3:11 AM
Vinay Singh
The train line from Prijepolje, in southern Serbia, to Podgorica, in Montenegro, is one of the most dramatic in Europe. You go through countless tunnels, skirting the precipice of one of the world's deepest canyons. The mountains here are indescribably rugged, barely cultivable and scarcely inhabited. Here and there in the midst of this gray wilderness of barren rock, you see a lonely hut surrounded by grassy plots cleared of stones for the grazing of sheep. But you see no people. The landscape is far too inhospitable.
Gradually, the mountains give way, and the train descends along a green river to the fertile plain upon which sits Podgorica, the capital of Montenegro. As soon as you disembark from the train, which is full of jolly young holiday-goers from Serbia, the change in climate hits you. The air is almost tropical, and you sense that the Mediterranean is now upon you.
I'd come to Montenegro to get a sense of the western Balkans, a region that had fascinated me ever since the end of the Yugoslav wars. The multiethnic nature of this small mountain land appealed to me: Here, Montenegrins, Serbs, Muslims and Albanians coexist more or less peacefully. I was also inspired by the colorful history of the place, Montenegro's tradition of resistance to the Turks during the nearly 500-year Ottoman occupation of the Balkans. Not least, I'd come to see mountains and sea.
Podgorica struck me as a rough-and-tumble town. During the civil war in the 1990s, it was rife with mafiosi. Gasoline, cigarettes and guns were smuggled from abroad through Montenegro into Serbia, and something of the illicit atmosphere of those times still clings to the city. It is loud, fast-paced, flashy and cheap at the same time. You cannot call it a charming town by any stretch of the imagination, but it does have a certain Wild West, frontier-town kind of life to it.
But I was only passing through Podgorica. Within hours of arriving, I boarded a hot, crowded bus heading in the direction of Niksic. Leaving Podgorica, it climbed rocky, barren mountains. Never have I seen so much rock; Montenegro is all rock, when it is not water.
