Srećan Put! |
|
13 November 2025 - Podgorica
I'm at the airport two hours early of course. I dropped off the little car which I've driven throughout the country. I checked my bag and carried liquids through security for the first time in decades. Like everything else EU, Montenegro has just adopted this rule too. TGD is the abbreviation for this airport, which makes no sense for Podgorica until I discovered that the city was called Titograd for the better part of the twentieth century. The airport is tiny and reminds be of Tyson-McGhee back in Knoxville. Based on the number of other people in the airport my flight back to Zürich will probably be as empty as the one coming here.
Yesterday I did an insane amount of driving, starting in Žabljak. I crossed the Tara Canyon on a rickety old bridge undergoing repairs. It's the largest canyon in Europe and quite impressive. I assumed that the Tara River flows out of the mountains, but I later discovered that in fact it goes the other way, flowing north into Bosnia and Hercegovina and eventually into the Danube and the Black Sea. Such a river must have been here long before the mountains were uplifted, which is why it held it's path and just carved right through them as they rose. Sadly I could not drive through the canyon because the road was being repaired so I took a more northerly route that Google Maps recommended through cow country. Unfortunately this road was also undergoing construction and I soon reached a nice new bridge that was not finished yet. One of the workmen told me that I could follow a cement truck to the path around the bridge. So off into the woods along a one lane dirt road I went. Soon I passed the cement truck on wide spot and found myself going down a steep grade along the edge cliff. I took a wrong turn and ended up on a farm, so I had to backtrack until I found the cement truck again. Then it was up another steep cliffside and back to the road on the far side of the incomplete bridge. Phew! There were many small valleys with farms and towns along the way, until I suddenly hit a real divided highway in the middle of nowhere. There was a sign crossed out going to Belgrade with cones blocking the entrance, but the other way to Bar/Podgorica was open. This was the famous Bar to Belgrade highway financed by the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative that nearly backrupted Montenegro and actually just goes from nowhere to nowhere atop the mountains through tunnels and bridges. It's faster than the road through the Morača Canyon that it runs roughly parallel to, but the toll of 3.50 euros one way means the truckers drive through the canyon instead. At least the far end of it drops one near Podgorica. I had wanted to see the Morača monastery in the canyon though, so I had to backtrack. The drive through the Morača canyon is another terrifying one, like driving down to Kotor from Cetinje. It's a two lane road, but often with a small rock barrier on the edge of a cliff with the river several hundred meters below. Still, worth it to see the 13th century monastery with waterfall and old stone bridge. Then I felt like some more hiking, so I stopped at the Mrtvica Canyon which featured another stone bridge, although newer from the 19th century. The sun was going down and had already set in the canyon though, so I wasn't able to do the full hike. Reaching my hotel by the aiport I got dinner and crashed hard into bed.
