Tools for the job

There are two kinds of DIYer – the perfectionist and the bodger. There’s no middle ground – by definition if something is not done perfectly it is done imperfectly and an imperfect job can only ever be a bodge. That’s not to say that there aren’t degrees of bodgery. It’s a dark art that has many forms, from the slapdash to the ingenious. I’m sure by now you can guess that I am not a perfectionist.

My stepfather Dave and my father-in-law Mike are. They properly research the job at hand, select the correct tools for the job and then go about their work with meticulous detail. The advantage of this approach is that you get exactly what you are after, and you know that it’ll work. The disadvantages to this approach are that a) it tends to take time (ask Dave what time it is and he’ll explain how to build a watch) and b) it is usually impossible in Montenegro for logistical, material and temporal reasons. Mike recoiled in horror one time when I was securing a fitting of pipe with a pair of pliers rather than a plumbers’ wrench, but the reality was that I would have had to drive 30km to buy one, and this was time I didn’t have. In Montenegro, you’ll be forced into bodgery because you can’t find what you need (KIPS and OKOV between them deserve –and have received – blog posts of their own detailing their inadequacies), the correct tool might not exist (good luck finding a pull-saw in Montenegro) and you might only have a limited amount of time to solve your problem.

This is how I have wound up cleaning our mouldy Skoda’s interior with a child’s toothbrush (nothing else would get into those hard to reach places), nailing together plastic sheeting and pallets from a rubbish tip to make a waterproof woodshed, using a dustpan and brush to clean and bail out our hot tub of dirt and rainwater and rigging up a plastic barrel with a hose, tap and spray gun so that guests can shower off before using the tub – none of these obvious, or optimum, solutions to the problems at hand. Oh, and I’ve finally succeeded in pumping water from the spring at the bottom of our garden into our reservoir at the top.

This last item is actually worthy of further explanation.

Our villa is not connected to the mains, for reasons to dull to go into at length (search May 2009 or so if you really want details) so we rely on water being pumped from our reservoir, underneath the car parking, via what is known here as a hidrofor. A hidrofor is a pump that uses bladder pressure to supply the whole house with equally pressured water – ie, there ought to be no drop in pressure of all four showers are used at once, say. Hidrofors are simple things with very few moving parts, the idea being that they should be next to maintenance free once installed. Naturally ours went wrong continually last year until we finally found a reliable electrician to sort it out (thanks, Novo). As for the reservoir itself – well, the problem is that it’s not big enough. It’s not big enough because back in 2008 our first builder, Bolimir the Bad – definitely a bodger – talked me out of putting the reservoir underneath the terrace for “structural reasons” that unsurprisingly turned out to be a load of old bollocks. Instead of a 70,000 litre tank that easily captured our rainwater from the drainpipes, then, we wound up with a 16,000 litre tank 30 metres away that had no rain capture and no other feed either. Thanks, Bolimir, curse your voluminous arse.

After one summer of getting our reservoir continually filled up by truck, we decided that things had to change once and for all, so when Mike was here last October I decided to make use of his degree in engineering to brainstorm a solution which – to his dismay and my glee – turned out to be the most sublime of bodges. First, I rigged up a rain-recycling system that would take rainwater in winter and deposit it in our undersized tank. It worked a treat. Bravo, me! The problem was what do in summer, when the tank ran dry.

Down at the bottom of our garden is a natural spring. Present on this site for several hundred years, it gushes natural mineral water right up until about mid-October, when it too has to wait for the rains again. It was one of the main reasons we bought the house in the first place. The difficulties were twofold if we wanted to use it to fill up our reservoir. First of all, we had to pump the water 35m back up the hill, which required a pretty strong pump. Secondly, the trough into which the water emptied held only about 200 litres, and a pretty strong pump would empty it in about a minute and a half, faster than it would fill up again in summer. Oh, and the trough was full of holes.

The bodge Mike and I came up with was this: situate a strong pump right next to the spring, and attach the feed not to the trough, but to the tap (which had a flow rate of at least 20l/min) to ensure continuous flow. We would then force the highly pressurised water up the hill via a series of valves that would be half closed, thus forcing the water to travel more slowly and ensure that it would reach the reservoir, but do so slowly enough to never leave the pump “breathing” air (which would knacker it).*

We could then manually top up our tank overnight, say, in the height of summer. It was a theoretically perfect solution to a problem that no-one had ever bothered or needed to solve before. My speciality!

 

And yes, that is a dog kennel the pump’s living in.  

Back in mid-October I spent a week crawling through brambles laying pipe and cable and literally 30 seconds after completing the work, the ****ing spring ran dry. At that stage I broke the world record for continuous inventive swearing, breaking the old record also held by me.

So that’s the science bit. And the reason I’ve bored you so about it? Well, we hooked it up again this week now that the spring is in full flow, and it only ****ing works!! The bodger’s bodger, son of a bodger and in all likelihood himself father to a future bodger, had put something together that actually worked!

And I just thought I should tell the world about it, that’s all. Well, the half a dozen people reading this, anyway.

The rest of my time has been taken up with – after pointlessly complicated DIY – my favourite activity in the world: dealing with Montenegrin bureaucracy. Imagine the stupidest system, run by the stupidest government, adhering to the stupidest set of rules ever devised by King Stupid the 28^th of Stupidville (apologies Richard Curtis), and you’re getting close to describing the experience of dealing with Montenegrin paperwork.

This is how you get a “zdravstvena knjizica”, or to non-Srpski speakers, the little green book that entitles you to free healthcare through the contributions you pay employing yourself through your own company.

-           Get your residency permit, work permit, passport and company contract - and several b/w copies of each - and go to Schalter 6 at Bar Opstina to get your little grey work permit book stamped at 11am sharp when they open.
-           Hand over your documents. You get a pink slip with €2 of tax to pay. -           Head back out of the opstina to the post office, the only place where you can pay this €2 tax. Queue for 30 minutes. Fill out another form, hand over €2 and your pink slip. You get a yellow slip.
-          Take this yellow slip back to Schalter 6. Wait another 20 minutes after rejoining the queue, and trade it for your little grey work permit book.
-          Go to Schalter 9 and hand it over with all the other documents. Wait 20 minutes.
-          Head back out of the opstina over the road to a nearby copy-shop to photocopy your passport again, because they need another copy.
-          Rejoin the queue for Schalter 9 and hand over your documents again.
-          Head back out of the Opstina because they need a different kind of work contract that you didn’t know about.
-          Find a “knjizara”, buy a 10 cent copy of the standard worker contract. Fill it out. Badly.
-          Rejoin the queue at Schalter 9. Have the fed up lady at Schalter 9 fill it out for you. This will endear you to her even more.
-          Receive a two page document that needs an official opstina stamp on it.
-          Leave the building a third time to find office 215, which is where you get the stamp for this new document. Stamping this document is not the lady at Schalter 9’s job. Queue outside the door, get the stamp.
-          Return to Schalter 9 with the stamp to get the pink slip to pay your €5 tax.
-          The woman working at Schalter 9 tells you that if you want to get your wife and child registered through your employment she will need proof of ID for them. You proffer their passports and are told that these won’t be sufficient. You explain that 200 nations around the globe say different, and ask why Montenegro does not consider a passport proof of ID.
-          Try really hard not to swear/scream/tear the opstina down with your bare hands when you are told that you need to submit a copy of your marriage certificate and child’s birth certificate. Which you don’t have with you.
-          Explain that both of these English documents have the following phrase in capitals all over them – “THIS CERTIFICATE IS NOT PROOF OF IDENTITY”.
-          See above entry but one.
-          Somehow avoid total meltdown when the lady informs you that as it is now 1pm, the Schalter is shut until tomorrow.

-          Return to Schalter 9 at 11am the next day to get your pink slip. Hand over copies of aforementioned certificates.

-          Head back out of the opstina to the post office, the only place where you can pay this €5 tax. Queue for 30 minutes. Fill out another form, hand over €5 and your pink slip. You get a yellow slip.
-          Take this yellow slip back to Schalter 9. Wait another 20 minutes after rejoining the queue, and trade it for your 2 page document again.
-          Now head off to the Fond Zdravstveno in the centre of Bar. Hand over your document and tell the lady you’d like your little green books stamped, please.
-          Club the bitch to death when she tells you that you can come back in 2 days to collect them because she has a “pauza” now and then the office shuts for the day.
-          Not really. An eye roll or two usually suffices at this stage.
-          Come back two days later to collect your little green books.

Abandon hope all ye who enter here



Now, you could sit a dimmer-than-average rhesus monkey down at a desk, keep it tripped out on tamazapam and ask it to type up a set of legal documents in whatever language it felt appropriate and you would still not come up with a system as bafflingly idiotic as that which every resident of Montenegro has to go through every time they want anything with an official stamp on it. There are ancient carved stones that have been kept in 3000yr old amphoras that make more sense than this. Even Lost makes more sense than this. And in May I have to go back and get our visas renewed. Pray for me.

Next time: we move house again and get our hot tub working (we hope)!

*those of you muttering “what about self-priming pumps?” ought to know that such a thing is – unbelievably – not available anywhere in Montenegro.

How Montenegrin are you?

Confused about your national identity? Take my easy quiz for some enlightenment!

 

You wish to buy a second hand car for a few thousand euros. What do you buy?

a)      Something reliable with good fuel consumption, in decent condition that Which? don’t slate and that hasn’t been savaged by Jeremy Clarkson.

b)      A 1991 VW Golf MK2.

It’s time for a fun night out! What are you wearing?

a)      Girls: jeans and a sparkly top. Guys: jeans and a shirt, possibly ironed.

b)      Girls: crazily short miniskirt, heels that would make Jimmy Stewart come over all dizzy, half an inch of slap and a wonderbra. Men: a tracksuit.

You have had a great night out but you can barely stand up you’ve drunk so much rakija. How are you getting home?

a)      Bus, taxi or beer scooter.

b)      Your 1991 VW Golf MK2.

You are in the supermarket and are looking for peanut butter. Where might this be?

a)      With the jam and honey?

b)      In the fridge with all the cheese.

You are at the supermarket check-out having bought a cucumber, three tomatoes, some canned tuna, milk, some Staklo Arf glass cleaner and some cevapcici. How many plastic bags will you require?

a)      None, thanks  – I brought my re-usable recyclable hessian bag.

b)      Six.

How many mobile phones do you possess?

a)      Er…one?

b)      Three – one for friends who have Telenor, one for those who have T-Mobile and one for those who have M-Tel so we can all talk to each other for less!

It’s breakfast time! What are you having?

a)      Cereal, toast with homemade marmelade, nice cup of tea. And then another cup of tea.

b)      Rakija, Turkish coffee, cigarette. In that order.

You have just finished the first fix stage on your new house. What do you do next?

a)      First of all, get the roof on. Buy a kitchen and bathroom installations, a few lights, doors and windows, then maybe some furniture once the plastering, painting and tiling has been done. Then clean it up, sort out the garden, maybe do some landscaping.

b)      Move in.

You are in a café and notice that there is a no-smoking sign on the door. What do you do?

a)      Order a coffee.

b)      Immediately light up, especially if you are near babies or anyone else you suspect might be a non-smoker.

You have an important meeting with someone at 10am on Tuesday. When do you show up for the meeting?

a)      10am Tuesday.

b)      When you have time. If you can’t make Tuesday they can wait until Wednesday. Or Thursday. Or next week.

Whilst on your way driving to Kolasin you get stuck behind a truck hauling stone up the tight mountain road. You’re going to be late. What now?

a)      You just end up being a little late. If you’re on your way to meet a local it’s not like they’re going to be on time.

b)      Wait until a blind hairpin bend, and then overtake with a flash of your headlights, a beep of your horn and your indicators off.

Congratulations! You’ve just got married. How do you see the husband/wife duties panning out during your time together? 

a)      No idea, but we’ll figure it out. We’re flexible.

b)      She will cook, clean and have babies. I will drink beer.

Your journey home usually takes 10 minutes, but this time it takes twice as long. Why?

a)      Ten minutes?? My commute is over an hour, where the hell did you get enough money to live in zone 1?

b)      Well, first I saw Ivica in his car so I had to beep, stop and say hi and ask after his mother, his wife, his children, his kum and his dog. Then I saw Tomislav’s car, so I had to beep, stop and say hi to him to and then ask after his wife, his children and his kum and then I saw Janko and had to beep, stop and ask after his wife and his children and argue with him about the presidential election. Then I saw Vesko…

What do you regard as proof of a foreigner’s identity?

a)      A passport or an identity card?

b)      An officially stamped, signed and translated copy of your original birth certificate, even if it says NOT PROOF OF IDENTITY at the bottom in capital letters.

You have a garden of mature fruit trees. What do you do with your harvest?

a)      Eat it.

b)      Distill a bewildering assortment of rustic brandies.

It’s time to put out the rubbish – what do you do with your household waste?

a)      We have a compost heap and recycle old carrot shavings into shoes for African children.

b)      We throw it into a bush/forest/river/laybye (delete as appropriate).

Congratulations guys, your partner has just given birth! How will you choose to celebrate the arrival of your new child?

a)      I’ll buy the wife/girlfriend something nice, have a few drinks and then spend time with our new family member.

b)      If it’s a boy, you’ll fire all your automatic weapons into the air and then get drunk. If it’s a girl, you’ll proceed directly to getting drunk and hoping you get a boy next time.

You see a new road sign on the side of the road. What is the most appropriate action to take?

a)      Nod appreciatively that the local government at least had the money to replace the old one, which was full of bullet holes.

b)      Get out your rifle and plug it one. If you hurry you may even get to be first!

You’ve got a new car that isn’t a VW Golf MK2, and it has an annoying bong that goes off every time you pull away. How do you make this stop?

a)      Try and diagnose the fault yourself, it’s probably because the handbrake is on or something. If you can’t find the problem, take it a dealer so they can investigate.

b)      It’s the seatbelt reminder. To avoid this irritation, hook your seatbelt around the back of the seat and plug it in so you don’t have to wear it. Problem solved!

Your friends are coming over and they have a small toddler. What should you offer the little’un to eat?

a)      Fruit or veg - but best to ask the parents in advance, just in case.

b)      Chocolate. Smokis. And Coca-Cola.

You are 30. How many teeth do you have?

a)      All of them – I think.

b)      If I’ve got my falsies in, all of them. If I haven’t, seven. Can I have another piece of chocolate cake?

You need to buy a first aid kit. Where can you buy one?

a)      A chemist?

b)      A car parts shop.

How did you do?

If you scored mostly As, you are probably British, possibly American, Australian or Western European.

If you answered mostly Bs, you are Montenegrin or have gone native. Cestitamo!

So what do we do now?

That’s a really boring title. Sorry. Inspiration has been a little thin on the ground the last couple of weeks, mostly because late February/early March is what we in the activity holiday field call “shit-are-we-going-to-get-some-more-bookings-bugger-it-let’s-spruce-the-place-up-and-see-if-that-helps” time. I told you I was all out of snappy titles.

It’s at this stage of the year that people are thinking about their Easter holidays rather than their summer ones, and consequently our enquiries graph has flat-lined. It’s nothing to worry about really – it did the same last year and things soon picked up again in early April – and we have almost exactly the same amount of bookings now that we had last March – but nevertheless it means that we are often left with very little to do at a time when our natural anxieties tend to bob to the surface. This is the flipside of living the dream, the bit you don’t get to see on TV. We have a fantastic life in a Mediterranean idyll. We spend our summers kayaking across glassy waters, leaping into amazing freshwater pools and eating and drinking some of the best natural produce Europe has to offer. We spend our summers doing THIS.



I know, we’re utter bastards aren’t we? And you can shut up about our taste in music.

Winters, however, are different. In the absence of a regular 9-5, we fret about bookings and either do boring things or become a little bored ourselves (car accidents in Norfolk notwithstanding), which is…well…not at the “very” end of the interesting scale. The weather’s a bit rubbish, you’re at a loose end and you need to take your mind off business matters – so you end up doing chores, just to break the days up a bit. We’ve painted walls, ceilings, cupboards, bedside tables and floors in an effort to give our house on Vis a bit of a lift. We’ve been creating driftwood wall art, making coffee tables out of discarded pallets and shoe-racks out of ancient fruit crates dragged out of bushes in an attempt to maximise practicality on a shoe-string budget. We’ve replaced lightshades, light switches, and even lights. We’ve even done a little work on our actual marketing, with two new listings in OwnersDirect and Airbnb that have already brought us in no fewer than four extra bookings.

 

 

Looking much smarter - and this was before we REALLY got going...

 

(mention this blog when enquiring about Kuca Visoka on www.thisisvis.com and we’ll bung in a 10% discount!)

Of course, we were on Vis a bit late thanks to the Croatian customs bods insisting that we take our hot tub direct to Montenegro (see two posts ago). It was great to see old friends again, albeit briefly, but in the back of our minds we always knew that we would have to get back to Villa Miela to make the same efforts there. Since my last post, our Skoda had been freed from the muddy field we’d dumped it in and our hot-tub had made it over our wall courtesy of our mate Dragan.

 

 

 

This is not the same Dragan who failed car electrics module 1 last time out. Nor is he any of the following Dragans: Dragan Majstor, Dragan Doors, Dragan Plumber, Electric Dragan, American Dragan, Dragan Big Boss or Dragan Lawyer, all of whom have crossed our path in the not so recent past. Dragan Dajkovic (for this is his name) avoids our usual address-book-defining moniker simply because he is not such an easy bloke to sum up. He is, variously – and depending on the time of year – Dragan Lorry, Dragan Hunter, Dragan Stolar, Dragan Vino, Dragan Dupilo, Dragan Digger or Dragan Drina (for the cancer sticks he has perennially on the go). He’s a brilliant bloke who seems to know, or know how to do almost anything, and if there is something that falls outside of his sphere of knowledge, it’s likely he knows a bloke who lives in an appropriate postcode. He’s a good bloke to be mates with.



There are two skills I’m desperate to learn from Dragan (other than how to operate heavy plant machinery) – how to make traditional Montenegrin chairs and how to cooper a wine barrel. Maybe next winter, if the DIY ever gets finished. Before the start of the season there’s a lot to do. We have to set up the tub and attach the wood burner (not to mention test it). We have to prune an entire natural orchard. We have to clear and gravel at least two levels of our terracing, clear and tidy another three levels of bits and pieces of building rubble, wood flotsam and discarded bottles of Niksicko that had been left there by various slovenly workmen since 2008. We have to repair a couple of dry-stone walls, set up a “natural” shower by the tub, reconnect our pump system from the spring at the bottom of the garden, do touch up painting in the house, replace loads of light bulbs and fittings, fix one boiler and check over all our bikes and kayaks. We have to meet with our lawyer and our accountant to, erm, balance the books. Oh, and we still have to move house. Again (more of which next time).

Given that we’ve only had two days without rain recently, we’ve not been doing too badly.



Better, at any rate, than the England rugby team. Watching your side getting spanked by Wales is never a choice experience, but watching them getting spanked by Wales in the presence of a Welsh rugby fan was the nadir of my sporting year thus far (and I’m a Norwich supporter). Of course, there is a chance things could get even worse by this time next week. Our cricketers may have failed to beat a bunch of part-time New Zealanders and the expensively-remunerated prats who mostly comprise our national football team might well have come to Podgorica’s FC Buducnosti stadium and left without the multiple points that shall be required if we’re to have any hope of being at the World Cup in Brazil in 2 years’ time.

 Wayne Rooney mistaking Montenegrin arse for the ball



Last time England pitched up here for the Euro qualis, they were 2-1 up and cruising when Manchester’s favourite granny-banger decided to boot a Montenegrin defender up the bum for the hell of it, got himself sent off and then had to watch from the sidelines as his put-upon team-mates, a man down, conceded an equaliser to a pumped up Montenegrin side (as well as getting himself banned for the first two matches of Euro 2012 – thanks Wayne). At Wembley, England (population 60m) managed a god-awful scoreless draw with the same opponents (population 650,000). The scene is set for a really crap game and a 1-1 draw.

And I really, really want to go. There are only two issues – I don’t have a ticket and I’m not entirely sure I’d spend all my time cheering for Woy’s Wonders…

Car rescue...again!



Us with the 296th best car in the UK

We’ve not had much luck with our Montenegrin cars.

Our first Montenegro vehicle was a Honda CRV whose 4x4 system we broke in Romania and which we scrapped back in the UK. Our second was a cursed Renault Espace whose electrics made no sense and rarely worked and which we sold at a large loss (again back in the UK) on the very day Which? magazine declared the ’98 model (ours) 296th out of 296 in a customer satisfaction survey. Our third was Boris the Landy, and you know what happened to him if you read the last blog entry. Our fourth was not in fact Ken, Boris’ replacement. Our fourth was actually a dark green Skoda Fabia TDi that we bought in the UK for peanuts, spent rather more than that getting it through its MOT and brought to Montenegro to act as our cheapo runabout while guests were ferried about in the Landy.

With the Landy being taken back to the UK each year to keep it legal for all European driving, the Skoda, we figured, would come to Montenegro and stay in Montenegro on local insurance. This left us with the dilemma of what to actually do with it while we were away over Christmas.

“We could just leave it at the villa,” I suggested. “If our house gets broken into again, what’s to stop the Skoda being nicked?” said Emma.

Now the Skoda was no joy-rider’s favourite, but underneath it was a VW, and a sought after diesel VW at that, so despite Montenegro’s low petty crime rate it might still prove too tempting a target for passing ne’er-do-wells given that 70% of all vehicles in the country are Volkswagens (and how do you suppose all of them got here?). So we did the next best thing. We dumped it in a field belonging to a local friend for three months. Hey, our friends Tim and Katie dumped a car in Greece for years before returning to collect it – and it started up first time.

All I can say is that Nissan batteries must be superior to VW ones, because when we returned to collect the car, it was growing several kinds of fungus inside and turning the key in the ignition did absolutely zilch. Using my NVQ in mechanics* I deduced that the battery was dead and needed replacing. Only the battery couldn’t be removed without a 11mm socket and a ratchet wrench, and mine were in Croatia.

We tried jump starting the Skoda from the Landy. Nothing. Then our field-owning friends Ana and Mio got involved and suggested giving it a bump start. I was pretty certain that with no charge in the battery a bump start was a waste of time, but we gave it a go anyway. Nothing. Mio then began to tell me that the “akumalator” was dead and pointed under the bonnet. The what? Did he mean the alternator? That would be mean we’d have to tow the damn Skoda to Podgorica to get it fixed (urgh). I was wary of taking anything Mio said about cars at face value on account of him being a) no more knowledgeable than I and b) blind, so re-iterated that I thought it was the battery, which made him screw up his face. He called his mate Dragan instead.

Dragan and I go back a few years. He was the plumber who installed all our pipes etc at Villa Miela, and he did a first rate job. I had, however, made a point of not calling him up and asking for his help for a year or so simply because I had spent the preceding three years doing exactly that, and had noted this patient man’s growing exasperation with me.

“I only need to borrow an 11mm socket,” I told Mio, who was already on the phone telling Dragan to bring jump leads. “I don’t need jump leads!”

Dragan rolled up 10 minutes later, and gruffly nodded hello. It was the sort of nod that’s a bit like a Montenegrin shrug in that this small movement can speak volumes. This nod said “So I’ve got to dig you out of another hole, have I, you daft English bastard?” I explained that I just needed to get the battery out and that I could then try and charge it or buy a new one. Dragan looked at me, confused, and muttered something about the akumalator. I didn’t have the language to tell him that there was no proof the alternator was broken, and re-iterated my need for an 11mm spanner. At this, Dragan gave me some high speed verbals and headshaking, and told me my jump leads were “shit” and that English people were not used to doing things for themselves.

“In England you are too soft. Look at you, Ben, you don’t know how to fix anything, you haven’t got a clue.”

Huh.

I leaned against the car door and told them to do whatever they thought best. This turned out to be 45 minutes of fannying about with jump leads trying to start a dead battery, and two gos at bump starting a car with a dead battery, after which they tried jump-starting the car again with FOUR leads and revving Dragan’s Dacia to the end of its rev scale in an attempt to get the Skoda’s battery (did I mention it was dead?) to accept a charge as the car lay off the path and half into the field. The engine coughed. And then died again, which seemed to be sufficient evidence for Dragan and Mio to give me that sort of “ah-hah” that means “see, told you so!” – despite the evidence pointing overwhelmingly towards progress of the f***-all kind.

I lost patience.

“FFS! Listen, you two, the battery’s clearly dead. Why can’t you just lend me a spanner so that I can heave the bloody thing out?”

As I said this in English there was no real response. Mio pointed at the bonnet and said again that in his (blind) opinion, the akumalator was at fault.

“Mio, it’s the bloody battery!” “Akumalator!” I heaved a big sigh of frustration. “Mio, what the hell IS an akumalator exactly??” Mio pointed directly at the battery.

The French for battery is batterie. The German for battery is Batterie. The Italian for battery is batteria. And yet in Serbian it’s called an akumalator. This made Mio right, me a plonker and Dragan a condescending clot. I thanked them both for their efforts, borrowed Dragan’s spanner, removed the battery and bought a new one after my charger told me that the original had expired and had joined the choir invisible. I returned to the Skoda with the new battery, and of course, it started up first time – sadly, not in the presence of Dragan, which sadly rendered irrelevant the smug little speech I had prepared for him.

“Hah!” said I. English bloke does know how to fix something after all. I gunned the engine to make my getaway and mud sprayed twenty feet into the air. Five minutes later, I had moved all of three inches and had churned a lovely scooped channel of oomskah into Mio’s field. I was stuck.

Bah. I hate cars.

 "Mummy's car all dirty!"

 

*I don’t have an NVQ in mechanics. I barely know one end of a spanner from the other.

We're back! Again!

Keep it short, do it often – that’s the way to write a blog, apparently. Oops. Brevity has never quite been my forte and that this is my first post in about three years shows that when it comes to accepted wisdom, I can as usual be found furthest from it. It will therefore be no surprise to anyone reading this that I have decided to pick up my ongoing Montenegrin am-dram more or less in the same vein that I started out...

February is a pretty predictable month. In the UK, it rains. On the continent, it snows. In Montenegro, it rains a lot. It is, in short, a less than ideal time of year to drive across Europe in a Landrover pulling a 2.2m high wooden hot-tub in a trailer bought for £150 off off ebay. A month after being in a road accident that you were very lucky to survive…

First, a brief summary of the last three years, where blogging for once took a back seat to the real life pursuit of our life change. We finished the house. We quit our jobs (again). We had a baby (it’s in the contract, all renovations/grand designs must be punctuated at the least opportune moment by the patter of tiny feet), and then had our first half season running activity tours at Lake Skadar in Montenegro, using our renovated house, Villa Miela, as our guest accommodation, which went quite well. We spent one winter in the UK, Emma working, me looking after little Freddy. Emma quit her job for a third time. In 2012 we came back out to Monty for our first full season, which went brilliantly, ensuring that we would not need to work over the next winter at all. We enjoyed relaxing at the lake and at our place on Vis.

IT'S TIME FOR A MONTAGE...

Amazing house, amazing guests, amazing that we got this far, really...



In January 2013 we came back to the UK to visit family and friends for a few weeks, and to get our old blue Landy, Boris, MOT’d so that we could continue to drive him all over Europe (at the time of writing, importing an older car to Montenegro is hellishly difficult and expensive). In the January slush, two Mercedes drivers decided to lose control on Norfolk’s A11 and effectively write off Boris, who was smashed front and back. Emma was hit by the second vehicle as she was heroically racing to get Freddy out of the car, and wound up with 7 inches of sliced thigh (Fred and I were amazingly uninjured). We then had to spend 4 further weeks sorting out all the insurance and finding another Landy (red this time), who in a flash of political inspiration we decided to call “Ken”.

RIP Boris. Thanks a bunch, Mercedes drivers.

Not a great start to 2013, then.

So now the hot-tub. Our 2012 guests were awesome, but following the season we realised that what the villa really lacked was a pool, or rather, a way for guests to cool down on site as opposed to in the numerous waterfalls, natural pools and of course the lake that featured heavily in our activities. After quite a lot of on-line research, I discovered that the cheapest solution was to buy a wooden hot-tub that could be installed above ground and also used as a plunge pool in summer (if proper filtration was used). The snag was, you couldn’t buy such a thing in Montenegro. Germany, however, was a different matter. You name it, the Germans make it, and make it properly. A swift “suche” auf den Internet later and I found a company that made lovely tubs from Siberian larch for a very reasonable price. The issue was transportation. Getting the tub from Germany to Montenegro was likely to cost half as much again if using a third party, and that was before you got to the thorny issue of exactly how much you’d be charged to import the tub itself into the country. As the German factory was just south of Stuttgart – and therefore on my way back across Europe – I decided to save us a large sum of money and collect the thing myself instead.

Yeah, I know.

The trailer was a rusting hulk I bought off ebay for this one-time only journey and then stored at my uncle’s until we’d found our new Landrover following Boris’ unfortunate demise. I’d carefully calculated that it was big enough to carry the hot tub, purchased a number-plate and had repaired its lightboard so that I was fully legal, and set off from Sussex in the rain for Dover. Ken was full of other stuff too: 2 more inflatable kayaks (we already had 6 out in Monty), one magimix, loads of kitchen odds and sods, new bedding, childrens toys and soft furnishings like lampshades that were simply not buyable in Croatia/Montenegro. I had bought and fitted Ken with a nice new roofrack (although not as good as Boris’), and had planned my cross-continental journey to the hour. I had, this time, thought of everything.

I should have checked the trailer’s tyres.

Waiting at Dover for the delayed ferry, I made the first of several planned checks to discover that one tyre was going flat. When I tried pumping it up again, the tyre’s entire valve pinged off and the tyre collapsed completely. When I tried inflating the spare (yes, I had made sure I had one), the pump broke, and I was due to board the ferry in 2 minutes. It was not the most auspicious of starts.

I called Emma, who was still at my mother’s house, and was due to fly with Freddy to Ljubljana three days hence to meet me. The vague plan was for us to travel together down through Croatia, hoping that we could procure some transit documents that would enable us to stop off on Vis for a week or two before continuing down to Montenegro with the rest of our belongings, which were still on the island. I know, I know. Ever the logical one, Emma found out there was a Norauto in Calais that might be able to help (Norauto being the French Halfords), and thus it was that I spent my first hour on the continent limping off the ferry at 20kph with my hazards on, letting the satnav guide me into town in the hope that the French could prove quicker than a Kwik-Fit fitter.

Norauto was shut.

There was some swearing at this point. I had to get to Saarbrucken that evening and it was already 1pm. What was this, some sort of typically gallic lunch-break where they shut the whole store and sat out the back smoking Gitanes and moaning about the 35 hour week? Angry, I barged into the nearby Carrefour and bought a new foot pump, resolving to fit the spare myself. I was on the point of screaming with frustration, the spare turning out to have more holes in it than QPR’s defence, when Norauto’s workers unexpectedly wound up their steel shutters and flicked their sign over to “ouvert”. I practically raced into their garage. Did they have a 145/50 R10 tyre they could fit on this stupid Englishman’s trailer? They did not. They had only a pair of 155s that would not fit inside the trailer’s wheelarches. I grabbed a spanner and bent back the mudguards, freeing up another 5cm of space. Would they fit now? The Norauto blokes laughed at me, and said they’d give it a go. They were better than their word – the new wheels went on and I was at least saved from total disaster – but it was already 3pm by the time we were done, and I had 400 miles still to cover.

Now, I’ve driven across Europe in February before, and if there’s one thing you can count on it’s that you will get caught in a blizzard at some point. Unfortunately for me, that point was just a few hours later. I trundled down the motorway, whimpering in fear as the trailer slewed about behind me, all road markings hidden by snow and with visibility in the dark down to about ten metres. By the time I reached Saarbrucken it was gone 11pm, and I was a gibbering wreck. What the hell was I doing? What if it was like this the whole bloody way? I’d die. Death would have a little word with himself and think, well, I let this bloke off last month, but he seems to really, really want to snuff it in a Landrover, so maybe I should oblige him?

Fortunately for my life and my sanity, the next day was clear and bright and the Germans proved a good deal more adept at clearing overnight snow than their British counterparts. All I had to do now was head to Kettenacker and pick up the hot-tub and its woodburner from the lovely people at www.sauna-badetonne.de. They were expecting me, but even so, my appearance did prompt some head-scratching. Had anyone ever come to collect their own tub, I asked as Uwe and Silvia helped forklift the tub and burner into the trailer and onto the roofrack respectively. No, they said – and certainly not in a trailer as “kaput” as the one I had brought along. Uwe merely chuckled and shrugged when I asked him if he thought I would make it to Montenegro. Silvia whipped her camera out and took pictures (“in case you make it, so we can tell other people it can be done!”).

Uwe and I lashed the tub down with several ratchet straps. Silvia handed me the export documents, telling me that these would be good to get me as far as the Slovenian border. Once I was over the border, she said, well, I was on my own.

“You might get twenty days for transit,” she guessed, as of course they had never known anyone try to cross Croatia with one of their products before. “That’s what seems standard when our trucks have to transit through Switzerland.”

The truth was, I had no clue what to expect at the Slovenian/Croatian border. HMRC, Croatian customs online and various googling had inexplicably failed to produce one previous instance of any private person trying to do what I was about to attempt, and next to no advice on what the proper procedure was. In the meantime I had to use all my concentration to keep the Landy at a steady 45/50mph so that the trailer had the smoothest ride possible. Rather disconcertingly I had to stop twice before I’d even reached Slovenia to replace snapped ratchet straps after being alerted to hot-tub wobblage by other motorists, but once I realised this was because the straps were getting frayed on the trailer’s rusty bodywork, some judiciously placed cardboard seemed to do the trick. Munich, and then Ljubljana were reached with a minimum of fuss, and Emma and Freddy were likewise gratefully retrieved for the big day: crossing into Croatia and seeing if we could a) get through and b) stop off on Vis en-route.

At the Slovenian border, my export documents were scanned – this meant I’d get back the MwSt (German VAT) that I’d paid back in January but from here on, I’d be making things up as I went.

My first foray into the Croatian customs building was not terribly productive. Various uniformed men and women sat behind glass partitions and either shrugged at me or ignored me completely when I asked – in Croatian – how I could get transit documents. When I did manage to get one lady to reply, she told me brusquely that she did not know how to help me and suggested that I drive to the border with Hungary instead (!). Undeterred, I went back outside and got Emma and Freddy to come into the building. If ever you have a paperwork issue with stubborn and unhelpful bureaucrats, I can highly recommend using your adorable toddler as emotional blackmail material. Eventually I was directed to a different counter, where – wouldn’t you know it – it turned out there was a chap working in the customs office who could procure my transit documents after all. Funny that.

€150 later, we were finally into Croatia. The downside was that we had been granted only three days to get across into Montenegro, so there would be no stopping off at Vis - I’d have to drive for a 6th straight day all the way down to Montenegro after we’d overnighted in Split. With Freddy watching endless episodes of In the Night Garden on our headrest DVD player (best invention ever, if you have young kids) and Emma’s legroom somewhat restricted by the bolt on air-conditioning unit Ken had had fitted at knee level across the front dash, we just about survived the infamous swirling winds of Sveti Rok and arrived at our final hurdle, Montenegrin customs, sometime around 4pm the next day.

This is what happened at Montenegrin customs.

And so it was that we finally rolled down into Herceg Novi, stayed overnight with the ever wonderful Jack and Hayley and the next morning pottered another 100km to finally arrive at Villa Miela, which was miraculously intact and undamaged (we had had break-ins the previous two winters, where a few things got pinched and the doors got a little bashed up). This was in part thanks to the new alarm we had installed, but also I suspect due to our leaving the keys in the hands of one of the local boss men, an influential villager with whom we are now on good terms. Twas not always thus (he was one of the guys who tried to get our wall knocked down a few years ago), but allegiances tend to shift along with necessity out here.

We’d done it.

Now, how exactly were we going to get the hot-tub over the wall…?

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...