Thursday, September 01, 2011

Montenegrin pljeskavica

Montenegro is cheap.  I spent a fortune in Italy.  Although Montenegro is de facto in the euro zone, its economy is not tied to the other euro zone nations; it simply adopted the euro unilaterally.  This goes a small way to explaining why a half litre of beer in Montenegro costs €1.20 and three or four times that in Italy.

At a bar in Bar, I ordered an omelette.  I just got off the ferry from Bari, Italy, and wanted some breakfast while waiting for the train to Podgorica.  The waiter indicated in Serbian that they had no eggs.  I really only ordered it because the word for omelette is omlet, one of only two words on the menu I could understand.  Since the other was hamburger, I ordered that.  He indicated they had no hamburgers.  Off to a rollicking start, this breakfast.  He recommended pljeskavica instead.  "What's pljeskavica?" I asked, and he rattled off something in Serbian and made a shape with his hands.  I shrugged and said, "okay."  I was just hungry.  When travelling, it makes things a lot easier to eat adventurously, and I'm not by nature a fussy eater.  I was ready to try whatever Montenegrin cuisine had to throw at me.

The waiter brought me my pljeskavica.  It was a hamburger.

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