Kotor

I remember when I was leaving Mongolia, I met another RPCV (Returned Peace Corps Volunteer) in a little café where expats tend to go. We talked for a while, and at one point, he posed a question to me: ‘What are the three most important things you’ve learned living in Mongolia?’ The first thing I said, so quickly and with such certainty that it surprised even me, was, ‘It’s all in the people.’

It was true in Mongolia, and it continues to be true as I travel about Europe. It is my last day in the Balkans: tonight I go by ferry to Bari, Italy. Kotor, Montenegro is the last place I laid my head, and where some of my best memories have been made—not necessarily because of the sites, but because of the people I’ve met.

I arrived in Kotor on the 30^th of August, somewhat weary, but not so much that I couldn’t hike the fortifications, which snake up the side the mountain beside which the old town of Kotor is built. As in Dubrovnik, the Old Town is girded by walls and contains meandering alleyways and side-streets, filled with shops and restaurants and little ice cream parlors and stray cats.

The next day, the weather was still nice, and so I took a bike ride around the area—one that ran along the coast and introduced me to a variety of small, coastal communities and quaint pebble beaches. At 40km (about 25miles), it took me about 4 hours or so, and proved a nice way to spend the afternoon.

But it wasn’t until later that night, when a bunch of hostel-goers went out for dinner, that the true enjoyment of my time was realized. We ate, drank, talked, and laughed—people from Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Ireland, the UK, and the US. All the next day, rain kept us cooped inside, but during a reprieve, a small group of us ventured out to explore what we could until rain drove us back inside. We stayed up playing card games and talking until late into the night.

By the time I left the hostel, all the friends I’d made had left. It’s strange, this life—how all at once, strangers can come together, and within a short time, become friends, and then, in the blink of an eye, be once again be scattered across the globe. Like a beautiful day passing the hours, a sand castle on a windy beach, a quaint town going by, a flower in full bloom, the joys of life are so often temporary; you embrace them when they come, knowing they are fleeting.

Kotor is already behind me, another city I’ve tumbled through, another leaf blown through the wild winds of my wandering. Zephyrs take me onward, and I wonder what I will see, where I will go… and who I will meet at my next destination