a message from Ben, as he's just arrived in Montenegro ...
Just wanted to let you know that we’re safely in Montenegro. We arrived last night about 10pm local time (2pm MT). We flew into Croatia and had a driver take us from Dubrovnik to Herceg Novi in Montenegro, about a 45 minute drive. We had to cross the Croatian border into no-mans-land then cross another border into Montenegro. It was an easy process but felt a little weird. Regardless, we arrived in Herceg Novi and met our host who had lined up an apartment for us to stay in while here. It’s a very nice place, three bedroom, two bath, kitchen, balcony overlooking the bay – couldn’t ask for a better place. Due to the time change (8 hrs) we couldn’t go to sleep last night and went for a stroll around old town, which was really interesting. It feels very safe here and the architecture is very old school European.
Today we met our host (Jack and his wife Hayley) and had lunch at the harbor. It was a very cool spot. We had to work out some of the logistics for our course that starts tomorrow, and spent the afternoon touring the areas we’ll use for the course. At one point, we were 1 km from the Bosnian border, which was a little weird considering the massive conflict there in the 90’s. The area where we are is unique in that it’s right on the coast but the land rises immediately behind us into the mountains. It’s rugged country and should be a good location for a course. Interestingly enough, there are brown bears here (grizzly-like) called the Balkan Brown Bear, there are wolves, wild Russian Boar, Lynx and Jackles. It’s surprisingly wild country that’s not very common in Europe. The culture is very Slavic and eastern European – the language sounds a lot like Russian. We’ve already learned a few words but it’s going to be tough (and I thought Chinese was challenging) but we’ve been told by our host that the people here like it very much when foreigners try to at least speak some of the native tongue.
