Kotor
As we sailed northwards into the Adriatic Sea, we moved from the ancient Greco-Illyrian world into the Slavic world. We woke up in the beautiful Bay of Kotor, a deep fjord that provides a dramatic entrance into the republic of Montenegro. Two decades ago, Montenegro was one of six Yugoslav republics, closely linked to its sister nation, Serbia. Today, this nation of 600,000 people is the newest country in Europe.
We spent the morning in Perast, a small town nestled in the shadow of the 5,000-foot mountains that rise up from the Bay of Kotor. A small boat ferried us across the 200-yard stretch of water to an island-church known as Our Lady of the Rock. The church stands on an artificial island created over the centuries by local residents and fishermen throwing stones into the water, as a way of invoking the protection of the Virgin Mary against maritime tragedy.
Our guide was Rade, an ebullient Montenegrin with a fluent, if idiosyncratic, command of English.
“Montenegro is famous like a country with the plenty of the kamikaze drivers,” Rade warned us, as we stepped back on dry land following our visit to the Lady of the Rock. Thanks to Rade, we learned about the cultural treasures of the town of Kotor, rebuilt after a devastating earthquake in 1979, and the luxurious waterfront homes now belonging to Russian oligarchs.
The towns and villages around the Bay of Kotor, including Kotor itself, are clearly part of the Venetian world, with Catholic churches, Renaissance belltowers, and Italian-style piazzas. But the visitor sees a very different side of Montenegro as soon as he ventures into the mountains. We explored this world in the afternoon, driving up the breathtaking Lovcen mountain road, with its 25 switchback turns, to the village of Njegosi, some 3,000 feet above the Bay of Kotor.
The road was built in 1907 to connect the Bay of Kotor to the former Montenegrin capital of Cetinje. As we ascended into the rugged limestone mountains, it was easy to understand how Montenegro had managed to resist wave after wave of foreign invasion. We heard about the feats of the Prince-Bishop-National Poet Njegos, who won the admiration of Europe by leading a national uprising against the Ottoman Turks from his mountain fortress, in the early part of the 19th century.
Several members of the group visited Njegos's burial place on the summit of the second highest mountain in the Lovcen mountain range, with glorious views of virtually the entire country of Montenegro, from Albania in the south to Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina in the north. According to legend, the warrior prince declined to be buried on top of the highest mountain because he wanted to reserve that honor for a successor stronger and wiser than himself.
As we neared the top of the Lovcen pass, Rade told us a joke that captured the combination of nervousness and exhilaration many of us felt about undertaking one of the most memorable road trips in the world. As Rade told the story, a priest dies at the same time as the driver of a Lovcen bus. Both men present themselves to St Peter at the Pearly Gates. The priest is surprised when the bus driver, an ordinary sinner, is immediately admitted to the Kingdom of Heaven, while he, a holy man, is ordered to wait outside. He asks for an explanation.
“It was simple,” replies St. Peter. “When you deliver your Sunday sermon, your followers fall asleep. But the driver does not have to say a word when he takes his passengers up the Lovcen pass. The people who are in the care of the bus driver spend their entire time praying to God.”
Fortunately, we were in the safe hands of an expert driver, and were able to enjoy both the joke and what Rade called “the view of the million dollars.”
