Budva, Montenegro
Sunday, July 31, 2011
I'm developing a theory: 'That there is a direct correlation between how much of an arsehole you are and how bad your driving is'. This theory has been brought about by a horrific bus trip we had to endure from Dubrovnik to Budva. I don't have a problem with transport being late, let's face it, I'm on a 3 month holiday, I'm hardly in a big rush to get anywhere important. Therefore I wasn't worried that the bus was more than an hour late, what did bother me was that the two drivers/arseholes were arrogant, mean and a little bit creepy right off the bat. First they ignored you when you tried to pay them to put your bags under the bus (also something that isn't ideal, but I don't really have a problem with it), they just looked right through you while smoking a cigarette, meanwhile there are 45 eager travellers all trying to put their bags under the bus so they can finally get on the bloody thing. When that was finally done and they had smoked some more cigarettes, yelled in Croatian at some more hapless backpackers and spoken gruffly into their mobile phones a bit more, we lurched off at supersonic speed and pretty much didn't slow down until we all got there, white-knuckled and raw-nerved 3 hours later
. This wouldn't have been so much of a problem if this lack of slowing down had been on a freeway or the like, but we had to cross a border, encounter mountains (often with no side-rails at all) with sheer cliffs on one side (the side we were on naturally). We also had to deal with trucks who would have slowed the average Joe (read 'normal, sane driver') down. This bus overtook lines and line of cars/buses/trucks on blind corners (ignoring the well deserved road rage that ensued), didn't slow down much to go around hairpin bends when there was a 200 metre drop into the ocean to contend with had we for any reason had to swerve, brake etc and just pushed in front of queues of people who had been patiently waiting at the border.
Quirky Balkan habit # 1: No tipping of the glass when pouring a beer. The beer if poured from bottle to glass is simply glugged in as if pouring a bottle of water so approximately 80% of the beer is just a big, frothy head. I bet they think we're pretty odd when we tip up the glass to get what we consider the perfect head to beer ratio of 5% head too though...
Quirky Balkan habit # 2: Small towels. We have not been given a towel bigger than a hand towel since we've been here. A bath mat would be bigger than the towels we've been using so far. And considering you're sharing a bathroom a lot of the time there's no covering yourself up with a hand towel, that's for sure!
