In my last post I referred to our retreat from Kotor before the NATO bombing campaign. From 1998 to 2004 we spent part of our summers in Kotor either running or teaching at a journalism summer school that had attendees from all the different ethnicities of the Western Balkans. It was one of the most rewarding projects we undertook, and, as a bonus, it meant spending time in Kotor, on the Montenegrin coast.
Kotor sits at the end of a deep and complicated fjord Boka Kotorska, an inlet from the Adriatic Sea. It’s not really a fjord; fjords are glacier made and there were no glaciers here. The Boka is a series of “ria”. A network of deep river canyons that were filled in as the Mediterranean rose. But everyone calls it a fjord. The Bay has two inner arms; a narrow strait separates them from two outer arms. The entrance meanders from those arms to the southeast. The Northeastern point of the Boka is in Croatia. On a map it almost looks like two figure eights on top of each other. The sail in and sail out are spectacular, going past little villages, churches and farms before reaching Kotor at the very end. The tallest mountain on the bay is over 6,000 feet.
The Boka was a cultural flashpoint during the Great Schism of 1054, the border between Catholic Dalmatia, influenced by Venice, and Orthodox Serbia, influenced by the Byzantines. It has remained a cultural mixing point. Rule switched between Byzantine, Serbian, and Venetian. For it while it was a free city. Kotor was a center for the salt trade and was known as a protected place of law and order, aided by its sheltered and easily defended location. At a narrow point of the Boka a boom chain could be pulled tight protecting the bay from invaders. It was initially built to protect against Venetians, and then used by them to protect Kotor from Ottomans.
Rivel powers were not the only threat to Kotor. In the 13 hundreds the black death arrived with rats on ships. Kotor claims that its cats attacked the rats as they left the ships and kept Kotor healthy. While there is no actual historical evidence of this, it is a favorite Kotor legend so cats are well cared for, people leave out food, water and boxes for them to sleep in, and celebrate them with a Cat Museum and a cat shop.
In 1420 Kotor recognized Venetian rule, but parts of the Boka became part of Ottoman Bosnia and parts was still Orthodox Serbian. The town of Kotor became a Catholic city where the language was Italian but it had a Slavic speaking Orthodox and sometimes Muslim hinterland. It was in this period, during Venice’s rule, when the walled city took its present form. In the 1600s the whole Boka came under the Venetians. In 1797 the area was ceded to the Habsburgs. For the next several years the Boka changed hands, Austria, France, Montenegro, and Austrian again although heavily under the influence of Montenegro, which attacked again during World War I.
The Scala of Kotor refers to two routes between Kotor and Cetinje, the capital of Montenegro. The first route was a foot trail with steps. The second, a road built by Austrian engineers in the 19th century that climbs more than 3320 feet to Lovćen, now a national park that has the tomb of in 25 hairpin turns. The Lovćen area is the home of Petar II Petrović-Njegoš, the Prince-Bishop who ruled Montenegro from 1830 t9 1851, united the different tribes and clans, and wrote Montenegro’s national epic poem “The Mountain Wreath.” Someone once asked Njegoš how long it took to travel from Kotor to Cetinje. “For a friend, 6 hours, for an enemy, a lifetime.” Njegoš mausoleum is on top of the second highest mountain in Lovćen. He directed it to be on that peak because he could not assume that a leader greater than he would not come along after him and deserve the high ground. The Highest peak now has a suite of TV and FM antennae. I put some of them there on a tower built under Tito in 1957. Suzi and I drove this many times, sometimes twice weekly as we commuted between our office in Podgorica and the Summer School in Kotor. We could have taken the more modern highway but loved this drive.
With only a day in Kotor there is so much we wanted to show our family. We opted to take them on the cable car, which flew above the Scala to Lovćen in 11 minutes, wander there for a while and then go back to the old walled city. Holland America provided the sail-in and sail-out through most of the length of the Boka, so that was taken care of for us.
We anchored off the town of Prcanj. I posted a picture on Facebook and almost immediately got a comment from a friend in town saying, “I am waving at you.” We waved back although I doubt we could see each other. She wanted to know if we could have a coffee but I told her this day was dedicated to family. Before the day was over, I had other offers
