VAN LIFE DIFFICULTIES IN MONTENEGRO
all right we're out here enjoying this sun off this Lake a little vitamin D is something we needed we just had a Turkish coffee but I had to have some of the local beer and so this is domestic brood right here in mro Niko all right give it a taste tastes like beer tastes like beer so Kurt has moved on to beer I'm still on coffee don't worry but we are in the town of Reason r i n and we're going to take you and show you a few things in this town but a little sneak peek is this town is old not just 1200s or 1300s old like we've been seeing this town dates back to 400 BC and we're going to show you some artifacts from the 200s guys this is a really cool Town sitting on the edge of this beautiful Bay of cotor so let's get to [Music] it snow has told you that this town has some really old history but to be honest we've been fascinated with all the history since we started traveling Europe a few months ago in our van and it's really got both of us to thinking where did our families come from that's why we're so excited to be partnering with my Heritage to track down our family trees my Heritage is the sponsor of today's video they have over 19 billion documents on their site to help you find records of your family first thing I did was set up my account on my heritage.com and entered some basic information on my parents my grandparents and my siblings then I started getting all kinds of notification called instant discoveries that will let you add an entire Branch to your family tree it was really easy and really quick getting started now I was really interested in tracing my first ancestors that came to the US and where they came from in no time I found John follower senior born in 1747 and died in 1845 he was a soldier in the Revolutionary War I could even see a picture of his gravestone with his position in the military and then I got a matching record and it had his father's name on it and so I continued to trace the father's fathers up for about six more Generations following the matching records and the instant discoveries and there it was William fer born in 16006 in Derby England and died in 1660 in New Haven Connecticut I was pretty excited I called my mom and she was able to confirm enough of the research to know I was on the right Trail and she was even able to send me some awesome old timey pics of my ancestors speaking of of pictures I was able to find some in my research and using the my Heritage tool I was able to enhance and even animate some of the photos now if you guys know me I had to keep going and within a short time several Generations up I traced to Henry the Fowler after some quick research I learned Henry the fer my direct ancestor and part of my heritage 29 Generations my senior was the king of east frania from 919 until his death in 936 of course we searched the Google Map and found some of the historical sites from the era of his Reign that are still standing in modern-day Germany they are now on my bucket list and we will be visiting these sites in our van tracking down my Heritage been more meaningful to me than I would have ever imagined and I'm not done with instant discoveries now you guys can get your own my Heritage account too and get started with a 14-day free trial the link is in the video description and be sure to let us know how far back you were able to trace your family so I got up it's Sunday morning to walk around and maybe see if this town little didn't have a little Sunday morning market and as I walked up through the hills I saw obviously the stone Villages you guys know I love that and there are a lot of ruins here and one nice thing about seeing old structures in this state is you can see in them because the windows are off the shutters are off the doors are off and even though a lot of times the floors have decayed and rotted so you can't see all those those you can still kind of see the overall structure what the walls are made of and all that type of stuff and it's just really fascinating but as you look up in here you can see how wide how thick those walls are I'm guessing that's that's that's almost a well it's not a meter thick maybe 2/3 of a meter 2 ft thick maybe but look at this you can just see up in in here and you can see when you look at these places just the years that they've been fixed up and rehabbed because you get different kinds of stones some are really more just rough cut and then some you can see are actually formed so anyway I'm enjoying my walk this morning it's a bit crisp but another thing I've noticed about Montenegro as well as Croatia and really we started seeing in Italy is these are C countries and we have seen cats all over beautiful cats all over these Villages ge's jealous cuz these are free walkers but to be fair guys we do hear them fighting in the alleys in any event it's lovely seeing the cats as we walk around these Old Stone Villages and I assure you you know you might be thinking well you guys have seen a lot of these this one is different this one's unique as a lot of of them are but this has some specials touches I can't wait till me and snow get a chance to get out here and properly explore this and show this to you guys but right now I'm going to go on down to the market and pick out a little [Music] veg how much is this how much no how quo how much cost Quanto uh Euros how many euros all right I'm here at the market I scored me some good red peppers I got me some onions and I got me some of this cured meat not a m so from A View this is a beautiful beautiful beautiful stunning parking spot spot and there are some cars as you can see coming and going we're not far from the main road although we're not right on it but it kind of ends right here with this little coffee shop down here where we had coffee and a beer the other day but believe it or not for all the traffic and there are a lot of cars coming and going it really is a nice little spot to walk the kitties now it's not ideal but there are a couple strips of grass and there's a little quietness over here by the Waterfront which is not their favorite but the sun is shining and they always love the sunshine and they always love a walk and so it ain't too bad uhoh closed it's not open today well our plans for today just abruptly changed we uh We've chilled here for a couple of days and the whole time we've been planning on today which is a Monday walking over and seeing the really cool feature of this town but it's closed on Mondays but that's not such a bad thing because we were kind of up in the air on whether we'd stay here one more night or not and now yes we will stay one more night and we'll be there first thing in the morning when they open and then we'll head out so that means we're still going to see the really really really cool old feature that this town has it's going to see it tomorrow and now today we're going to go walk through town supposed to be a cool old Street and some Churches maybe a coffee or lunch or something who knows let's see what the day has in store so we've learned that on this journey in the more touristy cities the churches are open and sometimes even charge a fee and you have to have reservations to go in but sometimes in these rural areas we're only going to get to show you the outsides of these churches cuz they're just not set up for tourist traffic but this is a really pretty Church Kurt took a peek inside through the window said it's really ornate too so but the clock tower is magnificent so we left the church walked a couple hundred feet took a turn by a restaurant and stumbled onto this amazing incredibly cool road that uh has cool Square blocked sidewalks but the road itself is made with round stones with a little design of some sort of long skinny looking one and it is a fascinating Road surrounded by these old buildings and uh yeah these are the kind of things that is cool to find on the roads less traveled and I would say this one is Less Traveled gabella Street one of the oldest streets in Montenegro dating back to the 1400s when the Venetian Empire started to rule this area now the name comes from the Italian word gabella which means tax or duty at the very beginning of the where the Market Square that Kurt visited earlier is there used to be a customs post which collected taxes on any imported goods which was mostly salt at the time now today there is no sign of the custom's house it vanished centuries ago but as you saw the market is still active on weekends 600 years later now unfortunately this area suffered an earthquake in 197 9 and many of these old buildings from the 1400s and 1500s that lie in this old Street were damaged and have not been restored but it is still a sight to see guys we are walking on the streets where taxes were collected 600 years ago there's some ruins there and in that middle window there's two pigeons I don't know if you'll be able to see them but it's like they're posing for the camera and as we pan down you'll see proof that people actually do drive on this road it's not just a pedestrian Road and I know Kurt has already showed y'all some of the cool brick work and how it displays the history of this town but check out these shutters and these doors and I can't get over this road it's beautiful [Music] in the town on the hill where the apples grow the church bells ring every hour so I took a little walk just to see The Ships coming [Music] in the sun rolls up right above the highway black blue red yellow golden Skyway it's like the day that he jump into the [Music] wind I can't go back down to that [Music] water so a little secret Kurt slept in very late this morning which is unusual usual but uh he had a relaxing morning and he had a very late breakfast so I think he's going to get just a snack but I'm going to full on get lunch cuz I'm hungry and we're at a little place called hypnos and hypnos is the Greek God of sleep luckily for us they've got English on this menu and I'm I'm conflicted between the bacon wrapped montenegrin Kebab or the barbecue sausages I'm going to add some french fries to the side cuz I know Kurt will want to try a few of those whether he's hungry or not I might have me some Nella pancakes oh they have that oh so it's been a long time since we saw lemonade on the menu CT you want to give it a taste ah fresh squeeze this is made with lemons not limes do they sweeten it up a little they sweeten it a little bit uh but it's not super sweet which is good for me I don't prob going to like [Music] it that's really good Kurt went from not being hungry to getting tiny fried smelt little fish bone in yeah I'm not trying [Music] that whole fish you guys know I like a whole fried fish I got a bunch of [Music] them those taste like slim gems slim gems salty wieners they're so good no mind nice quick lunch in this beautiful little town I think Kurt really liked his little smelts now we're headed back to the van but we'll probably do some editing while we hang out here for a little bit longer so we can take y'all to the museum tomorrow morning that was closed today but a nice relaxing Cool vibe little town on this beautiful Bay of cotor we both got a little bit of editing done yesterday afternoon had a good night's rest on this beautiful beautiful Bay it is now Tuesday and hopefully the museum we really want to show you in this town is open today let's go see all right we got bummer bummer news I was really excited to show y'all what was in here we even stayed in a whole extra day ah it's still closed guys was supposed to be open today according to the hours on the door and the Google hours so we're not going to get to see it but what's in there is this is actually a really really really old Villa that they turned into the museum and inside there are many rooms and they believe that a very very very powerful wealthy Roman general uh used to use this as a vacation home and in each room he had the floor exquisitely decorated with mosaics a different style in each room and these were discovered I think I'm pretty sure in the early 1900s when someone bought this Villa and was going to to restore it and was scraping up the old floors so imagine you buy an old house in the states and you pull up the carpet and then pull up the lenium and then Tada there's amazing wood floors except for here they pulled up the floors and there was amazing Roman Mosaic floor art dating back to like the years 200 h I really wanted to walk around there and see that and I'm so sorry we can't show it to you the history of this part of the world is amazing but we're going to grab a few groceries and leave this little town without seeing the [Music] mosaics [Music] Our Lady of the Rocks a church built on an island in the Bay of cotour yes it's beautiful and it's cool that you can only get to it by boat but the legend of how it came to be is what's truly fascinating you see this is a man-made Island apparently there was an ancient sighing of Madonna and child on the Rocks after a shipwreck near here and that caused the local seamen to take an oath that after each successful Voyage they would throw a rock into the sea in the same location of the Shipwreck now this was a popular trade route so there were a lot of ships and a lot of seamen that came through here it did not take long until an island started to appear and even today the custom of throwing rocks into the sea here is alive and well every July 22nd local residents take their boats out and throw more rocks into the sea so this island continues to grow now the church was built in 1630 in honor of Madonna and child with some major Renovations in 1722 you can take a boat to the island from the city of parest there's also a small Museum on the island next to the church but we're headed out of this area so we're going to skip the boat tour this go round we have left our little town we've drove by the cool little church out on the island we're circling around this entire Bay of cotor and now we are actually headed to the city of cotor which is on the southwest side of this Bay but before we get there we have run into a dilemma all campsites in this area are just closed up tight for the winter and we need water and where we were parking at in uh reason there was supposed to be a water source but it was out of order so so now we are stopping at restaurants and gas stations desperately looking for water because we don't need to get into the big city of cotor and have to look for water there that would be bad so we found a restaurant here right on the water's edge that looks open and there is a giant water hose sitting out front Kurt has walked over to try to work his magic I don't think it's okay to drink he said we can have some at the restaurant but obviously we need to fill our tank all right so we'll keep looking as we drive through here looking for somewhere to possibly ask for some water you can see every once in a while there's somewhere to pull off and park but it's just a little too tight for us just to stop at any of these places and look for hose bibs so we're kind of just hoping to get lucky keeping an eye out for a bigger parking lot of some sort of business being able to pull in and hope they got a hose bib now every once in a while we get a glimpse of the bay and we are definitely in an area where they Farm muscles and clams and oysters and you can see a lot of little docks along the water that in the summertime I imagine or pop up oyster bars so it's a beautiful little area but the only thing on our mind right now is finding some water no hose bibs let's check this side of the building no nothing we went by our planned parking spot here in the city no water source there we've cruised up and down a couple of little streets in that area we found a gas station the guy was very nice and said he didn't know anywhere to get water we're going to head out of town a little bit on the other side of cotour and just see if we can find anything but uh we need water we need water we got a little excited we found a hose bib underneath a sign that said water in their language of course VOD but VOD that's water but it didn't work Kurt went inside the guy at the gas station was very nice he said there's is broken try the gas station down the road he said the gas stations were probably going to be our best bet and there's three or four within a couple of Miles here so we're going to go hit all the gas stations yeah and one of the challenges is uh a lot of people in this region don't speak English which obviously that's not their native language but mostly in Europe we've been able to find places where people speak English and there are certainly some here but it's not as prevalent so we're looking for VOD v o d a is that how you spell it VOD VOD what do you think we could put a couple of capfuls of bleach yeah let's do that all right so we found water we found water we're going to go back to our old Central America routine button I did already and uh we're going to go back to our old Central America routine add a couple of capfuls of bleach to each tank let it swish around we feel pretty good about it but that's just an extra precaution woohoo we found water a leaky hose bib never looked so good guys it even came with a long hose so we don't have to pull out our hose here's this Curt for a couple of cat PS in there woohoo high five just like that we are back in business all the tanks are full including the shower tank we are good to go we got about a f minute drive back to our campsite so we've made it to our campsite and in the next video we are going to be taking you to see the city of Coture which is supposed to be epic but Kurt could not wait to get back on the computer back here and start chasing down more of his ancestors on my Heritage so don't forget head over there to their website the link is in the video description you can get started with your 14-day free trial and be sure to let us know any cool ancestors you find with that we're going to see you guys in a few days from the city of cotor here in Montenegro cheers if you like this video be sure to subscribe to our Channel and hit that notification Bell so you guys know when we put out new videos and don't forget you can always follow us over on Instagram to see what's going on in between videos cheers guys
2024-03-10 01:33
