I will never forget the day we attempted to go to Montenegro in the midst of the Corona-hype in Europe 2020. We started in Croatia, having been on the road for 6 weeks already, waking up near the Southern Croatian border where Southbound travelers have to cross over a tiny stretch of Bosnia-Herzegowina, just to come back to Croatia, only to leave Croatia again after an hour or so, down to Montenegro.
It's a remnant of the insane Yugoslav war and means in actuality that you have to go through 5 border control checkpoints in a day, which isn't all too pleasant and always drains my energy. Dealing with military type authority situations, brr.
We had read a message of my dad's early that day which informed us of a change of plans pertaining to border regulations: Montenegro had started demanding that German visitors (also visitors from France, Austria, Italy and a few other countries) could only come in under condition of agreeing to be part of a 14 day quarantine under medical supervision.
We didn't know what that meant but we somehow knew that we should definitely try getting there TODAY (Sunday), NOT tomorrow (Monday, the first day that schools, restaurants and other public gathering places around the country would be closed as a safety measure).
We felt the pull - now or never.
And so we drove down South from the lower Northern Croatian segment into Bosania-Herzegowina (the Neum corridor) and passed the first border checks - one of them being rather harsh but in the end still alright considering the political situation in this area.
Covid-19 warning leaflets had been put up in every border crossing and some of the border agents were actually wearing face masks which scared us a bit - damn, they take this very seriously here. Wow, how things had progressed! No mere 5 days ago when we entered Croatia from the North we had seen nothing like it. Now we were trying to gauge whether it would still be possible to cross today.
It was our luck that the guards at the first border were rather young and easy-going.
They did try to scare us (routinely, I presumed) searching our car and citing that if they found anything illegal we would go to jail for three months, but then quit their search after 4 minutes or so after they saw how messy our van was - packed tightly with groceries, washed underwear and all sorts of things flying around on our bed - letting us go and wishing us a good journey. I think part of that decision was also that my woman and I were easy and relaxed, they suspected no harm from us in their country and they were right too <3***
The agents at the checkpoint laughed when we said we wanted to go to Montenegro, one of them held up his two thumbs as in "Good luck with that!". It really wasn't clear whether we would make it or get stranded on any of the following borders...
It seemed noone really knew whether this was still workable at all, and all the border guards at subsequent border checkpoints spent a while calling someone after we mentioned Montenegro, maybe to double check whether the border was still open.
After crossing the Neum Corridor (the tiny stretch Bosnia-Herzegowina between the two separated Croatias) we took a rest in a nice spot overlooking the Adria. I was tired, the border checks always freak me out and the uncertainty of this whole Corona thing put us in a weird situation of major uncertainty. The situation had obviously become huge while we were busy escaping winter the last few weeks and we were now stigmatized being from Germany, a country that allegedly has "so many cases that we have to be careful letting you in".
But we held onto our plan: We wanted to attempt the border crossing TODAY. Tomorrow might be too late already.
And so, we ate a bit of fruit, got back in the car and drove to the Montenegro border not knowing what to expect.
Passed the last border with ease, the guards just asking about the last name of my woman as it is a Polish sounding name and they wanted to know whether she was indeed from Poland. She answered in her charming way that her name is due to her family history but that she doesn't speak polish, the guards smiled at her and we were off.
Drove past the first sign saying Welcome to Montenegro, and we were so thrilled! Wow that was easy, could it really be?
We drove down a mountainous road into a large curve and saw a dude in his late twenties standing there all by himself looking at us gesturing something. We instantly knew: This guy needed help, maybe a hitchhiker. We felt compelled to pick him up and pulled over instantly.
He was so happy we stopped for him! In decent English he was asking us whether we would go to the border. We were a bit confused: "What do you mean, we just come from the border."
He looked at us with a confused glance as well, pointing to the road ahead. "There is Montenegro border, do you go there?"
After a 2 minute conversation we found out: The Montenegro border had STILL not been passed, we only EXITED Croatia. We were in the buffer zone between the two jurisdictions and had not yet made it.
We were bummed but happy we could speak to him. He threw his backpack into the back of our messy van, sat down on the front bench with us and thanked us multiple times for picking him up. A lovely dude, full of heart.
I asked him what his name was: "I am Edward, how about you?"
We introduced ourselves, and while my woman was driving I was using the opportunity to ask a few things about the situation and the border.
Edward pulled out three face masks. "Here, wear these please. They don't like when you don''t have one."
We were inclined to decline but realized we had a native here with us and should probably take that cosmic offer, not knowing the situation here. So for the first time in our lives we put on face masks like a surgeon would, driving around the next corner slowly and seeing the final border crossing in the setting sun. There it was, Montenegro!
We felt anticipation, exhilaration and a bit of slight panic as well, having just picked up a random dude, wearing face masks and being at the last border checkpoint on our trip in early evening hours. What would happen here? Would we make it in? And what would that quarantine situation be like?
We took a deep breath and slowly approached the border guard checkpoint with faith and a deep sense of "this will be a challenge but there is no way back now. We are going!"
familiescantravel.com
discover-montenegro.com
