Montenegro Week 1: First Impressions
Tags: Investment, Digital Nomads, Montenegro, Europe, Balkans

30 June — 7 July 2019: Tivat, Lustica Bay

Magical sunsets are in no short supply in Montenegro. Photo diary on Instagram: 10kMeilen

“Montenegro has its own rhythm,” explained Jeffrey, the owner of Playworking, my home for the next two months. I had just landed in Tivat from Berlin, where I had been working remotely for 4 years, so going full-on nomadic was not such big of a leap. But giving up a home base, especially one that I loved as much as my apartment in the heart of Schönenviertel in Mitte, and booking myself into coliving houses in remote areas was definitely a step into the unknown for me. But I figured that as long as I had a kilogram of freshly roasted coffee from The Barn, along with a hand grinder, moka pot, and espresso cup, I would be able to figure things out along the way.

It turns out that one’s worries are not usually what one needs to worry about. Leaving Berlin, where air-conditioning is not common, during one of its worst heat waves, I was worried about checking into a place without a/c. But I found that with the constant sea breeze, the heat is manageable (as long as I stayed out of the sun during the day). What I wasn’t prepared for were the mosquitos, but a trip to the supermarket quickly rendered that problem manageable too.

Montenegro is a country of stunning natural beauty, where the sunsets and the clear, blue Adriatic waters are unreal, and the old, fortified towns charming. The tourism industry does a good job of showing this side of the country. But this is also a country the size of Connecticut with only 630,000 inhabitants and without the wealth of Connecticut. The recent rise of luxury seaside developments are foreign-invested, artificially-created, air-conditioned bubbles. Porto Montenegro, originally created by Canadian Peter Munk, has since been sold to Investment Corporation Dubai, while Lustica Bay is being developed by the Egyptian Orascom Development with the government of Montenegro holding a 10% stake. And on the other side of the bay in Herzog Novi, Porto Novi is a project of Azerbaijan Global Investments. Each development is anchored by a luxury hotel or resort and accompanying branded residences: Regent in Porto Montenegro, Chedi in Lustica, and One & Only in Porto Novi.

Within these developments, Russian is often heard. In fact, the day I arrived, Jeffrey and I were grabbing a bite at one of the few restaurants in Lustica, which is still a very new and empty development, when one of Jeffrey’s Russian friends joined us for a chat. Jeffrey himself had worked in Moscow for over a decade before moving to Montenegro around 7 years ago. Originally from New York, Jeffrey is very bullish on Montenegro.

The investment story being told is that investing now will yield bountiful returns when the country joins the EU. Of course, that’s a bit of a gamble given the current climate; the 2025 target now reads a bit like any completion date for Berlin’s new airport. In fact, the Balkan countries were just meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel among other EU leaders in Poznan at the Western Balkans Summit last Friday for some reassurance that the Berlin Process of bringing the Balkan countries into the European economic and security fold was still a priority. Of course, Russia, China, Turkey, and the United States also have their fingers in this pie. As part of its Belt & Road Initiative, China’s Export Import Bank lent Montenegro’s government €809 million for a 100-mile highway connecting Montenegro’s port town of Bar to land-locked Serbia, raising the country’s debt-to-GDP ratio to 79% last year, despite the economy growing nearly 5%.

I’m still just settling into my two-month stay, so I still have plenty of time to see, listen, and learn, to Montenegro’s own rhythm…

For the photo diary of my nomadic, coliving life: www.instagram.com/10kMeilen.