Djamila Grossman for The New York Times
A scene at one of the many bars on Bokeska Street in Podgorica.
For more than a decade after the breakup of Yugoslavia, Montenegro — the smallest of the country's six republics — seemed to hold no place in the traveler's mind beyond that of Serbia's little sidekick. Now independent since 2006, the Adriatic nation sandwiched between Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Albania is quickly enticing Western travelers with a promising mix of history, beauty and culture. And for many English-speakers the country remains a largely unknown gem — a Croatia before Croatia was cool.
Connect With Us on Twitter
Follow @nytimestravel for tips, features and photography from all over the globe.
Djamila Grossman for The New York Times
A view of Podgorica from Gorica, the hill that gives the city its name.
It certainly has a lot to offer: a 180-mile-long coast whittled with spectacular ports like the walled towns of Budva and Kotor, immense valleys and dawdling rivers seasoned with wild water chestnuts. Few visitors spend much time in Podgorica, Montenegro's pocket-size capital, because opinions like "not much there for tourists" creep into the reviews. But during my two visits to Montenegro over the last year, I found Podgorica to be surprisingly pleasant, with lively cafes, intriguing neighborhoods and no shortage of charms and moving encounters.
My connecting flight from Paris touched down on a sunny afternoon last fall at the Aerodrom Podgorica, code TGD, a reminder of Yugoslavia's Communist days when the city was known as Titograd. From the air I had squinted through the piercing glare of Lake Skadar, a national park, to absorb the terrifying peaks of the 8,000-foot-high Prokletije mountains that marked the Albanian border. Montenegro, or Crna Gora in Montenegrin, means "black mountain," and the rugged fastness of the landscape makes the name an obvious choice. Yet everything below me was so green, a patchwork of rolling farmland stitched together with rivers and creeks. It felt like flying into a Balkan Montana.
Podgorica, pronounced PAWD-go-ree-tsa, was no Bozeman but a place burbling with progress all the same. NATO had bombed the areas around the airport in 1999 when Serbs used it as a regrouping area after raids into neighboring Kosovo. Montenegro was largely spared much of the NATO wrath because Milo Djukanovic, who was president of Montenegro at the time, worked to distance his country from the Serbs during the war. By 2006, a majority of Montenegrins voted to part ways with Serbia for good, and the breakup happened peacefully.
"It was like a marriage that just wasn't working," Ninoslav Markovic, a Podgorica native who studied tourism in the World Heritage city of Kotor, told me later. "There was some anger but no big fight."
I struggled to spot any signs of the conflict on the ride into the city. Shiny BMWs and Mercedeses glided along a well-sealed road, past roundabouts, furniture stores and mechanic shops. Most of the buildings were squat, soulless apartment complexes with splashes of color from laundry draped over balconies. A donkey pulled a wood cart along the shoulder.
In searching for a place to stay I zeroed in on the Hotel Crna Gora, built in 1953, once the finest hotel in Podgorica. Back in the day it had been a place for the Communist Party elite. Looking at it now I saw little more than a drab concrete cube but quickly realized this was special in its own right. It had a bright lobby and dim hallways enlivened with long licks of red carpet. Over the decades the hotel had become a mini-repository for paintings by eminent Montenegrin and Yugoslav artists like Petar Lubarda and Milo Milunovic. My room had a creaky but comfortable bed next to an antique radio that probably wasn't intended to be an antique.
The hotel will become a Hilton, and since my visit, construction crews have demolished large portions of the hotel as part of a $56 million renovation project. The new Hilton Podgorica Crna Gora is scheduled to open in May 2015 and will have 200 rooms, a spa and seven conference rooms. The artwork and some of the original stone facade will all be preserved, Zarko Buric, the owner of the rebranded hotel, assured me in an e-mail. "The new hotel will maintain flair of old Hotel Crna Gora," he wrote, but I couldn't help but feel a little glum. Hiltons are everywhere. Communist throwbacks — even a "Stalinist dump" like this one, as one TripAdvisor user said — are disappearing fast.
Anda sedang membaca artikel tentang
Next Stop: Uncovering Charms in Montenegro’s Capital
Dengan url
http://travelwisatawan.blogspot.com/2013/09/next-stop-uncovering-charms-in.html
Anda boleh menyebar luaskannya atau mengcopy paste-nya
Next Stop: Uncovering Charms in Montenegro’s Capital
namun jangan lupa untuk meletakkan link
Next Stop: Uncovering Charms in Montenegro’s Capital
sebagai sumbernya
0 komentar:
Posting Komentar