Montenegro: Podgorica

Podgorica, Montenegro: beautiful, right?
see all photos »

During every trip there's always a day where nothing goes right and your plans are thrown out the window.  Count July 9th, the day of the World Cup Final, as that day.

We woke up in Budva around 8 a.m. and headed over to the bus station, anxious to head to Mostar, Bosnia - probably a six or seven hour ride away.  We were told there were no direct connections to Mostar from Budva (despite both being major cities) and that we were better off heading to Podgorica, the capital and largest city of Montenegro.

Bad Logistics Day...Really Bad

Podgorica, Montenegro: sweet montenegrian dreams
see all photos »

We took a bus to Podgorica, arriving around 10 a.m.  The city has over 130,000 residents, far more than any other Montenegrian city.  Further, it is the transportation hub of the region.  Amazingly, however, there was one connection to Mostar, and that was around 8 p.m., arriving at Mostar in the middle of the night.  And there was no way we were sitting around in Podgorica, a city with absolutely nothing worthwhile to see, until 8 p.m.

We started asking around and seeing where else we could connect to Mostar.  The popular opinion was that we should go to Herceg Novi and then back to Dubrovnik and onto Mostar.  This sounded pretty ridiculous to us, considering we would do some serious backtracking and probably not get to Mostar until the next morning, nevermind the fact that no one could give us any exact bus schedules.

Podgorica, Montenegro: front of the bus station
see all photos »

However, we decided to buy the ticket to Herceg Novi anyway and figure it out from there.  Well, we got on the bus, and a few minutes before the bus was about to depart, we had a change of heart and yanked our luggage out from the storage compartments and went back to the bus station for a refund.

We decided we would be better off taking the bus to Trebinje, a city in the Republica Srpska entity of Bosnia.  It would arrive in Trebinje during the early afternoon, and, being a large city in Bosnia, we figured it would definitely have frequent connections to Mostar.  Further, it was mentally much more satisfying since we would actually be in Bosnia and not waiting for some possibly non-existent bus from Croatia to Mostar.

Podgorica, Montenegro: yikes
see all photos »

So we went.  And our plan didn't exactly work out the way we wanted.