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...