After an adventure like the one we'd just experienced, we wanted a more relaxing day off the next day. The decision was to head to Žabljak, a small town that serves as one of the centers of Montenegrin tourism. Žabljak is located right in the Durmitor National Park, and from there it's a few kilometers' walk to a popular tourist attraction - the Black Lake.
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Yesterday's achievements are immediately visible
Our house in the light of day
Friendly dog
Later we met another dog of this breed, looks like a sheepdog. A quick search told me that it looks like a Romanian Carpathian Shepherd Dog, though dog experts would probably spit on me for this.
I must say that dogs generally annoy cyclists quite a bit. I myself am not particularly afraid of dogs, even though one bit me seriously once, exactly when I was a teenager riding my bike past Lake Šuņu. But the feeling that you are about to be grabbed by the leg with teeth is not pleasant, so I totally share the anxiety of all the bikers in the world.
And when a whole centner is rushing right at you, it's no joking matter
Fortunately, you can usually more or less figure out if the animal is aggressive or not. This won't help you if you are a fragile girl or if your hands immediately start shaking, but a brutal bear like me immediately starts looking for a stick to smack the beast right on its cheeky snout. Luckily, this particular dog was very sweet and kind.
The dog's owner
I'm including this photo just to say that when I was riding back through here 8 hours later, this guy was standing in the exact same spot, in the exact same pose and with the exact same cigarette in his teeth, and even the dog was running around nearby.
When I see things like this, I immediately get a sense of the unreality of what's happening, as if I'm in a computer game, and the people, animals, houses, and trees are just scenery that's slightly animated but doesn't change much from hour to hour.
About how current generations perceive reality like games or movies, and what this leads to, there is an excellent presentation on TED Talks (you can turn on Russian subtitles there, if anything).
Here I asked to take a picture of the little house, it looks great, just like the creations of Frank Lloyd Wright (I don't know any other architects, so I just insert his name everywhere).
For now we're even riding on asphalt
It's interesting that the same road is somehow cracked in some places and like new in others. It's probably related to where the meltwaters flow more, where they freeze and thaw. As you can see, they bury the dead wherever it works out – if there's no plain to bury them properly, let's put them right on the mountain slopes.
The puddles on the left are marked on the map as wetlands
Resting in the shade of a sprawling cranberry tree
Since it's my blog, I have to post a photo of myself sometimes
A monument with mountains in the background
A swamp with mountains in the background
A positive Yura is happy even with the asphalt that he usually doesn't really like
The inscription says that there was a conference here in 1940, and Comrade Tito was present
Just in case someone happens not to be an expert on Balkan history, here is a background check on who Comrade Tito was
Josip Broz Tito (Serbo-Croat. Јосип Броз, Josip Broz), party pseudonym Tito (Serbo-Croat. Тито, Tito), subsequently the pseudonym and surname were combined — leader of Yugoslavia from the end of World War II until his death (1945—1980), Marshal (September 29, 1943), president of the country since 1953.
Josip Broz Tito was the founder of a new communist movement — Titoism.
This movement emerged after Tito's disagreements with Stalin. The main principle of Titoism was that in each state the means of achieving communism should be determined by the state itself (i.e. Yugoslavia), and not by external forces (by which the Soviet Union was understood). Throughout his rule, Tito pursued a policy of non-alignment and did not participate in the CMEA and the Warsaw Pact.
Tito was married five times.
With Josip Broz Tito, the son of a Croat and a Slovene, Yugoslavia survived as a single state for a record term after World War II — from 1945 to 1991 — and broke up eleven years after his death. In the history of the 20th century, Tito's name will be noted on a par with Churchill, de Gaulle, and Roosevelt.
If anyone is interested in the details, we've got them here
Devil's Lake
While riding here, I was discussing sci-fi with Olga Luksha, although we didn't quite get to any titles we both knew. In general, I've moved away from modern fiction, I try to read encyclopedias, memoirs or classics, but on the Kindle so far only the latter is convenient. By the way, the E-ink reader kicks absolute ass, you just start reading right away, there are no excuses that there's nothing to read, it's uncomfortable to hold a book, or it's unpleasant to read from a screen. The only thing is that I really should have gotten a Kindle Touch, it would have been more convenient to turn pages on it after all.
Quite pastoral
Old shacks are interspersed with cute wooden cottages
A slightly different dog than the previous one, but similar
And then Oleg says: let's take a little shortcut over the mountain
I think everyone already understands how that ended.
First a little bit of snow appears
A minute later it's everywhere
At this point even Rob lost his patience and said that he didn't want to walk on snow for all the following days either, because we came here to ride after all. Fortunately, the snowy stretch of the path was short.
. . . but picturesque
While Oleg gets his bearings, we fill up on water
Straight from the melting snow
The path is not without its special stages
Out in the open, because of the blazing sun, it's very warm and even hot, but in the forest, where spruces and pines shade the ground, the snow lies in a thick layer, and chills the body with cold air. Fortunately, less than a couple of hours passed before we reached the notorious Black Lake.
