Extreme Tourist Experience

[Ivo Skoric]

Ulcin has a small sandy beach, crowded as the Holland tunnel in rush 
hour, called appropriately "The Small Beach". I literally walked over 
bodies to reach the muggy water. It is 2 Euros to bath there. Which 
explains why the beach is clean every morning: there are guys paid to 
clean it up every evening. A necessary solution for the place that so 
carelessly dispose of its garbage as Montenegro is.

There is also a 13 km long sandy beach, called simply "The Long 
Beach", outside of the town, where tourists from Belgrade go.

I stay in a house perched atop a cliff. One kid jumped off today. It 
is 60 feet, maybe higher. But jumping from crazy heights is a rite of 
passage for boys here. One that precedes, agewise, rally racing on 
the poorly maintained, narrow mountain roads. 

What would they think of New Jersey - where most of the pools had 
their springboards removed for insurance purposes? And what of the 55 
mph speed limit on six-lane highways?  The opposing cliff is covered 
with modern man litter: PVC bags and type 2 clear recyclable plastic.

It is easy to guess that most of the guests here are Kosovo 
Albanians: restaurants play corny music, restrooms in private 
accommodation have a bottle of water near the toilette, and no 
toilette paper; and the beggars, which, with stray dogs, are 
commonplace in Ulcin, beg in Albanian. Germans and even Czechs do not 
manage to reach Ulcin.

Officially there is 120,000 tourists in Montenegro. Unofficially, 
there is twice as much. Every homeowner in Ulcin rents every room of 
their houses to guests and sleeps in the kitchen. By not reporting 
all the guests, they save on taxes. That ads 40% to the population of 
Montenegro during Summer. 

In dry years that is bound to cause water shortages - as there are 
now in Bar, Budva, and, somewhat, Ulcin. Also, sewer pipes tend to 
break under increased pressure, causing the unpleasant smell of some 
locales. And the drought also nurture forest fires - often caused by 
a cigarette butt thrown through the car window. Everybody smokes, and 
everybody just throws things out from the car, as if the nature is a 
big garbage bin.

All the roads look like they can barely be one way, yet they are all 
two-way roads, plus the pedestrians walk right in the middle, and in 
the country, not that seldom, you can run into a cow.

Also, it is very good to be a man. Men can walk around dressed (or 
undressed) as they wish, they can drive as they please, do what they 
desire, and women are supposed to hover around them looking to be of 
some help to them.

Ada Bojana: no Kosovars there, but the place to see Belgraders 
literally naked, and ‘the Montenegrin lawnmowers' (cows graze freely) 
in action. Also, it is a little cleaner than on the Ulqin side. 
Still, no paper in the bathrooms. No water either. It is interesting 
how most of the foreign help focuses on democracy and freedom, while 
people here feel and behave much more uninhibited than in many other 
places I've lived at, including the U.S.

Yugoslav snowboard team spends their summers here kite-surfing. 
Snowboard instructors from Kopaonik teach basics of wind-surfing and 
kite-surfing. They also rent that equipment and kayaks to tourists. 
But, like everyone else there, they are not really very interested in 
making a buck. I observed how they nearly drove away a group of 
Albanian-Americans from The Bronx, when they inquired about renting a 
boat. Don't expect the eager service with an obsequious smile there.

With its relaxed attitude to dress-code, driving, smoking, and other 
little sinful pleasures, Montenegro overall feels more free than a US 
city (and there is no constant looming threat over your head). Oh, of 
course, I took a kayak to the Albanian border. No patrol-boat with 
120mm guns showed up. Just one soldier in camouflage (camouflage 
uniforms became the fashion choice of all armies liberated from 
communism, because of their association with the mighty Hollywood), 
whistled after me, and shouted: "Hey, you can't go down there." Very 
little is regulated. The police is more courteous and respectful than 
NYPD. They gave up on giving a damn. They definitely let me go on 
driving without a seatbelt, surprising my wife (who said that this 
was only because I was a guy in this ultra-macho society). 

The new tourist attraction of Montenegrin coast, however, is becoming 
the "sewage waterfalls." Rugged and intimidating cliffs with broken 
pipes draped over them. One lady, close to where I stay, just walks 
out of her house with the garbage bin, and empties the garbage right 
over the fence, that marks the cliff. Some of it ends in the water, 
some of it stays covering the cliff. Garbage container is too far to 
walk to, they say.

And the sewers were never built - because all this housing is the 
temporary accommodation, established after the big earthquake, that 
devastated Ulcin eight years ago. There was a Hotel here before the 
earthquake. Now there are houses of those that lost theirs due to it.

They, however, have no ownership rights, hence no interest in 
investing in an expensive project like a 3km long sewer pipe. So, the 
pipi and kaka of the local tenants goes over the cliff into the sea, 
right in their backyard. For most of the year, that means less than 
50 people, and very turbulent seas that do a quick clean-up.

In summer the sea is calm, and local families sleep in their 
kitchens, renting all their rooms to tourists, most often Kosovo 
Albanians, at least doubling the population using the same broken 
sewer line. So, it would be really smelly and disgusting for a 
spoiled American tourist, I guess. Or a European. They, seeing that 
garbage is everywhere, contribute with their own litter.

Otherwise, this place has one of the most breathtaking ‘extreme 
backyards' I've seen so far. As I said, the house is perched atop a 
60 ft cliff, with the living room window having a view over the sea 
that extends all the way to Italy. The cliff ends in a natural ramp 
that reaches deep in the sea like an arm of a giant rocky creature. 

The ramp is vertical on both sides, and, fortunately, the bigger 
sewer line empties on the side that is not deep enough to jump. On 
the other side one can jump from 50 ft right from ones backyard into 
refreshingly cold, deep sea.. The path to the sharp edged ramp is a 
narrow passage framed by the torny Montenegrin vegetation and guarded 
by Rocky, a small yellow dog that barks very loud when somebody comes 
close to his passage.

That punk kid and his friend came again, he jumped right from the 
top, while the other again hesitated, than, teased to death by the 
first kid, walked half, or, perhaps, three-quarters way down and 
jumped from there. I was told by my host's teenage daughter that 
those two are the worst pupils in her school. They proudly admitted 
to that.

Naturally, the company that owned a hotel here before the earthquake 
wants to build another one on the same spot. Then, of course, they 
would built a sewer and organize the garbage collection. But they 
have no money to begin with, and the current tenants, of course, do 
not want to leave their lucrative location.

The land-ownership is unclear, since the privatization drive occurred 
in Montenegro only after the earthquake, when this location was 
already assigned the temporary relief status. Left to the market 
regulation of this liberal's paradise without clear ownership, 
tenants stay where they are until further notice, and nobody is 
building a sewer or organizing garbage collection, since they are 
there just temporary, well into their ninth year.

Because of one parameter of their location - closeness to the sea, 
they can rent their rooms in summer, and because of another - open 
sewer, they have to rent them to the poorest of tourists - Kosovo 
Albainians. They can't care less about littering, since they see the 
garbage everywhere around anyway.

This by far is not an isolated problem: the municipal sewer line of 
the town of Ulcin is also broken. This, looks like a much more urgent 
target for USAID and/or EU help, than making more political parties 
in Montenegro. Local joke says: one hundred Montenegrins went to war, 
one hundred one returned.

Montenegro is between US and EU, and between Kosovo and Belgrade. US 
invests more money, but in the less tangible projects. EU built 
public lights in Bar and Golubovac, and repaired the main road 
between Podgorica and Bar, but earmarks a little money for 
Montenegro.

Belgrade tourists contribute to car accidents, Kosovo tourists 
contribute to littering. Both groups are involved in drug trade that 
comes from Albania - I felt as if I am in my old neighborhood's 
subway station on 110th Street and Lexington Avenue, when I found a 
used syringe in the background of a dilapidated house at the river 
Bojana's estuary.

Given the garbage problem, and the natural beauty that is endangered 
by it, Montenegro has plenty of environmentalists. They ask: did we 
deserve such beauty? Eco-society Kalimero of Ulcinj established Eco 
Patrol that fights illegal fishing with dynamite, pollution of River 
Bojana, and the excessive littering everywhere. They are too small, 
though, to stop the massive assault on the environment cause by 
unregulated summer tourism.
								
Eco Center Delphin from Kotor is luckier: they are included on the 
town's appropriations committee and receive USAID funds. Also, with 
most of Belgrade tourists in Budva, and most of Kosovo tourists in 
Ulqin-Ulcinj, Kotor is a relatively safe haven for environment.

Of all river-canyons in Montenegro, the most polluted is Zeta.  It is 
the widest valley, so it was suitable for settlement, agriculture, 
and industry. The results are devastating. The second largest 
Montenegrin city of Niksic, often disposed untreated sewage waste 
directly into Zeta, for the lack of resources to do anything else. 
There are couple of murmur factories along the river, which empty 
their waste in it. People who live along, use the river banks for 
garbage disposal.

Generally, if the car brakes down, or is involved in an accident, and 
it is not recoverable, in Montenegro, people just live it where it 
died, or hurl it down the steep slope to the river at the bottom of 
the canyon.

Ecological Society of Spuz is particularly angry at the murmur 
factories, now. That's because the main polluter- aluminum smelter in 
Podgorica, the second largest in Europe - operating at 40% is not any 
more the main threat to the survival of the river.

One can argue for independence of Montenegro on ecological grounds - 
with their borders, they would be more capable of controlling the 
influx of tourists. Alternatively, the independence of Kosovo would 
also help. As foreign citizens, Kosovars would be required to pay 
double the tax (as I am), and given their numbers, that would 
increase the Montenegrin budget, and thus ability to deal with the 
waste collection, forest fire prevention, and sewer repair - which 
should be the utmost priority now. Unless, of course, that money does 
not end up in a private pocket - which would not be that surprising 
here, where everything is run as a small business.

Needless to say, I acquired stomach pains and diarrhea during my 
short stay at Ulcinj.

Ivo---------------------------------------------------------
Ivo Skoric
19 Baxter Street
Rutland VT 05701
802.775.7257
ivo at balkansnet.org
balkansnet.org