The Apartment I Rented In Tivat, Montenegro During My 2009 Bike Tour Across Europe

My apartment in Tivat, Montenegro was probably the worst place I stayed in all of Europe. Surprisingly though, this had nothing to do with the city of Tivat or the apartment building itself. The main problem with the place was that the Internet hardly ever worked… and for someone life myself who relies on the Internet to make a living, not having a good Internet connection makes for a miserable time.

I spent a month-and-a-half living in Tivat, Montenegro during the summer of 2009 and I while Montenegro slowly grew on me, I was glad to say goodbye to the poorly connected apartment building I was staying in.

The photos below show my temporary home in Tivat, Montenegro. Here I am (below) standing in the driveway of the apartment building in which I was staying. As you can see, it had just recently rained. It rained a lot when I was in Montenegro. It was also extremely hot the entire time I was there.

When the Internet went out (which seemed to happen about two times per day) I’d have to call the owner of the apartment building (or his son, who spoke better English and was about my same age) and ask him to come over and reset the router. The router was located in a locked room in the basement area of the apartment, so each time the router shut off the owner would have to come back over and reset it. Sometimes, when resetting the router didn’t work, the owner of the apartment building would have to call the Internet company and they’d do something on there end before the Internet would turn back on again.

During my stay in Montenegro, the Internet literally went out hundreds of times… and I made an astronomical number of calls to the apartment owner and his son to complain about the situation. I know they must have hated me for calling them so often, but I needed to work and without the Internet I couldn’t do a thing. It was a really frustrating situation – both for myself and for the man who owned the apartment building.

This is the hallway inside the apartment building. The building was three stories tall, with one level below ground and two levels above ground. My apartment was located on the first floor, in the middle of the building, with no view whatsoever. The door on the left side of this photo was where I entered into my apartment. The door on the right was where the grandmother of the apartment owner was living. She was a little old woman who didn’t speak a word of English and hardly ever went anywhere. Every time I would return to the apartment she was sitting in a chair just outside the apartment building. I would wave at her and she’d say something to me in Serbian (which I pretended to understand), and then I would retreat into my apartment.

This was the main living area. There was way too much furniture in there for such a small space, and just like my apartment in Croatia, the television didn’t actually work. There was Internet however, but the cord that came out of the wall was only about four feet long, so in order to use the Internet I had to prop my computer up against the television stand and work from there. It was not a comfortable work environment to say the least.

Just like most of the apartments I rented in Europe, my pad in Montenegro had a kitchenette where I was able to store and cook my food. There was only one tiny cooking pot, however, and its handle was completely broken off. The pot was so small I could barely cook a single meal for myself inside of it. I ate a lot of pasta, chocolate, yogurt and juice while living in Montenegro. The bread in Montenegro is the worst I have ever had in my entire life. In fact, after leaving Montenegro I didn’t eat bread for at least six months because the sheer thought of eating bread again made me want to vomit.

The best part about the apartment in Montenegro was the bathroom and bedroom. Both were extremely nice.

Because it was so hot most of the time that I was in Montenegro, I kept the curtains in the bedroom closed so as to keep in dark and cool inside the apartment.

The other annoying thing about my apartment in Montenegro was that once a week a cleaning lady would come to the apartment in the early morning hours (when I was still asleep) and wake me up. I would then walk to the beach with my pajamas still on, spend about an hour there reading a book or writing in my journal, and then come back to the apartment and fall asleep for a little while longer. I hated it when the cleaning lady came. Not only did she not need to come that often (because I was keeping the place clean myself), but she certainly didn’t have to come so early in the morning. Because I was there for a month-and-a-half, the cleaning lady came at least six times, and toward the end of my stay in Montenegro I really began to dread the days when the cleaning lady came to wake me from my slumber.

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