No Harm, No Vowel: Crna Gora (10/5/2006)

Hi.

In May, I was sitting in a stuffy Montreal conference room doing "SEVIS" cheers with overenthusiastic study-abroad officers. My neighbor, of whose name I remember nothing save the "-ova", was constantly checking exit polls on her cell phone. Not ours, mind you, but her own: as we toiled, her compatriots were dropping their divorce papers in the ballot box.

Welcome to Montenegro (Crna Gora), who recently unhitched the yolk of Serbian doormatdom and became the world's newest nation. (Score: now I needn't visit East Timor!) How it's going survive its growing pains remains to be seen -- but let time sort out the details.Our day-trip destination, Kotor, is Montenegro's calling card now that the country has quit being "Serbia and". The city, a tiny town of 5,600 at the tail end of Kotor Fjord -- the largest in southern Europe, and one whose protection from the open Adriatic gives it a constant tranquility. Thank you, glaciers.If New Zealand evokes "Lord of the Rings" and old Montreal "Les Miserables," then Kotor is clearly "The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins."**

Enter its medieval gates (epee and plume in tow, tibi volente), and wander its tiny streets -- it's too small to get lost in, and too pretty not to gawk at. It's what we travelers have always wanted from Central Europe; indeed, it's ironic that the continent's best Central European specimen is closer to Greece and Italy than Prague or Budapest.

Of course, no excursion would be whole without a 1500-step hike up to Kotor Fortress, a medieval bastion which hangs Great-Wallishly over the city. In addition to crafting your thighs a la Auckland, the fortress tests your "Choose your own adventure book" wits. If you choose wisely, you are rewarded with steep, unmarked, untended "staircases." If you choose unwisely, you are either stonewalled by ancient fortifications or are staring over hundred-foot cliffs. If you really choose unwisely, you are staring over hundred-foot cliffs while toe-tapping around world-record deposits of goat dung.

As Julie, Christie, and I (Omar Sharif) stood at the summit, the newly-independent Montenegrin flag whipped proudly above us. While this five-month-old baby is too young to poetically deem "a mighty fine country altogether," it is spunky and vivacious -- which, if you're going to be independent, is probably a good first step.

Take that, Serbia.
Matt

** PS: If you never read "The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins," by Dr. Seuss, you were clearly literarily repressed as a child.