Volujica, Photo: Milan Vujović
04.05.2026. 08:30h
The grandfather accompanied his daughter and grandson on a long journey. Unannounced works on the roads through the municipality of Bar made their parting even more difficult. They barely arrived on time at the Podgorica airport, at the so-called check-in and boarding. Given the delay, the “bar connection” helped the mother and two-year-old son speed up the procedure, while the grandfather remained behind the fenced area. However, there was some commotion at boarding and grandfather got upset when one of the officials ran off somewhere. Just as he was about to enter the enclosure and see what it was all about, the man came running back, carrying something in his hands. To the surprise of many passengers, it was an ice cream for a boy. Grandfather has always been “easy to tears” and now it didn’t take long for him to be blown away by his emotions.
“This is only available in Montenegro” – he was heard to say, as he left the airport building slowly and bent over.
* * *
This government is much worse than we expected that August six years ago. It took many of the weaknesses of the previous regime and added some new ones. He behaves towards the state as if it were Alaibeg’s straw. In particular, our coast is being destroyed by concreting and erecting huge buildings. Žukotrlica, for example, was attacked from both sides of the Adriatic highway. I don’t believe that there is illegal construction, it’s too eye-popping. Someone apparently signed the approval.
Still, and in spite of everything, it is somehow easier to breathe. There are no longer those demigods and echelons behind them, before whom one fell on his face. Perhaps the Democrats can resemble them first if they strengthen the security sector and the power that goes with it (I’m not referring to a member of parliament from Bar, he seems like a fighter, still not inclined to rotten compromises). But we will see how things develop. After DPS, it should be easier to change each subsequent (bad) government.
* * *
The current government has taken over from the previous one the bad attitude towards pensioners, regardless of that demagogic move with the raising of the lowest pensions to 450 euros, because, in the meantime, everything has become more expensive. And it came to the same. The middle class of pensioners, whose pensions are from 550 to 650 euros, and whose full working life is behind them, is particularly damaged. After taxes and the purchase of medicines (and there is no one who has waited for retirement without at least two chronic diseases), they have little money left. I look at the pensioners who come to Bar on cruise ships, happy, cheerful, traveling the world, and ours are calculating whether they can buy chocolate for their grandchildren.
I would say that the time has come for a real party of pensioners in Montenegro, which will fight for their better standard. Let’s say, “Third Age”!
* * *
And speaking of cruise ships… We didn’t really present ourselves in the right light in Bar to the foreigners who visited us the other day. And there were almost three and a half thousand of them. Some streets were repaired (the old asphalt was scratched and new laid, without informing anyone from “Crnagoraput” in advance), so without great delay and patience it was not possible to go towards Ulcinj, Petrovac or Virpazar. In addition, the city in the center seems somewhat dilapidated, neglected, probably because of the “Izbor” department store, which is still only scrapped, and nothing is invested in it. The special “aroma” is added by dozens of pigeons who are not looking for where to unload their past work, as well as motorcyclists who are noisier (and ruder) than ever.
* * *
Not so long ago, one of the main export businesses of Montenegro was the exploitation of stone from Volujica. I don’t know if the stone is still sailing for Italy, only Volujica looks broken. And it seems as if at any moment it will split in half and sink into the sea, like the “Titanic”.
* * *
The cult of Russia has been nurtured in our family for years. When he was in Leningrad, in the early seventies, my father went from one elderly Leningrader to another, asking them if they had been in Leningrad during the Nazi siege in World War II. When an old man told him that he did, he gave him a new, unpacked shirt that he had brought with him from Bar. In the early nineties, when I was in Moscow for the first time, he made me take a rose to Stalin’s grave, behind Lenin’s mausoleum on Red Square. My father believed that it was only thanks to the Soviet Union that the greatest evil in the history of mankind – fascism – was defeated. His loyalty and gratitude to the USSR were boundless.
I am not sure that some of the Russians who have settled in Bar in recent years are true representatives of that heroic Soviet Union and the “motherland” of Russia…
* * *
I wish I could eat strawberries that smell like strawberries and taste like strawberries. This small, red, berry-like one, which we buy at the bar market and in stores, is woody and completely tasteless.
* * *
As soon as I saw that they were charging 1.7 euros for a coffee capsule in the room, I knew that in the hotel with a patriotic name, in Bečići, regardless of the friendly and helpful staff, a philandering mentality prevails.
But I fell, I killed myself…
* * *
I don’t know if my ancestors had anything to do with bandits, but our family has been functioning for years on the principle of Đurđevdan and Mitrovdan, meetings and farewells…
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