Hi ya all! :) ,
What a beautiful time it has been here in Montenegro so far! Or Crna Gora as the locals call it. I have been staying here almost everytime since June and I must say it's been the best experience so far after my gathering in Ozora, Hungary a few years ago...
I was getting really emotional touched due to the high degree of hospitality and sympathy that these people showed to me during my stop here near the bay of Kotor, where I am staying right now.
Beside that the most breathtaking thing I think is the HUGE presence of mother earth here in this country. For me personally a guy that originally comes from Germany the nature of Crna Gora is like a huge difference to what I have seen in my homeland: Here in this country you encounter many giant buzzing insects, all different kinds of reptiles like snakes, turtles
(I met so many of them in my first days here I stopped counting after a while haha) and howling jackals at night time when the moon is full and bright.
In addition to that the density of plants here in this area is so high that you can't go on a straight forward Mountain tour, because you will need a machete to make it barely even some meters into wilderness...
view of the entrance to the bay of Kotor
... I think this picture really shows why this country is called "Black Mountain/Montenegro" ^^ The black mountain-effect is even more present when it's absolute night time and the lights of the tourism places and the moon slightly light up the dark mountainous silhouettes in the background.
After spending most of the time since June here in this country, I came across the idea that the balkan itself is some sort of the "Wild West" of Europe. The reason behind this assumption is that many natives who leave here outside the tourism areas are not really plagued by any govermental, bureaucratic controls whatsoever. So they tend to live their life by their own rules. For instance growing their own food and plants in many ways or making their own Rakija which is some kind of a hard liquour. It is by far the best alcohol that I drank in my entire life and you can have many shots of rakija at night and still work on the next day, because of the good quality of this drink. The cause for the high-purity of this liquor is that the knowledge of making rakija has been passed on through the generations for hundreds of years.
On the one hand these people are loving their slight seclusion, but on the other hand they are truthfully open when you show interest in their way of life.
According to this if you really want to experience Montenegro to the fullest I can recommend, trying to live along the natives and you will gain many new perspectives on what life is about. Especially in terms of simplicity and sociability.
The purpose of this series is to document my experiences and to share my stories here in Montenegro and all the other countries on the Balkan that I am willing to visit in the next years.
To conclude I want to say thanks to this beautiful land and it's people for the beautiful experiences that I had here so far and I am curious to see what I will encounter here in future times. <3 ...
Thanks for reading <3
Sources:
All images are taken from myself.