wages just before we were due to head out for nearly two weeks.

All together now – arrrgggh.

Left with little alternative, we did what we’ve always done in such circumstances; we dug deep, borrowed some money and I got myself my third job in 12 months, starting the very day we got back from our “holiday” to see if American Dragan and Zlatko between them had finished our house. In Heywood-land, see, this is what constitutes an average year...

Of course, it won’t surprise you to hear that they weren’t quite done yet. We had forgotten to “Dave-minute”* American Dragan.

*a “Dave-minute” is the sneaky practice of handing someone a false deadline in the knowledge that they will miss it but still be on time for your “real” deadline.

It wasn’t a problem of quality. As with Zlatko, what Dragan had accomplished had been finished to a very high standard. Floors and beams had been sanded and beautifully varnished, tiles had been expertly laid, lights had been safely installed, walls had been carefully painted and a myriad other little left-overs had been ticked off, too, but as usual it appeared that there would be no breaking of the tape without us being there to send the whole phase scurrying through to completion. It was initially disappointing, but after a few firm discussions, work motored on apace. Skirting boards were affixed. Door surrounds were fashioned. Extra lights were wired in. All plumbing units were tried and tested. We cleaned. We repaired. We went to KIPS and OKOV more times than we should ever have to and once again fell prey to the logistical quagmire of the Montenegrin shopping experience.

Want a 120mm soil pipe? That’ll be KIPS in Golubovci. Want a flexible hose to connect it to your toilet? That’ll be the other KIPS out by the stari aerodrom. Want to return that soil pipe because you realise you actually need a different solution you didn’t spot first time and now wish to purchase on your way back from the other KIPS? Well, first you have to find a store worker to take the pipe back and give you a form. Then you have to go to the manager’s office to get the form stamped before revolving to the exact person you returned the pipe to. He will then fill it out and direct you to head back to the manager’s office - again - where you have to queue to get the form stamped - again. Then you have to go back that self-same store worker to buy your replacement goods before heading to the check-out till. Here, you perform the easiest part of the whole operation (naturally) and are told to head around the side of the building to collect your purchase. Except the girl around the side of the building tells you that you in fact have to cross the parking lot to go to their second building to get another stamp. At this second building, a second girl steals your receipt and replaces it with a completely new piece of paper that gets the aforementioned stamp. You then have to head back around the side of building #1 where the first girl will rather unhelpfully tell you to head out in the yard to collect your hose, where you will have to wait for ten minutes for a yard worker to arrive and take your replacement bit of paper, leaving you with the disconcerting feeling of having no proof that you’ve actually bought anything. You will then have to drive around to the other side of the yard to where your materials are stored and wait, a process that will take somewhere between five and fifty minutes depending on how much of a queue there is and whether your appointed KIPS employee knows where to find what you have bought. Finally, the goods will be loaded into your car and somehow, after all this, you are handed back your original receipt mere seconds before spontaneously combusting in impotent, impatient rage because you’ve forgotten those nails and in order to get nails you’ll have to go back into town to OKOV, past the Mercator Mexx on the road to Tuzi because God forbid that KIPS, a DIY store, should stock such an item!

And this is sort of how, almost exactly two years after we signed the papers and became the owners of that crumbling ruin, our house got finished. Almost.

We hope you agree that the results are pretty tasty.

We’re not quite done, of course. That border wall still has to be finished, and with it the rainwater recycling system. We’re still a few lights and fans shy, as well as one interior door, and have yet to find the right internal door handles. As you can see, Zlatko has installed some gorgeous ironwork for our spiral stairs, but won’t be able to attach the wooden treads until November (he has other jobs on that might actually earn him a profit and he rather understandably wants to finish those first), and of course the untamed monster that the garden has become is a battle for another time. We also have an extra problem to fix in the shape of a leak in our water tank (don’t worry - it sounds a good deal more serious than it actually is.

We are, however, finished enough for people to live in the house should they wish to. They’ll not have much furniture to use yet, but every electrical and plumbing installation is 100% operational. Good work, Dragans Dragišić and Deverdzić!

Those delays might only have been measurable in days rather than weeks, but combined with our already too-tight holiday schedule they sadly meant that as a result we missed the wedding of a couple of friends and barely had any time to relax ourselves. Only on the afternoon of the final Sunday could we spend any time with our good friend Dean Jovičević (he who spotted the house for us in the first place) and make some new friends as we joined the Montenegro Phototrekking Walking group on a hike from just outside our house in Zabes over to Godinje and then on to Virpazar itself.

The hike was part of a series of events that weekend hosted by the rather unfortunately named 2010 Lake Skadar Krapfest, the third year that the event had been running. Krap, of course, means carp in Serbo-Croat – the ubiquitous fish turning up on every local restaurant’s menu in either dimljeni (smoked) or na žaru (grilled) form – and is thus the perfect local festival mascot - provided you lack a fluent understanding of English slang. Created to promote the lake and all forms of eco-tourism, this was an event we had actually been looking forward to attending because it would afford us a rare opportunity to chat with likeminded people who a) would speak good English and b) might well be someone we could partner with when we start up in 2011. On this score it did not disappoint, at least. It was members of this group that had so delighted us earlier in the year when we heard of their “clean up the lake” campaign - and heartening to see that young Montenegrins were fully committed to protecting the National Park.

Ecology students apart, it would of course normally take a lot more than an organised hike to lure youngsters away from Podgorica. Virpazar was frankly throbbing like we’d never seen it before as locals poured into the tiny village in anticipation of an evening concert headlined by a chap called Darko Rundek.

Busy now - rammed later

Aleksander and Lilja, two of the phototrekkers, explained to us what all the fuss was about.
“He is a major star over here!” they said. “Think of him a little as the Croatian version of Sting. That’s how big a deal this is.”
“So he was part of a very popular group earlier in his career but now does his own stuff with an ever-changing troupe of global musicians,” I guessed, “but regarded as not all that cool by the younger kids?”

“Exactly!” they laughed. Emma and I have previous form when it comes to enduring obviously crap (sorry) concerts [see the previous blog entry, for example], but compared to what we had been forced to listen to in our house, Gospodin Rundek acquitted himself very well. Dragan and his team, you see, were fans of that peculiar Balkan folk music that sounds like a German oompah-polka crossed with Arabian wailing.

“My wife, Christine, she hates it too!” he grinned when I’d asked him what on earth the attraction was listening to a sound only marginally easier on the ear than bagpipes. “It’s about love of your family, your country. It’s happy music!”

Zlatko was less enamoured. On one of his brief visits to Villa Miela, the first thing he had done was switch off the offending radio, muttering “Turkish music!” under his breath.

To be honest, by that point I had sort of tuned it all out as I got on with the job of putting together no fewer than fifteen pieces of IKEA furniture that we had managed to get over the border into Montenegro. Nearly two weeks later, I still have “IKEA thumb”. I also survived a brief run in with the geometer (surveyor) Doctor Dean had set us up with back in August 08, a chap who had attempted to charge us €500 for his non-services. By then used to dodgy demands coming in this conveniently round number, we had insisted on receiving the detailed plans we had been promised in exchange for payment. Eventually, after meeting him for the fourth time in three weeks and still being given nothing more than a map of our land photocopied from the local land registry, we had cut off contact.

“You owe me €500!” he protested now, door-stepping me on our final evening more than two years after our last meeting.
“For one piece of paper? Not a chance,” I replied, crossing my arms and shaking my head with finality. “Do you have the survey with you right now? You know, the exact measurements of our land?”
He shrugged his shoulders.
“Well, then you’re not getting any money. Goodbye,” I asserted as bravely as I could. He called me several names, most of which I didn’t recognise, and drove off. American Dragan chuckled beside me, having helped to translate for part of the more lengthy exchange.
“What did he call me?” I asked, bemused.
“He called you mangup,” replied Dragan. “This is like, hard man. Smart, but ruthless, you know?”
I had to laugh. After deflating, ego-bruising arguments with shouty bullies like Bolimir, Electric Dragan and the wall-hate posse over the course of the last two years, it seemed I had finally found my Montenegrin backbone.

When I looked it up in the dictionary later, the entry read “mangup – rascal.”

If you can’t beat ‘em…

So, we're almost done. The sofa and woodburner are on their way, American Dragan is taking care of the water-tank repairs and our website (www.undiscoveredmontenegro.com) has been newly updated. Now all we need to do is see the build through to the finish, ensure Junior arrives safely and then get busy with a lot of paperwork...

All good things come to those who wait...

No moonwalking this time. This visit we marched to the beat of a different drummer, the kind that unlike Michael Jackson has no reverse gear, the kind that knows no fear and moves only forwards, marching into battle ahead of the troops, leading the charge with a swift one-two beat (to no doubt get mown down by machine gun fire in the first moments, but you know what I mean).

In my family, there is a law called the "Dave-minute". This refers to my step-father's required five minutes’ notice for dinner actually translating to him needing nearer forty-five, so dinner minus 45 minutes is when he is told it is ready. We had noticed a similar phenomenon in Montenegro that we shall call Montenegrin Time - to which builders were particularly susceptible. With Zlatko, if we gave him a month as a deadline, it would really take two. If he told us something would require a week to complete, it generally meant a month.

This is not a criticism, by the way. A Bolimir week would last an entire season and anyway, there's an unwritten law of property that states that you can only ever have two of the following three ideals: speed, quality and value for money. We had long since decided to give up on speed in favour of the other two, but even after a couple of years on this project, Montenegrin Time still caught us out on a regular basis. On our last visit, we had been a bit disappointed by the lack of progress and noted that Zlatko's men only really got cracking on our house in the week before our arrival, often leaving them no time to complete certain items before our departure, which would render our entire visit less worthwhile. We couldn't blame them for this - they had many more lucrative parallel jobs - but on this occasion we were desperate to get what we had asked for, when we had asked for it. We had told Zlatko we’d be heading out for July 7th - but then we got delayed by Emma’s work and had to fly out a week later instead.

“This could be a blessing in disguise,” Emma said. “After all, if they only started work a week ago, they’ve got a bonus week to get it finished. If they’re actually done this time, that’ll leave us free to sort out the next stage rather than standing around uselessly waiting for them to finish.”

We had unwittingly “Dave-minuted” Zlatko. Did it work? Did it ever. We should do it more often.

From the outside, the house looked SPECTACULAR. There was a deliciously crafted new gate. The doors and windows had been re-coloured a gorgeous darker hue, and the door and window surrounds had been re-coloured a subtler, lighter shade of ochre. The stonework was complete. The gutters had been transformed with a paint job of their own. The chimney was finished and poked beautifully up above the roof line. It almost made us cry.

Inside, there was extra progress. Every bathroom had been tiled by Goran and his team, exactly to the patterns specified, and every bath was ready and in position. The unappealing stone steps in the konoba had been removed, and although the new spiral stairs were still not in, we knew already that these were going to take a little more time given that Zlatko had rejected the modular unit we had selected from KIPS and had decided to get them made for us himself (a rather slower process).

As our five-day long stay unfolded, the news kept getting better. First of all, our kitchen arrived and was installed the same day thanks to the extremely efficient team from Eurosalon.

Of course, the sink had to be purchased and fitted separately...

Two days later came the moment neither of us thought we'd ever see. Dragan the Plumber (Zlatko apart, our favourite contractor) got our hidrofor working again and plumbed in two of the four bathrooms. We finally had working showers! Working toilets! Working sinks! And at about the same time, thanks to our ever-helpful translator, Sara, we received the best news of all from Dragan the Lawyer - he informed us that we had won our battle with four of the locals over the position of our wall. We had apparently beaten a second knock-down order and he was now in the process of getting the official kataster borders (infamous for being notoriously inaccurate) redrawn in our favour. Come September, we might finally be able to finish our wall...

This all meant that our elected finisher, American Dragan (no, I’m not joking, you can’t have any other name if you wish to work with us) could get cracking inside, something he’d been unable to do until we turned up and removed all the rubbish and left-over materials that Zlatko’s crew had left behind inside the house. He will now work together with Dragan the Plumber (who still has two more bathrooms and the white goods in the kitchen to go) over the next month to properly ensure that the house is ready for habitation by the end of August.

Good God. Surely not? Surely we can’t be nearing the end of a two year mission to restore one of the most beautiful stone houses in Crmnica? What on earth will we do then??

I for one suspect that our travails will not be so easily over. Come August/September, we’ll have an awful lot of furniture to buy, as well as a hell of a lot of landscaping to try and tame the beast that has become our ever more savage garden. This will mean more trips to KIPS and the like, which is actually what we spend most of our brief visits doing anyway. As mentioned back in the days when we were still living here (Montenegro, a Survival Guide, October 08), shopping can test your patience in Monty. First of all, there are no websites to save you time in selecting where to have a look for stuff. You have to get in the car and traipse round every store until you find what you need. The problem is that Montenegrin stores are the most frustratingly sloppy edifices to enterprise that Europe has yet foisted upon the unwary consumer. There’s the SuperMaxi supermarket that sells tortillas but no salsa. There’s the Technomarkt that sells printers, but no printer cartridges. There’s the otherwise impressive KIPS that for some hugely annoying reason sells all its plumbing odds and sods in one store and all its bathroom supplies in another. There’s the Gorenje showroom on the road to Cetinje that not only won’t sell you the extractor fan on display, but makes you collect it from their warehouse (which of course is on the other side of town), a warehouse that of course does not stock the filter that any normal person would assume comes with the extractor itself. Oh no, for that you have to go to Frigo Electro. But not the main Frigo Electro near the Voli supermarket in Podgorica. No, you have to go to the tiny one near the massive orthodox church…

Ivanka was very displeased at having to buy the left shoe at Delta City and the right shoe at Mercator Mex.

Getting that extractor took us two and a half hours. We still require a nice sofa, four wardrobes, a woodburner, four mirrors, several mattresses, a full set of curtain poles and curtains to go with them, a decent set of patio furniture for 8 and one final ceiling fan (we managed to find three already, itself something of a miracle as almost no-one near us appears to sell them).

Oh, and we have 9 days of holiday left this year. As the Americans are fond of saying: do the math.

Amid all this helter-skelter racing about, I would like to report that we had time to kick back and enjoy some of the beauty of the area, but we didn’t. As usual, it was left to the wonderful Tim and Katie to hand us our one afternoon of relaxation joining them on a sunset cruise on the Monty B down in Kotor, which did just the trick. On board we also met another couple on the renovation trail, David and Michelle, with whom we seemed to have plenty in common - although it’d be fair to say that they were rather nearer the finishing line than us, having just completed their own impressive house in Kotor after a four-year odyssey that might even have ours beat for drama.

That same evening Tim and Katie took us along to what sounded like a very intriguing performance down on the Tivat marina by an arts company based on a touring “theatre boat” from Canada. Emma and I are always game for an evening of weird culture, so we happily tagged along. It did not disappoint. The appropriately titled performance of “Purgatorija” was not, unfortunately, anything to do with Dante but rather a completely original musical set entirely on an impressively decked-out long boat while the audience followed the action sat on the quayside. I say followed the action, but it was hard enough trying to keep up during a 90 minute long extravaganza that made little sense to begin with and still less the longer it went on. Bellowing their way through a collection of atonal musical numbers supported by lyrics that were gibberish whether in their native English or the bafflingly inaccurate Serbo-Croat subtitles that were beamed onto one of the ship’s sails on an average delay of about 20 seconds, it was a little like watching a college am-dram society with an enviably decent budget and a 2:2 in Sociology. In the background under the admittedly impressive set design, meanwhile, a troupe of Cirque du Soleil cast-offs swayed about on sashes, ropes and modest trapezes wearing the sort of lycra costumes seemingly designed principally to expose their genitals while underneath them the lead actress battled her baffling Siamese-twin costume, a failing mike and the incomprehensible narrative by striding around the stage like Bonny Langford in Mungojerry and Rumpleteaser.

After half an hour, my ears had started to hurt. After an hour, numb-bum syndrome had set in with anaesthetic inevitability and just before the final curtain (ok, sail) a dogfight broke out in row K, scattering those stoic souls who had toughed it out to the finish. What the local people made of it all, we could but wonder. Half of them had slunk away around the halfway mark, thus avoiding the second act’s giant talking heads and having to fork out during the whip-round. I fear this sort of thing may not quite catch on in Monty.

So, until the next time. It’s been two years since we first saw this house. If we get it properly finished in another two, we’ll have matched David and Michelle. And given that we’re already thinking log cabins and plunge pools, the story probably has a fair bit left to run…

Do the Monty Moonwalk

I know what you’re thinking. Moonwalking? Eh? What exactly does a move made famous by the late Wacko Jacko have to do with our ongoing build? Well, how about if I were to use it as a rather loose metaphor for something that appears to be moving forwards but is actually moving in the opposite direction?

After a welter of texts prior to our arrival in Monty, we were, as usual, expecting signs of great progress. This is in itself progress - after all, when Bolimir was in charge of things we knew each visit to the site after a short absence would lead only to shredded vocals cords and a near-death experience of one sort or another - attempted murder, a near-fatal coronary or Boli falling through his own shoddily constructed floor (which actually did happen – Emma nearly gave herself a hernia trying to conceal her laughter). Since Zlatko and his men have taken over the project, however, we have been able to take a rather more positive approach from afar, looking forward to the latest instalment of sensitive restoration and top-notch workmanship.

Nikola, master stonemason

This means that, rather like England at the World Cup, expectation can build to levels that can only, eventually, lead to a disappointment - and this visit was ours.

Chris was bitterly disappointed with Bolimir's plastering

Don't get me wrong - there had been some terrific work preparing the terraces and outside walls and the car port had been more or less finished, but in most other respects we were left - for the first time – underwhelmed.

Nothing at all had been done inside the house since our last visit and the spiral stair design was very different to the look we had commissioned. We were going to have to have words. Now I was not looking forward to having to have words. If there are two things that builders really don't like being told it's a) that they've made a mistake and b) to hurry up. Usually all this achieves is a demand for more money to put things right - Bolimir had to be bollocked on both these points on a regular basis, and his reactions ranged from the belligerent to the beserk. We therefore approached Zlatko and his redoubtable team with some trepidation as we explained that we had expected more to have been done, that we didn’t like the stairs and that we expected tiling inside to be finished, pronto.

Zlatko's response?

"Ok."

And like that, his workers got straight onto the jobs still left undone (outside rendering, more stone work, tiling, bathroom sizing, hidrofor protective hut, guttering, outside lights, etc). Phew.

I give instructions for the car-port and hidrofor shed

From some angles the house even looked finished!

Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair...

Why our presence was required for this sudden increase in activity I don't know, but if it takes us turning up once every month or two to crack the whip, well, then journey justified. We left with the promise that all Zlatko's outstanding tasks would be complete in the next month so that our "finisher", American Dragan, could get to work sanding floors, plastering the walls, painting and sorting our light fittings once we’ve bought them (Montenegrin light fittings are like Montenegrin furniture - cheap, nasty and twice the price of UK IKEA). We've hired American Dragan to do our finishing because a) he does good work, speaks English and we can trust him and b) because we know that this job is taking up more of Zlatko's time than was previously thought and although some of that time might have been spent more productively, we're aware that he has pulled his men off far more lucrative jobs in order to help us. He deserves his early release - if by the time we're next out his sheet has every item ticked off.

Of course, there’s one item that might have to wait a little while longer - the wall, or at least the part of it that has been the subject of a formal complaint as detailed in my last blog entry. We've already beaten back one knock-down order for this ten metre headache so apart from giving up the only step left for the objectors might be to let a tribunal decide who is in the right. They reckon that as the road is shown as running along the border of the house on the kadaster map (below), we’ve built the wall on the road itself.

The kadaster map does indeed show that the road borders our property, but that shaded box you can see above is referred to in the paperwork as a house and courtyard, and as it is the courtyard that forms the actual border of our property (blue line), not the walls of the house (dotted line), we’re not sure they have a case. Is it worth fighting and incurring more strife, or should we just knock the offending section down and rebuild it where they say the border is (green line)? Either way, we need a legal ruling on the actual border of our property, so we just have to wait. It’s a real shame the situation can’t be resolved more amicably.

On a more uplifting note, we had a decent beering session with previous owner and friend Slaviša (the Robert de Niro lookalike), and he told us that the objectors numbered only four – not the whole village of Zabes as we were previously told. He also cleared up for us the ongoing mystery as to why we were yet to receive any charges for the electricity we and our builders had been using. Apparently he had forgotten to inform the local provider of the change of ownership and as a result his granny – the on-paper previous owner - was now being chased for a couple of hundred euro’s worth of unpaid electricity bills, bills she was unlikely to be able to cover on account of being seven years deceased (!). We were happy to help him sort it out. Rather more amusing for all those still in the realm of the living, however, was his second exclusive.

“Listen,” he said to us, leaning forward in the way that men do when they want their words to have extra import. “I have to ask...Ben, do you have a restaurant in Subotica?”
Emma and I looked at each other blankly. Subotica was a little town on the border of Serbia and Hungary.
“The only time I’ve been to Subotica was when we drove through it 2 years ago on our way up to Budapest. Why do you ask?”
Slaviša blushed.
“Well, you see, there’s been this story going around. You know this guy, Mirko Vulijević?”
“No...”
“You don’t know him?”
“Slaviša, we’ve never heard of him,” Emma added.
“Well, this guy, he ran up a load of credit, and then skipped town. There were people trying to find him, and eventually we got hold of him and he said he would never come back to Virpazar because he was working in your restaurant in Subotica.”
“Really?” I giggled, staring over at Emma. “I have a restaurant in Subotica?”
“This is what Mirko say,” added Slaviša’s son Miloš in English. Emma started to laugh.
“Do I not have a share?” she asked, somewhat put out.
“Well, no,” Slaviša continued, by now rather embarrassed. “He said that you had split up with Ben and that he had had a baby with you.”
I spluttered my beer out through my nose. Emma’s jaw dropped and she began cackling wildly. We had to get them to repeat this story several more times for clarity before collapsing in fits of laughter.
“So let me get this straight,” I repeated to Slaviša, “Emma and I split up, this Mirko has a baby with her and then I’m such a nice guy I give him a job in my restaurant in Subotica?” I called our friend Sara to check the validity of the rumour - she admitted she had heard all about it already but didn’t think it was worth mentioning to us as it was clearly “bollocks” (we’ve taught her well). Not worth mentioning to us?

I turned to Emma, christening the phantom child “Baby Dragan” (seriously, what other name could he possibly have?) before asking where he was and demanding visitation rights as his “stepfather”. By now, both Slaviša and his two boys (the younger one is called Slobodan, Balkan aficionados) were practically crying with laughter along with us. I’d never been the subject of a rumour before. It was certainly inventive.

It was also a nice little reminder that our friends in Virpazar outnumber our anonymous enemies by about 20 to one. When we’re in town we’re stopped by no end of local people who are delighted to see us and catch up – even more so than when we’re on Vis, in fact. In between unseasonal showers and repair jobs on our house there we did eventually manage a couple of days’ holiday on our (and, it seems, Yahoo’s) favourite Croatian island to round off our time away – but it’s hard to relax when you’re still mulling over what might or might not be happening a few hundred clicks south. This, unfortunately, is how we tend to view setbacks now (no matter how slight) – with a conviction that the pace has slackened for good even if most of the evidence to this point would indicate the opposite. One month, eh? Hmm. We’ll see in mid-June...

Now...where were we...?

It's often been said that the thing to do with blogs is blog short, and blog often. I appear to have swung from blogging often and at length to blogging not at all - that's 9 months back in the UK for you. Oops.

It's not like we've been idle. Since my last post in June last year both Emma and I have somehow scored new jobs with better pay - although I went about it in typically unorthodox fashion by getting sacked by text (!) mere hours before handing in my notice (that first day sitting next to Carolina Kluft in first class turned out to be the literal high point of my employ). We've lived in Islington, Dulwich, Clapham and Wimbledon and are now, finally, settled in Surrey - for the moment at least. We've said hello to a couple of mountain bikes, waved a teary goodbye to our trusty Honda and somehow managed to sell the heap of plastic and digital crap that was our malfunctioning Renault Espace the same day that it was voted the 296th least reliable car in the UK (out of - ahem - 296). Bizarrely, Renault announced this year that they would launch 4 all-electric cars by 2014, which is a bit like Toyota suddenly announcing they're going to make nothing but accelerator pedals...

Hahahahaahaha! Don't be silly.

Of course, our build has also had to change as a result of our enforced absence. Managing a renovation remotely is rather different to living through every stone, beam and plumbing pipe; progress is measured not in daily but monthly intervals. The decisions we make as architects of our own home can no longer grow organically as the build trundles towards completion - with just 20 days holiday a year, our visits are brief. We have to react sharply and decisively and hope to hell we get it right. Umming and ahh-ing is no longer permitted.

It's essential, therefore, to be able to trust your builder to carry out the instructions you've left them and also to get the big calls right when you're not able to view the situation for yourself. That's why we love Zlatko Vujotic.

We love Zlatko. So does Sara

Gone are the days when we'd leave the site for a week and return to find windows had been put in the wrong place or our workers had disappeared. Gone are the days when we'd be presented with a bill for twice the money for half the work. Gone are the days when we'd have a sense of dread every time we spoke to the builder, developing a Pavlovian response that practically left us with a phobia of our own house.

I inspect the renovated konoba in November prior to tiling

Now that's looking better...

The near completed terrace. Rendering has had to wait as we need a run of rain-free weather - hard to come by in winter here!

This is what it looked like back in November. Behind me the landscaped gardens expertly hide the septic tank. The giraffe-style stonework has faded nicely with the weather, I'm pleased to say.

Goran and Bik start our ill-fated wall

The crew tuck into a hearty breakfast!

As you can see, since taking over the project last summer, Zlatko has transformed our house. Thanks to his dedicated team of craftsmen we have a functioning septic system. We have beautiful rendering inside and out, and top notch stone and metalwork covering our terrace and balcony. We have a series of stone steps and walkways on landscaped gardens (the latter done for free because "it makes more beautiful"), a chimney, a tiled ground floor and thanks to our gentle plumber, Dragan, we now have full plumbing in the bathrooms, which are being tiled as I type this. We have a border wall.

Well, at least for the moment. It's never all good news, is it?

It turns out that two of our less helpful neighbours have thrown a potential spanner in the works regarding the wall. Clearly still holding a grudge over our refusal to pay well over the odds for a water connection we didn't need or to let them put an electricity pylon in our garden back in May last year, they're now trying to get this wall knocked down because they claim it's overstepped our land's boundaries by about a metre (despite being built on the exact spot where the Staletovic family's old wire and post fence used to be).

My red pen marks the site of the old fence, on the boundary of our land, just off the edge of the asphalt.

Above, the foundations for the wall clearly on our land...

Emma inspects the wall this February. This is the section under threat.

According to the land registry records it doesn't look like they have a leg to stand on but this is Montenegro, where such paper legalities can prove very succeptible to "persuasive alteration". We might well have to have part of the wall removed and rebuilt just to ensure things don't escalate further. It's sad that some people can be this petty, but in reality it's Zlatko and his team who have been more offended and inconvenienced. He has invested in the local restaurant, Badanj, and even stocks one of the complainants' wine, so wrongly accusing him (and us) of building on supposed "state" land is a pretty poor way to repay him! After all, his team are the poor buggers who will have to do all the work - one metre here or there doesn't make any difference to us. Still, nice to know that we have now ticked off both the immutable pit-falls of building abroad - dodgy builders (the unlamented Bolimir) and nasty neighbours. We've tried to explain our long-term plans to them, and that we are not profiteering Russians but a young couple keen to help develop the local tourist economy, but they just don't care. We didn't let them put their pylon in our garden. We must therefore be punished!

Unedifying as this squabble might be, we're not letting it put us off the area. The vast majority of people in and around Virpazar have been wonderful to us both, especially when we were living there. And it's still spectacularly beautiful, even during a winter that has by all accounts been even colder and wetter than the one we endured (hence further building delays)!

Our next visit at the end of April might be a biggie. First of all, we're hoping to see the completion of all stone work outside (wall excepted) and all bathrooms inside, as well as final plastering work. Second of all, we're hoping to install some fairly major items, such as the kitchen and our spiral stairs. Bizarrely, it's still cheaper to buy these items in the UK, freight them to Monty by truck and pay local PDV and import duties than it is to buy an inferior product just down the road...go figure. Then we have to think about lighting and furniture...and gardening, painting, decorating...

So when do we think we'll be done?

Well, given that we are currently a faintly laughable 10 months behind schedule, it's probably not sensible to answer that one. Let's just say soon. Ish. We hope.

In the meantime, by popular demand, here's Slavisa! He claims he doesn't look like Robert de Niro - but that Robert de Niro just happens to look like him. What do you think?

So, until next time. Remember to have a look at Emma's Flickr albums - click on the slideshow at the top right of this page to see all of these pics and more at a resolution that doesn't require squinting. She updates those with rather better regularity than I manage these days...