July 29, 2012
Great Danes: Matasero - Plav
THERE'S NOTHING like waking up and going straight into a climb to 1 520 metres. It settles your breakfast in a big way. Or, better put, it unsettles it. But again, we are stunned by the beauty of Montenegro. It is one of the wonderful cycle-touring countries of the world, often demanding but a glory of empty roads, friendly people and a never-ending choice of places to camp wild. And nobody seems to mind if you pitch your tent.
It will change, of course. This is a little country and it's obvious planners see tourism can make up for the lack of industry. Montenegro already uses the euro rather than create its own currency, even though it is not part of the euro zone.
Our road is as empty as ever and lined with trees. It has happy-looking houses on the left, now and then with wooden lavatories across the road on a verge, and it looks over a beautiful valley to the right.
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Today is Sunday and there's a weekend mood. We get waves and flashes of headlights from the few drivers we see, and calls of greeting from people sitting on their steps.
The road surface worsens as we get nearer the summit. Two road workers speak to us in English. Ask yourself how many road workers round your way can strike up a conversation in a foreign language. We pass a funeral in a mountain village. There are knots of people at a gate and a weeping woman is being consoled. Those around her have appropriately solemn expressions. Those down the road, who haven't yet caught up, are more cheerful, more distant from the deceased, and they wave and call without hesitation.
There is an unusual feature to death in Montenegro. The procedure seems to be that you photo-copy a grim death notice, squared in a heavy black, and attach it to bus shelters, gates, to poles outside houses. There can be several in the same place. Perhaps attending a funeral is a good day out because graveyards have graded seating for spectators.
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There's a bar at the top of the mountain. We sit at one table and listen to a group in front of us. One of the men keeps looking round, to make contact. I take a guess at their language and say "Sverige?"
"Denmark," he says back in English. I am one country out.
They are a mixed group, the result of so many people from the valley going to Denmark when it needed foreign workers in the 1960s.
"Denmark needed a lot back then," the youngest man explained. He is a doctor, he says, about to specialise in stomach complaints. "They thought they'd stay a few years and so they didn't bother to learn Danish. Then they stayed and now, of course, they do speak Danish but, when they come back here, their friends and family laugh because they speak old-fashioned Montenegrin that has long vanished here."
A bit like still speaking of hep cats and being cool to the jive in English.
The elder of the boys is nine. He can already speak fair English. His seven-year-old brother is about to start learning. One is blond and the other dark. The blond tells his mother to ask "if they ride with steaks in their shorts like Bjarne Riis."
I doubt Bjarne Riis ever rode with a steak in his shorts. More probably, he said Tour de France riders before the 1950s did it to overcome saddle sores.
"No, we don't," Steph answered. "We're too poor for that. We use hamburgers."
The air became turgid and damp. The long, tortuous drop into the valley was a succession of brake-burning twists. We stopped at a campground just outside Plav. A grandfatherly man with a heart-warming smile met us at the gate.
"Pivo?" he asked.
"Da, pivo," we laughed.
And moments later he brought two cold beers, as requested.
It wasn't the only celebration. Three girls of ascending age sat outside the house, dressed in party gear. A woman we thought to be their mother walked past with a large square iced cake.
"Mangez?" she asked.
We thought we hadn't understood. But then it became clear and we were served birthday cake, before the girls because we were guests.
The birthday girl was tall and so slim that it would take only three seconds to walk round her. She had face powder and discreet false eyelashes. Her eyes, lined with mascara, were large and brown.
"Your birthday?"
"Yes," she answered shyly.
We congratulated her.
"And how old today?"
"Seventeen," she said, adding with a note of apology: "I'm still young."
And doubtless the wow of lads in the village, too.
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