When one mulls over festive getaway locations from which to ring in the big day, one might be forgiven for overlooking the diminutive Balkan nation of Montenegro. However, as the end of December neared, it is exactly where we found ourselves, in the Bay of Kotor to be precise, about ninety kilometres southeast of Dubrovnik.
Our race to escape Bosnian blizzards brought us back to the safe haven of the Dalmatian Coast and to the Pelješac peninsula in Croatia where a slower pace of life was extremely welcomed. Connected by a small land bridge and sharply jutting into the Adriatic, Pelješac has all the bays, beaches, and nauseatingly expensive bars one would expect of a Croatian island but with the ease of being connected to the mainland.
The more southerly region of Herzegovina, like so many others in the Balkans, has struggled to define its geographic, cultural, and historic borders over the years. Thankfully, for everyone concerned, this has never posed a problem as their northerly neighbours, Bosnia, don’t have any issues with the ambiguity.
As a child of the late 90s, the news stories I faintly remember Moira Stuart drily informing me of were the unstoppable rise of a generation-defining girl group, the sudden death of a beloved princess, a greying man in a suit “not having sexual relations with that woman” (with no clue what that meant), and of a thing so unspeakably terrible going on in a place called Bosnia.
Belgrade. Over one-and-a-half million people call this sprawling, baroque-brutalist metropolis home which comfortably makes it the largest city in the Western Balkans and one of the largest in South-eastern Europe.
If there is one country that influences, or at least attempts to influence, the Western Balkans more than any other it is Serbia. The beating heart of former Yugoslavia, it comprises many of the biggest cities of the erstwhile country as well as the largest ethnic population, not that that has caused any problems ever.
As signs of a frigid winter began to cast a dark shadow over the Western Balkans, our itinerary took us away from the comfort and relative warmth of the Adriatic coastline inland towards the centre of the country. I say centre, but when the country you’re describing is shaped as peculiarly as Croatia is, the centre could be pretty much anywhere.
From a country with one of the shortest coastlines in Europe in Slovenia to another with one of the longest; that’s if you’re including its seven hundred and eighteen islands, three hundred and eighty-nine islets (whatever they are), and seventy-eight reefs and why on earth wouldn’t you?
Given the time of year we have chosen to travel and the pace with which we move from place to place, we don’t often get the chance to uncover the often unusual or inspiring stories of fellow travellers but in the small Slovene village of Kozina, about eighty kilometres southwest of Ljubljana, we bumped into a very interesting couple indeed.
Almost the instant we crossed the Italian-Slovenian border at Rateče, in the far north of both nations, the weather, architecture, and horned grazing cattle took a distinctly alpine turn as a scene from The Sound of Music opened dramatically in front of us.
