We had only a couple of days in Montenegro, and maybe a distance of 100km we cycled there. Montenegro is a tiny country on the adriatic coast and was one of the former republics of Yugoslavia. It’s mostly famous for it’s great nature, most notably the mountains, still roamed by bears and wolfs. Due to the winter slowly coming to Serbia in November, and temperatures around 0°C, even in the daytime, we didn’t really know how to continue. South of Belgrade, the country is mostly mountainous and would have been even colder than what we already had in the plains of the Vojvodina (the part of Serbia north of the Danube river). But apparently, the train from Belgrade to Thessaloniki was suspended or cancelled for the time being. Fortunately, our host Slobodan had a very nice idea: To take the train from Belgrade to Montenegro. There, at the coast, the weather was supposed to be much warmer. So we did that. The train was going to the city of Bar, wich is very close to the border to Albania. So we decided to get off a station before that, in Podgorica, the capitol of Montenegro.
That way we could cycle at least a few days in there, and on the way we would also pass a couple of Spomeniks, Monuments dedicated to the victims of the two World Wars, often specifically to the local victims. The style is mostly abstract, at times surrealistic and although a lot of them were not taken care of very well, in recent years they received quite some international attention. Most famous creator of those monuments was the architect Bogdan Bogdanovic, who was also mayor of Belgrade later, before he had to flee to Vienna in the early 90s. On a flea market in Belgrade, i actually found his Autobiography in German and it was quite a nice read. He has a style to write, where he mixes in a lot of dreams and fantasies, but at the same time you learn alot about the history of Belgrade, Serbia and Yugoslavia at that time. And especially about the story behind some of his Monuments. So i can reccomend this book, if you are interested in this topic. The name in german is “Der verdammte Baumeister”.
You can also read more about these Spomeniks on this website, where there is also a map:
https://www.spomenikdatabase.org/
Svetlana Kana Radević
And thats about it. After Bar we had our first time asking strangers to camp in their garden, and were welcomed 🙂 The next day was terrible non-stop rain, but we made it to Shkodra in Albania. We needed three days to dry everything!
Tired on Tires 