The Blue Monkey Review

In 1999 British Prime Minister Tony Blair said that Kosovo was “on the doorstep of Europe.” Quite apart from Blair’s strange sense of geography, this gives you a notion of how the Balkan’s figure into the economic system of Europe. And if you examine a map you will note that Montenegro shares a border with Kosovo and so must also be out there on Europe’s front stoop. But, Montenegro, with regular flights to Frankfurt and ferries three times a week to and from Bari, in Italy, is much easier to reach than Kosovo.

It’s no wonder, then, that goods traveling from East to West or vice versa should make their way through Montenegro. News reports have shown car loads of drugs stopped on the highway or seized in the port of Bar. Some of the people tell me that they’ve met people who talk quite casually of taking drugs into western Europe. But, the drug trade is global and changes its transfer points as the needs of the trade dictate. Although I don’t know if we have our own syndicates here, I suspect that involvement with the drug business here is opportunistic rather than integral.

But drugs are really just part of the emporium that is Montenegro, which is a kind of upside down iceberg where what is most abundant is also hard to miss. Trade in goods that are not, strictly speaking, legal, tells a lot about the country. For instance, it explains on both the supply and the demand sides the ubiquity of men wearing leather jackets. It also clears up why cigarettes seem to be sold by wandering young men with open boxes filled with a variety of brands, or women sitting on street corners covering up their goods with plastic sheeting during the rain. One recent headline said that “Rome Wants to Be Paid for Cigarettes.” The car ferry from Bari must provide regular relief for Montenegrins yearning to breathe the air of Marlboro country.

Since the topic of cars has arisen more or less spontaneously, let’s talk about that. Last week in Podgorica I made arrangements to rent a car to go to Dubrovnik to pick up Ruth. The receptionist, Ivana, had graduated from the Nikšić faculty and had yet to secure regular, professional employment, so she enjoyed the opportunity to speak English. She told me that normally there is a deposit of 1000 euros to rent a car, but ask the manager to waive the deposit. So, I enjoyed the décor of the rental office and had a glass of blueberry juice and chatted with Ivana for a few minutes..

“Who rents cars?” I asked, to make small talk.

“Mostly foreigners. Or people who want to go abroad.” I must have looked a little puzzled at that latter information, because she added, “Maybe you know, or maybe you don’t know, people cannot drive cars out of the country. Many cars here don’t have official papers, because maybe they are stolen in Germany.”

The manager arrived about this time so we could perform the waiving of the fee ritual. Nema problema, because I’m a professor at the faculty and I know Cindy who teaches in the faculty and whom Ivana knows. Later in the day I had coffee with this very same Cindy, and she told me that many stolen cars end up here. But the other, perhaps more common avenue is that someone of Balkan descent will purchase a car in Germany and drive it here, sell it for a good but still bargain price, then go back to Germany to report the car as stolen. When Cindy and her husband bought their car a while back, they purchased an older model Audi just so it would be visibly too old to attract suspicion as a stolen (or “stolen”) vehicle.

All this talk of stolen cars and contraband cigarettes might lead one to conclude that Montenegro suffers a lack of law-enforcement personnel. That conclusion would be wrong. Montenegro must have one of the highest police to population ratios of any country in Europe. Najo, my landlord, says that he spent three months with his brother in Sweden some years ago and saw one policeman in that time. Here, you see them everywhere—they are about as common as the Roma, though rarely as active. There might be one for every other street corner if they were spread out, but they generally stand in groups, three being the most popular nunmber of associates. And often you see them along the roadways, flagging drivers down and—well, I don’t know what. Enforcing some laws, I suppose.

Cindy has been stopped many times, and has had to show no end of papers to prove that her vehicle is legal. True, it is too old to make sense as a stolen car, but the other quirk here is that foreigners cannot legally own a car. So, although Cindy’s car and her ownership are perfectly legal, it isn’t something simple like purchasing a car and registering it in one’s own name. Thus, every so often she has to work through this with members of the constabulary.

“But, I’ve never had to pay a bribe,” she concludes with relief and triumph.

In spite of the vigilance of the police, contraband goods somehow slip into the country. In fact, if Nikšić is a guide, the country is awash with smuggled goods. There are blocks in Nikšić where, every week day, cars line up and their drivers unload wares for sale. I had assumed that the kiwi I purchased from one of these car peddlers came directly from farmers in the Montenegrin countryside. I think that is usually the case, but the last kilo I bought came already packaged and with an Italian label.

The other goods on sale are almost all more banal than kiwi. Nikšić peddlers could fill a Sam’s Club with the underwear, gloves, slippers, and petrochemical furniture they offer for sale. I don’t take pride in my violations of the social contract, but I think my umbrella came from a load that fell off a truck somewhere in Szechuan province. No doubt it was carried along the silk road to Istanbul. There,
a tall, leather-jacketed, chain-smoking Montenegrin bought it from some smuggler’s souk, and loaded it with his other checked luggage onto the bus for the ride home.