I would like to share with you my thoughts and feelings about the life of my family in Montenegro. We moved from Siberia, and for 8 years now we have been permanently living in Montenegro. I will not compare these two completely different worlds, but I would just like to convey to you my worldview. We have visited many nearby countries, but only in Montenegro I feel at home. If an interlocutor was next to me, he would definitely put in his five cents, like - well, of course, the sea, the beach, the sun - who might not like it? In fact, I never liked to lie on the beach, because. I feel sorry for this time, and I don’t swim in the sea often - as, in principle, any resident of a seaside town. What matters to me is:
Silence and the opportunity to contemplate the beautiful
Right now I am sitting on a bench near Old Kotor, the sun has already set behind the mountains, but the bay has not become less beautiful - the same serene expanse of water, a duck combing its feathers and lazily quacking from time to time, mountains reflected in the water, pedestrians, thinking about something of their own and not in a hurry. Yes, you can’t sit so calmly during the season, but already from September you can fully breathe in this serenity.
closeness to nature
You sit at home and you can’t get inspiration in these four walls and create something like that. But then the sun breaks through the window (this is a sign!), You take a laptop and go to the nearest mountain - and there, surrounded by a coniferous forest, an Austro-Hungarian fortress and with amazing panoramic views of the bay, you begin to create something frantically (during these hours you, however, along the way, you lament that you are not a poet and not an artist!). Tired of mountains? No problem! You can go to the beach, and to the rocks by the sea, and to the forest, and to the island - and all this is very close!
Good-natured, open people
Today I went to the bakery, and a saleswoman works there, whom I haven’t seen for 4 years - she immediately recognized me (I figured out who it was for 30 seconds) and exclaimed - ohhh, what a ste, what a baby has grown! (How are you doing? How your child has grown up!) And we stood chatting like old girlfriends, and the girl in line meekly waited for us to talk (this is completely normal here). Or, for example, a two-meter uncle is walking towards you, throwing sidelong glances at you, but as soon as he throws - chao, what a ste! - and then he blossoms into a smile and is ready to invite you to visit him for a drink of homemade brandy.
Mild climate and variable weather
Yes, there are no tropics here, and there is a boring, rainy and windy winter (you feel it especially sharply when you return from Thailand in January). But this winter is very short, and there are often warm, sunny days and there is never snow, which is the most important thing for me - yes, I don’t like snow and have never missed it in 8 years! Who needs snow, welcome to the north of Montenegro - there are ski resorts (Zabljak, Kolasin) of a quite tolerable level. Throughout the year, green grass and various flowers grow - in winter, these are small wildflowers, but how pleasing to the eye!
Delicious vegetables and fruits throughout the year
In Siberia, where I used to live, the fruits were only small apples, pears and sour cherries. Here the list of available fruits has noticeably expanded - their home-made figs (fresh figs), peaches, apricots, grapes, cherries, cherries, feijoa and other names indecent for a Siberian. But this is only in the summer. In autumn and winter, the time of ripening of kiwi, oranges, lemons, tangerines, persimmons begins. Vitamins all year round. Is it bad?
Hiking (or just walking in the mountains)
Because Montenegro is a country of mountains, so there is an incredible number of marked trails in the mountains. Here you can find abandoned, ancient villages, wild goats, and various aromatic herbs such as sage, oregano, thyme, wild mint, all combined with incredible views of the mountains and the sea. I'm not going to give lectures, how useful it is for those who spend most of their time at the computer.
This is just what I can remember today. There are other pleasant moments that keep me in this country and fall in love with it year after year.
