Black Lake, despite its fame, looked rather modest. On the other hand, its maximum depth is a whopping 49 meters.
Max and Doomer went for a swim
They write about the bifurcation of rivers
When our buddies got into the water, the fishermen perked up and got anxious
Looks like only crazy "Russians" would swim in this freezing water. The sign on the board above says: "swimming at your own risk".
And we're just sitting here chilling
There are info boards around the lake, with what looks almost like my chinchilla on them
According to Andrey, Montenegro is a "special place"
We made it to Žabljak, had lunch, and stocked up on souvenirs
A quick brief on Žabljak, population 4204. The only interesting thing about it is that it's the highest situated settlement in the Balkans — 1456 meters. It lives off tourism: skiing in the winter, rafting and cycling in the summer. Mountaineering and hiking in all seasons.
The vendor at the magnet kiosk had some awesome Montenegrin rap playing, and I was too shy to ask what band it was, which I regret now. You should always just do what you want right away, otherwise later you'll be thinking, "Why didn't I just do that?"
There's no shortage of cycling tourists here, there are even tandem riders
A rather sad-looking dog on the store's doorstep
Near the store we had lunch at the "Durmitor" restaurant. The food was decent, but the service was completely non-existent — we waited for a waiter for 20 minutes, and they didn't even bring everything we ordered. Dismal.
Evening is drawing in, and we're rolling back
We finally arrived at the bridge, so I'll tell you about it
The bridge is called the Đurđevića Tara Bridge, where the last two words are the name of the settlement formed by the farmsteads scattered around. The bridge is beautiful and large, connecting the roads going to Mojkovac (already familiar to us from the previous episode), Žabljak (familiar from this one), and Pljevlja.
Side view
View from the other side of the bridge
View of the bridge from the house
There's an interesting story with the bridge: the openwork structure was built in 1940. At the time, it was the largest concrete arch bridge in Europe: 365 meters long, the largest arch being 116 meters wide, and the height ranging from 140 to 172 meters above the Tara River, depending on who was measuring. The author of the project was a certain Isaac Russo.
But shortly after that, Italian fascists invaded the then-Kingdom of Yugoslavia, and the Germans followed suit. The bridge had to be blown up; this was done by communist partisans with the help of Lazar Jauković, one of the engineers who had built the structure. I can only imagine what a person who spent three years building such a man-made marvel felt when he realized he'd have to destroy it with his own hands. But war is war, and duty is duty. The engineer was eventually caught by the Italians and executed right in the very place where the bridge was. Interestingly, they didn't blow up the whole bridge, but only the widest arch, the one over the Tara. After the war, in 1946, it was rebuilt, and as you can see, a monument was erected not to the creator, but to the destroyer.
That's just how people are wired: they are impressed by things that affect their emotions, and the strongest emotions are, after all, the negative ones. But we're going to try to turn the tide, look at the world positively, and therefore end the story on a beautiful panorama of the Tara River valley.
