Say goodbye to Croatia

We hardly knew ye.

Goodnight, Dubrovnik, May 2014

After twelve days, 40 boat rides, rain, sun, cold, heat and hundreds of pizzas we said our farewells to Croatia and Dubrovnik and moved on down the road to Sveti Stefan (St. Stefan) in Montenegro. Montenegro and Serbia were the last two republics in the old Yugoslavia, and both declared their independence from Yugoslavia in 2006. It's not clear to me what "Yugoslavia" meant when both parties split from it almost simultaneously, but there you are.

While Croatians and Slovenes are Roman Catholic, Serbs and Montenegrins are Eastern Orthodox Christians (Bosnians are Muslim). This is a result of the collapse of the Roman Empire in the 4th century, which split into Byzantium (Eastern Orthodox) and the Holy Roman Empire (Catholic). This three-way religious split partially explains some of the wars that have been inflicted on the region over the centuries.

The drive was more involved and time-consuming than we expected.

The first issue arose when we reached the Croatia/Montenegro border. We had been in the no-passport zone(1) since arriving in Switzerland, so leaving the EU came as a bit of a shock. As in, we spent almost an hour between waiting on line to exit Croatia and waiting on line to enter Montenegro. It would have been longer had some truckers not waved a bunch of cars around the long line of trucks on a two lane highway to reach the car lane at the border control.

Don't touch my bags, if you please, May 2014

 

We then decided to take a brief detour and see one of the key sites in the country, the Bay of Kotor(2) and Kotor itself. My reasoning was that by hitting it on the way down, we would save backtracking tomorrow and more than an hour driving time. It was a very lovely drive around the Bay. We stopped at Perast, a small village on the bay, and took a boat out to Our Lady of the Rocks, a very old and picturesque church on an artificial islet just off the shore. This consumed all of my very few Euros, and in fact I had to add some Kuna to pay for the boat ride.

Pirate map of the Bay of Kotor, May 2014

Our Lady of the Rocks and Perast, May 2014

From there, it's only 12K to Kotor, so we planned to have lunch and take a brief walk around the walled city. Big fail! The city was so crowded I couldn't even find a parking lot with space(3). So we kept on going and finally reached the Aman Sveti Stefan.

This hotel is a very unique place, and all I'll say tonight is two things:

1. The staff ratio is about 9 to every guest

2. Somebody bought an entire village and turned it into a hotel

What is this place?, May 2014

So you'll have to tune in later to learn more.

 

 

 

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(1) The Schengen Area is almost all of the EU, plus Swtzerland, Norway and Iceland. The UK and Ireland are not included. It defines an area where no passports are needed to cross international borders.

(2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bay_of_Kotor

(3) No pictures; I was too busy driving. You can check Wikipedia as an exercise.

 

 

Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans