Zabljak, Crna Gora

By the beginning of November I was expecting the weather to start turning cold in Belgrade, but it was still t-shirt weather. So I took advantage of the opportunity to visit Durmitor National Park in Crna Gora. I went with my Serbian professor Natacha, who is friends with a guy that used to be the head forester at the park.

The first day we hiked around Crno Jezero, and were lucky enough to still have sunny weather. The second day we went on a more ambitious hike, but had so much fog that we never actually saw the lake we were hiking to. On the way back we met a shepherd who told us that it sounded like we’d made it all the way to the lake. Amusingly enough, while we were talking to him, his cell phone rang. Even toothless old shepherds in Serbia have cell phones.

That night we got half a meter of snow, and it kept on falling for the next 48 hours. I walked back to Crna Jezera to see it in the snow. Unfortunately there’s no skiing there until New Years, but it was at least breathtakingly beautiful.

On Wednesday I got to experience village life in the raw when Misa killed a pig. The next day was devoted to processing pig parts in the kitchen—mostly rendering fat. During breakfast I tried to distract myself from the smell by pretending I was in anatomy class (hmm... those look like kidneys)... At that point I decided it was time to go back to civilization.