Memories and hints of a travelling IT professional.
I came into contact with the Albanian language three times – in Albania, Montenegro and Kosovo (it is also official language in North Macedonia). Every time I had the same feeling like with Dutch: I can read it and understand quite a lot, but listening to somebody speaking it I can’t even separate the words in my head. It is an Indo-European language with 7.6 million speakers around the world.
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The Aerodrom Podgorica is the small airport of the capital city of Montenegro. It is located nine kilometers outside of Podgorica, Montenegro and can only be reached by taxi, rental car, and an hourly running bus. But as the costs for a taxi ride to city are about 6 Euros this is pretty acceptable.
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Montenegro (or Црна Гора/Crna Gora, black mountains) is a young state on the Balkans which became independent only in 2006 (before that it was part of the federation of Serbia and Montenegro, before that it was part of Yugoslavia). It is a country that is mostly unknown to western Europeans; if they get here then mostly, they get to the Adriatic coast or by cruise ship to the UNESCO world heritage site Kotor.
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Yes, Podgorica is the capital city of Montenegro. But it doesn’t feel like a capital city. It is a town with 150,00 inhabitants and rather a silent capital. It has many green places, the buildings like in many areas very old and gray. The name means ‘at the foot of the hill’ but a lot people still know the city under another name: Titograd. Between 1918 and 1992 Podgorica belonged to Yugoslavia and was named like this to honour Josip Broz Tito who was communist prime minister and president of Yugoslavia.
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Not far from the city of Podgorica, Montenegro on hill Dajbabska Gora you can find a radio tower built between 2008 and 2011, the Toranj na Dajbabskoj Gori. It became one of the towns landmarks and can be seen from everywhere – especially when it is lighted up at night. It is 55 meters high and many people visit it.
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The Ramada hotel at Podgorica, Montenegro is an absolute alien. A modern, futuristic building between rather unrenovated Soviet style residential buildings. It is the opposite of living like a local in this region of the capital city. I should have avoided this hotel therefore, but I loved it instead for different reasons: I arrived late in the evening at the bus station of Podgorica close to the railway station – from there it was an easy walk within eight minutes to the hotel.
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If you’re a real soccer aficionado you’ll have to watch the games also while on the road. Unless you fell in love with the really big clubs in the world this is sometimes pretty hard. As a fan of the SV Werder Bremen I’ll sometimes have to search a little bit more until I find a bar that shows Bundesliga and the matches of my club. But it is always worth the the effort – watching German soccer in another country is always fun.
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Between the Dvorac Petrovića and the unusual resurrection cathedral – but also not far away from the University of Crne Gore at Podgorica, Montenegro you can have a pitstop at the ‘PG akademija piva‘. It’s a brewery and a large restaurant serving not only craft beer but also great and very priceworthy food.
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The Cathedral of the Resurrection of Christ at Podgorica, Montenegro is a special one. It was consecrated only in 2013 after 10 years of construction works and belongs to the Serbian orthodox church. It is a shiny new church that comes with all the pomp an orthodox church needs to have.
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You shouldn’t expect too much when reading about the king’s palace at Podgorica, Montenegro. It is a nice building within the Kruševac park near river Morača, it was built in 1891 and became the winter palace of king Nikola of Montenegro. Later the building was used as a school, a hospital and today it is a museum.
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