On the road with Norm

Norm has a chequered past. He originates from the UK; I'm not sure of his precise lineage but he is of the Ford family. His recent history is quite tumultuous, in particular the replacement of his engine in Port Grimaud, France.

I was pleased to make the acquaintance of Norm in Zadar. He provided plenty of comfort with 3 of us on board. He wasn't a huge fan of the hills though. The Bastow-pioneered way of travelling up inclines was to 'just tractor'. It was actually a real pleasure to pop him into 2nd gear and just mosey on up the hills.

Norm sure saw some great scenery in the last coupla weeks we were travelling together. The Adriatic coast was breathtaking; one could not decide whether to gaze out to sea or look up into the precipitous mountains.

The back road from Sarajevo to Dubrovnik was a real gem. It started with a AU$0.60 espresso (for serious). It continued through a series of luscious green valleys, speckled with limestone cliffs and outcrops, then opened up into some 'proper' mountains, some with snow atop. Norm was happy uphill as long as he was just tractoring. I was astounded by the scenery. I had no expectations - all I knew about Bosnia was the little I knew about its conflicts - so I was taken away with the beauty of the countryside. At a roadside lunch stop I looked at all the ridgelines above me, and I though how great it would be to go hiking here. No crowds, and much cheaper than Western Europe. The daydreams were somewhat quelled by the ongoing existence (so we had been told) of land mines in Bosnia.

Down out of the mountains, a policeman in the form of a Bosnian Jean-Claude Van Damme pulled us over, eventually pointed to my bare feet and the front of he car, and asked for 20€. When I walked over to their car with a 50 in my hand, he pulled an enormous wad of cash out of his wallet (is that your lunch money officer?), and got 30€ change ready. I proceeded to ask for a slip of paper, hoping they'd either not bother wih the bribe whoops I mean fine at all, or at least make it legit. They deliberated for some time, wrote me a slip of paper, and instructed us to go back to the Gacko post office to pay. Which we did: 15€, the correct conversion. During this time, they also felt the need to keep all three of our passports.

Returning to the police on the road, said BJCVD was going nuts and pointing at the front of the car. We had no idea what we was banging on about, but eventually figured out that our lights had not been on when they should have been. Well, this finally explained one half of the initial fine, but now they wanted to fine us again for the same offence! I just sat by their car, acted polite as I could, and sat there moving my hands and pointing and all that, until he eventually gave back our passports and told us to keep going. All in all, a loss of and hour or two's time, but at least we injected 15€ into the Bosnian economy rather than pay for a months worth of coffees for BJCVD and co.

Down at Dubrovnik, we paid a fortune for the only camp ground around, but I would not have skipped a visit of Dubrovnik's old town for anything. Dubrovnik is an absolute jewel. As Branka had suggested, right up there with Venice. They seemed similar to me in several ways: absolutely lovely, but I couldn't spend too much time there unless I was rolling in cash, and there with a partner. Dubrovnik fended off the Ottoman Turks, and many other aggressors, for centuries, and remained its own city state for a remarkable amount of time. When you see the city walls it's easy to imagine how they managed this. I sweet talked my way into a heavily discounted student ticket, and spent a couple of hours circling the walls.

The following days were spent at a more relaxed pace, with another night in the south of Croatia, before entering Montenegro. We knew nothing about Montenegro, but all three of us thought that they seemed a mostly unhappy (outwardly, at least) people. A few of them did open and smile once we talked a bit. There is obviously a huge amount of money going into Montenegro. This is evidenced in all the buildings popping up. We drove straight through the larger town of Budva - it looked disgusting. Any charm it may have had is being eaten up by the consumers desire for more, bigger, better. By chance, we happened across a lovely little campground away from all the Paris Hilton look at me's, where we spent a couple of nights. It was holiday mode - lazing around at the rocky beach, with all the Montenegrans, Serbs and their deck chairs. We saw next to no foreigners in Montenegro; most other countries have plenty of travelling Euro's in them (e.g. Germans on the Croatian coast!)

From Montenegro it was time to say farewell to Norm, and thus Adam and Dezarae also. We'd only been together for about ten days, but on account of them being held up for four weeks to mend Norm, they'd missed out on more of central Europe than they would have liked. So while they are ferrying over to Italy, I am continuing east.