It Was the Best of Days, It Was the Worst of Days
Sunday 11/29/2009 6:35 PM
When we woke up to rain on Saturday morning, Alex's first suggestion was that we return the rental car and pick it up again when the sun comes out. I probably should have taken his suggestion, but instead, I got him out of bed, and we gathered our things for our excursion to Biogradska National Park, one of the last virgin forests in Europe, and the only Montenegrin national park we haven't yet visited (the others being Durmitor, Lovcen and Skadar ... okay: so we didn't exactly visit Skadar, but we drove through it). When we got downstairs, we were delighted to find a notice written in Cyrillic in our mail box.
Peter sent a package with books, magazines, and jeans for Alex, Kashi bars, a candle and a CD for me, and peanut butter cups and chocolate chips for our friend Chris way back on November 7. I figured it would take a couple of weeks to get here, but when we talked to Peter on Thanksgiving he said that he'd sent it priority mail and the US post office seemed to think it would be here within 10 days. So before we left town on Friday, we stopped by the post office to see if maybe it was there, even though we hadn't received a notice to pick it up. According to former Fulbrighters, the notice doesn't always end up in the right mail box, so you have to go to the right post office (the one on a side street next to the train station) if you're expecting something to see if it's come in yet. Easier said than done: I'd assumed, from previous post office adventures, that no one would speak English, so I wrote down the Google translator version of "Do I have a package from the US? It was sent on November 7. My address is ..." in Serbian (Google don't do "Montenegrin" just yet) on a piece of paper. When we arrived, I went up to the window, said, in Serbian, that I speak English and that I don't speak Serbian, and showed the man my paper. He read it, nodded, and started gesturing off to his right, telling me quite a few things in Serbian/Montenegrin. When he was done I said again that I don't speak Serbian, at which point he sort of shrugged, said a lot of Serbian words again, gestured to his right, and then walked into some mysterious back room. I waited for about a minute to see if he might come back with my package, but while I was waiting, I noticed another door off to the right. We went through it and went through the whole routine again. This time the person behind the counter read my piece of paper, told me to wait a moment, and then continued what she'd been doing (reading a stack of papers) for 3-4 minutes before she got up and went into another room. I was almost ready to give up when she came back out and told me to wait another moment and then started reading her papers again. Then another man came out, and he spoke enough English for me to be confident that he understood why we were there, looked through several ledger sheets that seemed to list incoming packages, and then told me that it wasn't there and that I should try back in 10 days. We left feeling pretty sorry that Peter had gone through the trouble and expense of sending us a package that might never arrive.
But, as you know by now, it DID arrive ... the very next day, in fact. We had a much easier time at the post office with the slip of paper. Our only difficulty came when the man made me sign for the package, then found the box in a pile on the floor, put it on the counter with his hand on top of it, and said, "Vas paket: Cetiri euro." (Your package: four euros.) I asked him why, and he pointed to me and said again, "Vas paket," then to the box, "Cetiri euro." So I gave him the four euros and he stamped three pink carbon copies of a receipt, tore the last one off, slapped it on top of our box, and slid it over to me. Whatever. We had our box, and we were pleased:
We opened it up in the car and Alex checked out his loot as I drove us out of town. We were heading up through the Moraca Canyon to Kolasin to get to the park, and it was raining. The day before we had some sporadic drizzle and cloudy skies, but now it was raining pretty steadily, with lots of fog higher up in the mountains.
It's a fun road, though, in good weather: most of the dropoffs into the canyon are guard-railed, and the moutains rise straight up from the other side of the road. And there are dozens of tunnels between here and Kolasin ... mostly short ones (100-300 meters), but a few longer ones, too.
But it's also, as you can tell, a two-lane road and it's the major route running north and south in Montenegro, so it's not unusual to get stuck behind a big stinky truck along the way. It took us about two hours to get to Kolasin, where we stopped to visit the tourist info office. We found it easily enough, but it was closed, which should have served as a warning to us. We left Kolasin and traveled further north to the entrance to the actual park, found the turn off for it and the "Welcome to Biogradska Gora" signs ... but just beyond the first curve up the mountain, there was a bar across the road and what looked like park ranger stand completely closed and locked. We even got out of the car to knock on the door to see if maybe someone was in there, but there wasn't. And have I mentioned that it was raining? I don't know if the park was closed because it's too late in the season for summer hikers and too early for snow enthusiasts, or if it was because of the rain, or what. But it was clear we weren't going to be able to get into the park by that route. And since the rain was coming down pretty steadily, we were leery of exploring the back roads (which were likely gravel or mud) to try to find another way in. Our plan, afterall, had been for the rain to stop so we could park the car and spend the afternoon hiking. Instead, we decided to head back towards Podgorica, stopping at a monastery along the way and then taking a side road we were pretty sure was paved into Podgorica from there.
But alas, our day was about to get much worse. Not too far down the road, we ended up being the fourth car behind a pair of big stinky trucks cruising steadily between 30 and 40 kmh. Before long, there were another 8 or 10 cars behind us. There was no chance of passing on this road, especially in the rain, and no place for the big trucks to pull over to let us pass. So we settled in with the Christmas music Peter had put on the CD for us, and tried to make the best of it. After about a half hour of this, I saw a blur of something dark and heard something big hit the car. Then it was gone. And we had a huge crack in our windshield outlining what could only have been a rock that had fallen off the side of the mountain. At the Thanksgiving feast with the Willekes, another American told us that her favorite Montenegrin word so far is "zmigavac," which is the word for turn signal (translates specifically to "blinker"). And she liked it because, to Americans, it sounds like a curse word: Shmee-ga-vatz! We joked that when we were back in America, we could tell people that it was Montenegrin for "fuck!" or "shit!" As if there was any doubt about this before, what came out of my mouth when the rock hit proves that I am no where near fluent in Montenegrin: I won't get into particulars, but there was no zmigavacing at the moment of impact, nor for several minutes afterwards. Luckily, I didn't have time to try something stupid like trying to swerve out of the way of the rock, and even more luckily, no more rocks seemed to follow that one, so no one was hurt. It just fell, hit our windshield, and bounced off. Several kilometers later, we were able to pull to the side of the road to have a closer look at the damage and call the rental company.
Even though we'd rented the car until the following morning, I told the guy that I would drop it off that night when we got back into town. I knew that we had insurance on the car, but I also knew that we had to pay the first 300 euros worth of damage, so we drove back, suspiciously eyeing each mountain and tunnel, thinking that we were out 300 euros. When we got back into town, we dropped off our things at the apartment and called the rental company to tell them we were coming over with the car. Of course, the rental office wasn't actually open ... it only seems to be open when someone is picking up or dropping off a car, so the number I had was for the rental guy's cell phone. He explained that his son was sleeping and he couldn't leave until he woke up so we'd have to meet later.
By that point, I'd become pretty confident driving again and figured there was little chance that we'd have another problem with the car after a freaking ROCK fell on it, so we decided to cruise around Podgorica in search of lights for our Christmas tree. And we actually found them! We had some dinner, came home and put the lights on the tree, and about 30 minutes later, our rental guy called. We met him (and his adorable roughly-2-year-old son) at his office, and waited nervously while he went out to see the damage. When he came back in, he said, "Now THAT was a big rock!" And then he explained that the insurance didn't cover glass or tires (zmigavac zmigavac zmigavac) and that he'd called around to get estimates on a replacement windshield (aww, zmiiiigavac: here we go) and the lowest price he'd found was 130 euros (even if insurance DID cover glass, we'd have to pay the first 300 euros anyway), so if I gave him that much money, we'd be square (holy zmigavac! he's not going to rip me off!). I happily walked to the nearest ATM, got his money, and we were on our way. Of course, I wish that we hadn't had to pay anything at all, but in the end, 130 euros was MUCH more preferable to the 300 I was anticipating.
And we had our package from Peter, and lights for our little Montenegrin Christmas tree. Made in China. Be home soon.
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