The Blue Monkey Review

So, to work. Montenegro is currently in a federal union with Serbia. It is surrounded by Serbia, Bosnia, Croatia, and Albania, but it also has a coastline on the Adriatic. Until the Congress of Berlin recognized it as a sovereign state in 1878, Montenegro had been an outpost of the Ottoman Empire for several centuries. There are Muslims living here still, and Niksic, where I live, has its own mosque as well as its own Baptist church. But most of the people in this country are Orthodox Christians. They speak a language very close to Serbian, but many prefer that you not call their language Serbian.

You can take the Monte in Montenegro seriously. When I awoke Saturday morning in the train from Belgrade, I looked out on a scene that might have come from a travelogue for a tour of the Alps. Or, with the heavy covering of snow and the sparse vegetation that I could see, it might have been the Rockies. When my traveling companion said that we were almost in Podgorica, I had a little trouble accepting that because we were still surrounded by mountains. But Podgorica (the capital) like Niksic sits in a relatively flat mountain valley. Traveling from Podgorica to Niksic by bus was about like traveling from Cuernavaca to Taxco by bus, except that everything here was covered by snow.

I do not remember if I have mentioned the snow. In the two days before I arrived in Serbian airspace, Niksic received a meter (that"s right, one yard and a little more) of snow. In my three days here I have yet to step foot on the soil of Montenegro, and have barely even seen the country"s asphalt. Snow either sits in high piles next to the roads and buildings, or it is hard packed underfoot. Last night on my walk back home I saw some of the local snow removal equipment. It was a World War II vintage truck with a plough in front. The truck itself was loaded with cordwood. Niksic looks like some kind of Serbian fantasy of the North Pole. Individuals and families crowd the roads, slipping and sliding in the same space where the cars are looking for traction. You see parents pulling children in little sleds.

I"m becoming more and more familiar with the town. It is not large. The population here is about 50,000, a little larger than Greensburg. But it seems like a much smaller town. I have the impression that most people here, like myself at the moment, live in apartment blocs. Once you leave the apartment blocs, the commercial buildings are fairly small and there seems to be a lot of open space. The square in the city center is very large and open (though currently covered by three plus feet of snow). But there are some large buildings. The town has quite a modern looking hotel, though Janko, my department chair, tells me that the new part does not operate. A very large building near the center of town was built at the end of the Communist period, but was abandoned because there were no funds to continue to turn it into a commercial center. A large high school near my apartment building is abandoned and looks like a haven for drug addicts.

Niksic has a reputation in Montenegro for being tough. It is an industrial town, with the brewery and the steel mill the largest employers. And even though I can"t see it because of all the snow, Janko P. my traveling companion of last week, and Janko A. my department chair, assure me that Niksic is dirty. Montenegro, generally, is a poor country and clearly doesn"t participate, yet, in the dynamic economic growth to the north and west of it. My predecessor in this Fulbright chair told me that Montenegro was about ten years behind Croatia.

What does it mean to be behind the times? Yesterday I went to cash a traveler"s check. I"ve done this for more than thirty years on four different continents. But here in Niksic I had to visit two different banks to complete this transaction. (Just imagine that. A bank that blithely sends away a customer and his 1.5% margin of profit .) The cashier who finally took care of me seemed very unsure of various aspects of the transaction, e.g., she seemed to believe the "city" designation on the check should have stated the city where the check originated. But this extended example is to make a point--Niksic has no infrastructure for tourism. That"s right, none. Nema, as we say here.

A final note. Janko P., who grew up in Germany in a Montenegrin family, would refer to "downstairs" in our conversations. I could not, at first, figure out what he was talking about. "Downstairs they know I have an accent," he said, and I thought, "Who? The servants?" But it finally clicked. Downstairs is Montenegro. I don"t think anyone else uses that term for this place. Just Janko P. And me.