Montenegro - redux

Just spent another five days in Montenegro - the surreal, three-year-old micro state between Croatia and Albania - running civil society development events, and it's been an interesting few days.

I flew out on my birthday, along with three senior colleagues. I managed to shake them off in order to chat with a beautiful Aussie woman on our flight. Turned out she works on private yachts as a chef, cooking for the super-rich and their guests on luxury boats. She'd just finished five months cruising the Bahamas and was about to spend another five among the Greek islands. 'Sounds incredible' I said. 'It is', she replied. 'Must pay badly', I said. 'Actually it pays really well, plus there's no tax and no living costs', she replied... I considered changing career.

The hotel were we stayed, and the events were held, is an enormous Spanish-run all-inclusive resort, of the kind one would expect to find (but probably hope to avoid) in somewhere like Torremolinos. It's got an incredible location, in the corner of a stunning bay, ringed by high mountains and right on the beach. But the place had a prison-ish vibe: it has three buildings referred to blocks A, B and C; we were shackled in irremovable plastic bracelets as we checked in to prove our mighty full-package status and claim our free drinks (in plastic cups); and we had to eat when and what we were told. The food was atrocious re-heated buffet style. The chips tasked like cold cardboard and the stews were clearly drawn from the back of the fridge with a mop before being microwaved.

The music was also torturous. They'd clearly got the DJ from Guantanamo Bay. There were just four CDs to choose from in the main pool/bar area that formed the resorts centrepiece the least bad was a Michael Jackson compilation. But not the good stuff. Tunes like 'Earthsong', which I must have heard four or five times during my first afternoon. When I asked the bartender what he was playing at, he replied that he too would not choose such bile, but it was hotel policy to give the elderly and tone-deaf customers what they wanted: nice, pleasant, inoffensive love songs.

The most amusing thing about the place was the sorry looking staff's uniforms: bright yellow waistcoats with blue and white shirts, and a blue bow tie with the company's horrible yellow star logo on each drooping side. I could see the staff cringe as they wore this cross between Butlins and smurfland outfit, and I cringed with them. And sniggered a bit.

Of course I wasn't there to moan about the food or laugh at the uniforms, but to develop civil society in order to hasten the country's accession to the EU. Easy. Well although that's the sort of grandiose claims we were forced to make when writing the project application, in reality we had much more modest ambitions: to train 20 or so NGO leaders in how to make their organisations more sustainable, and then to hold a conference gathering people from NGOs, government, and the European Commission.

It all went surprisingly well. And although we had to work in a windowless conference suite while the sun shone over an area of stunning natural beauty outside, it was made much more pleasant by the fact that Montenegrins are famously relaxed (i.e. lazy) and refuse to work after 3pm, giving us all the best part of the afternoon to enjoy the sun and the cocktails we could order by waving our stupid bracelets at the friendly but absurdly dressed waiters.

After the second day I went to speak to a group of participants who were well into their third cocktails of the afternoon, and one of them tipsily asked me my age. '26' I replied. 'Oh, I thought you were 18 [giggles all round]'. (I heard from our local partner later on that a few participants thought I was too young to be running the event, tempting me into a complex). I smiled serenely (and soberly), and walked away. But later in the day I got my revenge as the teaser - who turned out to be just 20 - asked her friend to tell me to take her for a moonlit walk. I politely declined, using the speech I had to give the next day as an excuse.

The speech started with me explaining what my organisation does, but before doing so I clarified to the audience that although I may not look it, I was old enough to drink alcohol, so if they saw me doing so after the conference they needn't worry. After all it is a young country - what were they complaining about?