We were planning to go to the Black Forest, Germany, but ended up heading to Montenegro instead. This played right into my hands, because my life plans dictate that I visit two new countries a year, and I had already been to Germany.
We decided to visit Montenegro in May to catch the holidays (May 1st and 4th are days off in Latvia).
Montenegro is a country on the Balkan Peninsula that recently broke away from Serbia (peacefully). In English, it's called Montenegro.
In case you've forgotten, Serbia was part of a big union called Yugoslavia, ruled by the dictator Josip Broz Tito.
Yugoslavia — a state in Europe that existed on the Balkan Peninsula for almost the entire 20th century and had access to the Adriatic Sea.
Greater Yugoslavia — a kingdom (SHS), then a federation (FPRY, SFRY) — included the now independent states: Serbia, Montenegro, Croatia, Slovenia, Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Yugoslavia was formed (as the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes) after World War I and the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the early 20th century, and fell apart in the late 20th — early 21st century.
Before the trip, the only things I knew about Montenegro were that it had mountains, the sea, was warm and beautiful, and generally that it was the Balkans, where people are hot-blooded but relaxed, if such a thing is possible.
I also knew that Russians love buying up real estate there, because for residents of Russian metropolises it turns out to be not very expensive. Google tells us that an apartment costs from 50 to 100 thousand euros, and a house — from 100 and up. I'm not clued into Moscow realities, but it seems like in Moscow for 50 thousand euros you can't even buy a Khrushchyovka near the metro, whereas here — you get a comfortable apartment by the sea, warmth, a similar mentality, but it's still Europe after all.
We weren't just going for the hell of it, but with the goal of training our spirits and bodies with the help of bicycles, namely — a leisurely climb up the mountain with them, and a subsequent hurried and terrifying roll down the mountain on them. To deliver our iron steeds to the destination (and ourselves as well), we tracked down a suitable means of transport in the form of a 9-seater minibus with a large luggage compartment. Renting this cute little hippo cost 32 lats a day, which is 320 lats for 10 days, 36 lats per person.
Here is the ad with a picture:
https://www.ss.lv/msg/ru/transport/transports-rent/minibuses/bhxfb.html
Thanks to those team members who scanned the ads, pondered the options, and went to look at the bus. By some strange coincidence, these are the very same people who drove the car 30 hours there and 30 back, and their contribution to our Cosa Nostra is invaluable.
In order not to overexert our bodies, it was decided to rent a villa on the spot, and base our daily sorties from there. After some googling and email negotiations, a villa was found right by the bridge over the Tara River in the village of Đurđevića Tara in Durmitor National Park.
Our abode was called “Wolf's Mane”, for a 6-night stay there we paid 630 euros.
https://www.montebramis.com/index.php?lang=eng
In total, for renting the bus, the house, food on the spot, fuel, toll roads, and other necessary needs, we spent about 200 lats per person. I spent another 100 lats on eating out, gifts, rafting, and other things, but those expenses could have been avoided. In principle, it turned out quite budget-friendly.
I'll also write a bit about maps, because I had a hand in this too. There are no completely good topographic maps of Montenegro. With some difficulty, we found more or less decent maps: old maps (General Staff?) on rutracker, and newer ones — from the American military machine, in GeoPDF format. After putting our brains to work, we managed to convert these maps both for the Garmin tourist navigator and for the Android platform, for my favorite program OruxMaps. This whole process was not easy, and I won't describe it in detail right now, I'll just say that for this we needed the programs GlobalMapper, MAPC2MAPC, OruxMapsDesktop, and custom firmware for the Garmin with support for homemade JNX files.
In the end, the maps turned out quite usable, but those trails marked with dotted lines don't always exist in reality.
As for cycling routes, there are official routes, a booklet, and even a paid book. GPX tracks are sent out if you write an email to the contacts at https://montenegro.travel, such incomprehensible bureaucracy.
That's all for now.