Bar: A Train to the Capital and a Colder Sea

By the second week in Bar, the map had started to stretch. Stari Bar and the old olive tree are still waiting uphill for a cooler morning; this week the heat sent us a different direction, inland to the capital and out into the water instead.

The first days were mostly coastal: the apartment, the promenade, the beach, the gym, the grocery stores, the places we could reach on foot before the heat built. This week widened the frame. We took the train inland to Podgorica, spent the Fourth of July at Čanj Beach, settled into the slow Sunday life of the Šušanj promenade, and spent more time than expected solving one of the practical realities of long-term travel: how to keep eating well when every country changes the rules of the grocery aisle.

The train to Podgorica begins modestly, though it belongs to a much larger story. The Belgrade-Bar railway was initiated by Josip Broz Tito in the early 1950s, and the terrain was difficult enough that trains could not run the full length until 1976. Tito rode the ceremonial opening aboard his presidential Blue Train on May 28, 1976, marking the end of a twenty-five-year construction project. The finished line runs about 476 kilometers through 254 tunnels and over 400 bridges, and it is still considered one of the more demanding rail corridors built in twentieth-century Europe. We were only riding the short coastal-to-capital portion, from Šušanj to Podgorica, but even that gave the day a different shape.

Šušanj does not have a grand station. It has more of a quiet roadside stop, the kind of place where you stand with locals and wait until the train appears. When it came, it looked very much like something from another era: old, utilitarian, a little worn, and still doing its job. There was no air-conditioning, just windows propped open for airflow, which gave the whole ride a practical, lived-in quality that suited the route.

The ticket was 2.80 euros each way. The ride took about ninety minutes, and partway through, an attendant moved through the cars checking and selling tickets. We crossed the northern edge of Lake Skadar, a body of water that keeps appearing in the geography of this region. At the end of July we will spend a night in Shkodër, on the Albanian side of that same broader lake region, as we move from Montenegro into Albania. For now, we passed it from the train window, between Bar and the capital, watching the coast give way to inland heat and lowland space.

Podgorica is not immediately charming in the way Kotor or Split are charming. It does not perform for the visitor. Its history helps explain why. The city was heavily damaged during the Second World War, rebuilt in the socialist Yugoslav period, renamed Titograd in 1946, and then returned to the name Podgorica in 1992. That sequence left a capital with older fragments, broad postwar streets, modern institutions, and a practical working-city feel.

Which, for our purposes, made sense. We were not going to Podgorica for a romantic day in the capital. We had errands.

First came Big Fashion, the mall, where we picked up a hat for Stephanie. Then a key shop, because our Airbnb had only one set of keys and long-stay life works better when both people can come and go without a small logistical conference. Then coffee at Doppio, which turned out to be excellent. Espresso-based drinks here are smaller than their American equivalents, and a standard cappuccino usually includes one shot rather than two. We made ours doubles, and they still came to only 2.20 euros each. Whatever Podgorica lacks in charm, it makes up in price.

We stopped at a supplement shop to restock clean protein, had lunch at Green & Protein, crossed the Old Ribnica Bridge, climbed up to the remains of the Ribnica fortress, walked the Moscow Bridge for the best view of the Millennium Bridge, and went inside the Cathedral of the Resurrection of Christ.

By late afternoon we were ready for shade, so we stopped at Street Bar for cold drinks under jazz posters and low lighting, then caught the city bus back to the train station. The bus was 0.90 euros each. The train home was another 2.80. By evening, we were back in Bar, having done a capital-city day for the price of routine errands.

Our assessment is that Podgorica felt underwhelming for a capital city. It is clearly a full-fledged city, with enough scale that we combined buses and walking to get around, but it was quieter than we expected. There was less bustle, less street-level energy, and more empty space between points of interest than we had anticipated. Some of that may have been the heat. Podgorica sits inland and runs hot in July, and the heat wave we had been living under may have pushed much of the city indoors.

Graffiti and a general lack of polish were part of the day too, one piece of Podgorica's story rather than the whole of it. For us, one well-planned day was enough to see the main sites, handle practical errands, and understand the capital as a useful contrast to the coast.

A month in one place has this advantage: Bar is not isolated. It is quieter than the capital, cheaper and plainer than the more polished parts of the coast, but the train keeps the interior within reach. A long-stay base does not have to contain everything. It only needs to connect well enough to what it lacks.

Čanj Beach was the week's other excursion, and a much simpler one: no errands, no capital-city itinerary, just a bus ride to the water.

Čanj is a small, family-friendly beach village in Bar Municipality, built around a long crescent of rose-hued pebbles known locally as the Pearl Coast. Organized tourism began here in the 1970s, with modest cottages and small hotel complexes built for package holidaymakers from Western Europe and elsewhere in Yugoslavia. The 1990s sanctions years hit the town hard, and recovery only picked up after the Sozina Tunnel opened in 2005, cutting the Podgorica-Bar drive by roughly 25 kilometers, followed by Montenegro's 2006 independence, which opened the door to new investment. The InterContinental project underway now is the latest chapter in that recovery, but the town is still a beach village at its core: cafés, umbrellas, families, and sea.

The main beach runs for roughly 1.2 kilometers, with clear water and an easy swimming environment. It also has a local reputation for a favorable microclimate, shaped by the meeting of sea and mountain air. That sounded pleasant in theory. On our visit, it arrived with force.

We had just come through an overnight wind storm, and the wind was still pushing hard from land toward sea. In Montenegro and along the broader Adriatic, that kind of offshore blast is often associated with the bura, a cold, dry katabatic wind that descends from the mountains toward the water. When it pushes warm surface water away from shore, colder water from deeper below rises to replace it. The result, even on a hot July day, can be a sea that feels startlingly cold.

That was the day we got. The sun was strong, the gusts were still arriving, and the water was clear and much colder than expected. So we did what everyone else seemed to be doing: waded in, braced ourselves, took the plunge, and came back out completely cooled down.

One of the harder parts of this nomadic year has not been language, transportation, or even the repeated arrival-and-reset cycle. It has been food.

Not food in the restaurant sense. We have had memorable meals across the year, from Turkish lahmacun to Croatian pašticada to family-run tables we couldn't name if we tried. The harder part is the plain food that sustains a week: oatmeal, yogurt, peanut butter, protein powder, bread, eggs, fruit, vegetables, coffee, olive oil, pantry items, and the small ingredients that let an apartment kitchen function.

At home, we had grown used to shelves full of clean-ingredient options from familiar brands. Not perfect options, and certainly not effortless ones, but enough selection that we could make informed choices. Abroad, the calculation changes. Each country has different brands. Labels are in different languages. Product availability shifts from city to city. A familiar item in one country disappears in the next. Every grocery run becomes part shopping, part translation exercise, part compromise.

Our general rule is straightforward: fewer ingredients, recognizable ingredients, and as little unnecessary processing as possible. Oatmeal should be oats. Peanut butter should be peanuts and salt. Yogurt should be milk and live cultures. Bread should not require a chemistry lesson.

That sounds easy until you are standing in a grocery aisle in a small coastal town, scanning labels with your phone. Part of the difficulty is structural: European and American regulators start from different assumptions about what counts as guilty until proven safe versus innocent until proven harmful, and neither approach makes a foreign grocery aisle simpler to read.

This week we found a better answer in Bar. A small boutique shop called Organic by Cosmetics carried more of the clean-ingredient products we had been missing. It was on the other side of town, so we took the bus, stocked up, and rode back with groceries. It cost more than the standard supermarket and took a few hours out of the day, but it meant we could eat the way we actually want to eat.

The same pattern drove part of our Podgorica trip. Finding protein powder we were comfortable consuming required research, a capital-city shop, and a transit day folded around other practical needs.

Living local for a month means you are not eating every meal out and calling it culture. You are trying to build a life, and a life needs repeatable systems: keys, groceries, protein, buses, backup plans, a place that sells peanut butter that isn't filled with sugar and seed oil.

The trade-off is clear. In a larger European city, some of this would be easier. In Bar, it takes more effort. But Bar also gives us a smaller-town pace, lower costs, a ten-minute walk to the sea, and the kind of summer life that still observes Sunday as something close to rest. Every long-stay choice has a cost. The work is knowing which costs are worth paying.

The most interesting parts of Podgorica are not concentrated into one polished historic core. They sit in fragments: a stone bridge near the confluence of two rivers, an Ottoman-era fortress above it, a modern cable-stayed bridge across the Morača, a Soviet singer's statue in a riverside park, a monumental Orthodox cathedral with a twenty-first-century interior that feels both traditional and startlingly modern.

The Old Ribnica Bridge sits where the Ribnica River meets the Morača. It is believed to be the oldest bridge in Podgorica, and local tourism sources connect it to the Roman-era layers of the city. Nearby, the Ribnica fortress, also known as Depedogen, stands above the confluence, associated with Ottoman rule and the old Stara Varoš quarter, though the site also carries deeper medieval associations in local memory. It is not presented like a major museum complex. It is simply there, rough and low, absorbed into the capital's everyday topography. That combination, old stone beside modern function, is Podgorica at its best.

The two river crossings tell the story from opposite directions. The Millennium Bridge opened on July 13, 2005, Montenegro's National Day, a cable-stayed structure spanning 173 meters with a single 57-meter pylon, built as a statement about the country's future rather than its past. The Moscow Bridge, a pedestrian span about 105 meters long, was a gift from the city of Moscow, officially opened in December 2008, and it exists mainly to give people a place to stand and look at the Millennium Bridge properly.

On the western bank stands a bronze monument to Vladimir Vysotsky, the Soviet singer-songwriter, poet, and actor. The statue was unveiled in October 2004, sculpted by Alexander Taratinov, who also made a nearby monument to Pushkin. Vysotsky visited Montenegro in the 1970s and wrote a poem about it; the monument's pedestal carries lines from that poem, in which he regrets not being able to call the country his second homeland. It is a small, specific trace of Cold War-era cultural ties turning up in an unexpected corner of a Balkan riverbank.

Then there is the Cathedral of the Resurrection of Christ. From the outside, the cathedral is massive and pale, with rough-hewn stone, twin towers, and a form that draws from Byzantine, Romanesque, and local medieval influences. Inside, the effect changes completely: gold-backed frescoes, mosaics, chandeliers, marble, and stone fill the space from floor to ceiling. Construction began in 1993 and the cathedral was consecrated on October 7, 2013, timed to the 1,700th anniversary of the Edict of Milan. The building belongs to Montenegro's post-Yugoslav present more than to any medieval one. Its twin towers rise nearly 27 meters, and the loft holds 17 bells, the largest weighing about 11 tons, the largest bell on the Balkan Peninsula.

It has also drawn attention for one controversial fresco near the entrance, which depicts figures including Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, and Josip Broz Tito in hell. The building doubles as a modern Orthodox statement in a country still carrying the political, religious, and cultural afterlife of the twentieth century.

For visitors moving through Montenegro by coast alone, Podgorica can seem easy to dismiss. But the capital tells a different story from the seaside towns. It is less picturesque, more practical, more visibly shaped by rupture and rebuilding. Its cultural value is not in charm. It is in the seams.

Week two gave us a good working picture of Bar's value as a base.

The Podgorica day trip was the clearest example. From Šušanj to Podgorica, the train cost 2.80 euros per person each way. Local buses in Podgorica were 0.90 euros per ride. A double cappuccino at Doppio was 2.20 euros. Lunch at Green & Protein was 8.50 euros per bowl. For a capital-city errand day involving transportation, coffee, lunch, shopping, key copies, sightseeing, and a cold drink, the core costs stayed manageable.

Čanj Beach was similarly straightforward. The bus from Bar was 2 euros per person each way. Lunch at Optimum Gastro Bar, just off the beach, came to 28 euros for a beer, a cider, two burgers with fries, and two cappuccinos. At the beach bar, a quarter-bottle of wine (187 ml) was 4.50 euros. The better move was not to rent a full beach setup, but to order a drink and take a shaded table or chairs under a palapa. It is a small move, but it is the one that makes a summer beach day work.

The larger cost this week was time. A clean grocery run across town, a bus ride to a specialty store, a capital-city supplement errand, label translation, planning around Sunday closures, and choosing which products are worth paying more for all take time. That time cost is real, even when the euro cost is reasonable.

This is the main difference between visiting and living. A visitor mostly asks, "What should we see?" A long-stay traveler asks, "Can we build a repeatable week here?"

In Bar, the answer is yes, with trade-offs. The sea is close. The promenade is easy. Local buses are cheap. Coffee is affordable. Beach days do not have to be expensive. But specialty products take work, and Sunday closures matter. Many shops, grocery stores, and bakeries are closed on Sundays, which changes how you plan arrival days, grocery days, and meal prep.

We have learned not to arrive in a new place on a Sunday if we can avoid it. Better to move on another day, stock the kitchen, and let Sunday remain what it is meant to be: worship, rest, a slow walk, a beach day, a long coffee, a smaller radius. In Montenegro, that older rhythm is still embedded enough in daily life that you feel it practically, not just spiritually.

The best food discovery this week may not have been a dish as much as a tempo.

Sunday on the Šušanj promenade has its own pace. People take tables in the shade of the pines and umbrellas, order coffee, and stay. Children move between the adults and the water. Someone goes in for a swim. Someone else orders another drink. Conversation stretches. People watch the promenade without seeming to wait for anything.

We had a slow coffee at Caffe Corso, walked the promenade, then stopped at Forest for a savory crepe overlooking the sea. In the Balkans, the pancake category is broader than the American breakfast version. It can be sweet or savory, folded and filled, casual enough for a seaside lunch but substantial enough to count. Ours fit the day: unfussy, affordable, eaten in the shade with the water in view.

Later we picked up fresh berries from a sidewalk vendor and brought them home.

That kind of day is easy to undercount. No major site. No formal restaurant. No special reservation. But it may explain more about summer in Bar than any single attraction does. The promenade is not just a walkway. It is a public living room stretched along the sea.

The better grocery discovery came at Bar's farmers market. Supermarkets here can be uneven for fresh produce, with smaller selections and quality that varies more than we're used to in the United States. The market was different: more seasonal, more local, and noticeably fresher. It takes a little effort to get there and back with groceries, but we will go again.

The olives were the standout, and that should not have surprised us. Bar is olive country, and the local variety, Žutica, dominates it: nearly 90 percent of the region's olive oil comes from it, drawn from an estimated 100,000 olive trees in and around Bar. Olive groves are part of the landscape here, and the market made that visible in a way the supermarket does not. We bought more than we needed and went through all of it before the week was out.

Since it was Independence Day in the U.S., we leaned American and had burgers at Optimum Gastro Bar, just off the beach: sun, cold beer, fries, coffee, and a bus ride back to Bar through summer traffic.

Dinner was simpler: a pizza slice and ice cream along the Šušanj promenade, followed by a movie night back at the apartment.

Not every food discovery has to be culturally significant. Some are just the meal that fits the day you are actually living.

Next week, Bar's older story finally moves to the center. We plan to walk the loop from Stari Bar through Turčini village to the Vrteljak Waterfall, sometimes called the Blue Lagoon, a roughly 5.5-kilometer trail that ties the old fortress town to a swimming spot in the hills above it. The route also passes the ruined medieval walls, the Ottoman aqueduct, and the Stara Maslina at Mirovica, the olive tree usually described as more than 2,000 years old. One walk, most of Bar's older history in a single morning.

July 13 is Montenegro's Statehood Day, marking two events: international recognition of Montenegrin independence at the 1878 Congress of Berlin, and the 1941 uprising against Italian occupation, one of the first armed revolts in occupied Europe. We expect to walk the promenade and take in whatever the town does to mark it.

Ulcinj is still on the list, timing undecided. And more beach days, which by now need no explanation.

Independence Day was burgers, beach, and a bus ride home in traffic, which is closer to how most Americans actually spend the holiday than any postcard version would suggest.

Podgorica gave us the sharper contrast. A capital renamed twice in one century, its skyline still anchored by a cathedral consecrated only in 2013, still fighting over its own communist past in a fresco inside it. Bar does not press that argument on you in the same way. The buses run on the same schedule, the beach fills the same way every evening, and nobody seems to be relitigating the twentieth century over coffee. After a day inside a capital still deciding what to make of its own history, a quiet evening on the Šušanj promenade felt like the better deal.

Two weeks in, Bar's case for itself is simple: it asks less of you than a capital city and gives back more of an actual week.

And as this dispatch goes out, we are thinking especially of Preston in Seattle. Happy birthday, son. We love you and miss you.

Until next week,
S&S

Some Great Place
Living local in a global world