Kotor, Montenegro, Europe

Well this has been the longest day of travel I can remember on this trip, but I am currently writing this blog at 7:34am as I have just reached my destination. Yesterday started out with leaving my things at Pansion Bianco and going for breakfast at the Hotel Anja restaurant again. It was raining again so there was no chance for me to go up the cable car to the big cross on the mountain. It was something I had wanted to do the day before but the cable car was closed and again yesterday. So unfortunately, that is something left undone.

I went to visit the Memorial House of Mother Theresa after breakfast. All these years I had just assumed she was Indian because I know she did most of her work in Calcutta. It turns out she was Macedonian and born in Skopje, so they built a nice house/chapel to tell you about things she did when she was alive and told of her life story. She died when I was 14 so I don’t remember too much about her, but she led a pretty amazing life.

I went back to the hotel and got a taxi to the bus station at 12:30pm to start my day of travelling. My initial plan was to go to Pristina, Kosovo and spend a night there. Not because I really wanted to see Kosovo, but it was just on the way to Montenegro. It was supposed to be a two hour journey to Pristina, but it ended up being three hours. These kinds of things happen all the time, so I’ve learned to be flexible. And that flexibility allowed me to do the following.

As we were driving through Kosovo and into Pristina, I realized that this is a VERY poor country that is still trying to find its feet, and there’s really nothing here from a tourism standpoint to see. I checked at the Pristina bus station when I would be able to get a bus to Kotor, Montenegro and they said there was only one bus per day and it is at 7pm. It was now 3pm and I could either go ahead with my plan and stay in Pristina for the night, or just grab the next bus outta here. I chose the latter. There was no way I wanted to spend 27 hours in Pristina with nothing to do or look at.

So I found a bar/restaurant that had wifi and sat there for a couple of hours. I met a Canadian guy travelling on his own as well and he was heading in the same direction so we hung out until the bus showed up. I bought my ticket for €16 to KOTOR and got on the bus. It wasn’t until halfway to Podgorica (the capital of Montenegro) that the driver told me this bus doesn’t actually go to Kotor, it ends in Podgorica. So my ticket to Kotor, meant exactly the same thing as my travelling companion Sean’s ticket to Podgorica. Pointless.

I had also been told that it would take about six hours to get to Kotor, getting us there at 1am. Sean was told that it would take eight hours to get to Podgorica, which is before Kotor. My lady was wrong. We ended up getting to Podgorica at 2:45am. I was really surprised that when we crossed the border from Kosovo to Montenegro there was snow on the ground. A lot of snow. We must have been at a pretty high elevation, but it just came as a shock to me.

I found out that the next bus to Kotor from Podgorica would be at 6:20am, which meant I had to decide if I wanted to find a hostel in Podgorica (which has nothing worth seeing) for a few hours sleep, or just hang out in the bus terminal. I chose the latter again. It wasn’t a fun time hanging out in a bus terminal getting harassed by taxi drivers, but I survived.

At about 5am I went over to the ticket desk and asked if I could buy my ticket to Kotor. The same guy who told me that the bus was at 6:20am said “you better hurry up, it leaves in two minutes.” Awesome. So I grabbed my €8 ticket, grabbed my bags, said by to Sean, and ran to my bus. I made it without a problem, but I just don’t understand how their scheduling works here.

So when I was in Pristina and I had bought my ticket to Kotor that would get me there at 1am, I booked a hostel online so I would have a place to go when I arrived. So when I finally got here to Kotor at 7:15am, I had to get a taxi to the hostel and then wake up the worker to give me my key. It hardly seemed worth it but since I’d already paid for this room, I might as well get a few hours kip. So that’s what I’m gonna do. Get some much needed sleep and then get up and explore Kotor!