Country Article / Postcards

Operation: Breakfast

Date: 10/22/2006

International Living Postcards-- your daily escape

Monday, Oct. 23, 2006
Budva, Montenegro
More on Slovenska Plaza. This mega-sized “holiday village” is my less-than-luxurious accommodation in Budva, Montenegro’s main resort. I told you about the compulsory half-board arrangements, which is why I felt obliged to sample one dinner here. And one was enough.

Western visitors usually come to Montenegro on package holidays, though many eastern Europeans stay in sobe (private rooms). Certainly at Slovenska Plaza, independent travelers are a rarity. Maybe this is why such a bizarre system operates for breakfast and dinner. First thing, you have to present what resembles a ration card to a surly individual (sometimes male, sometimes female, but always surly) who guards the entrance to the complex’s Pansion Restaurant. Your dobro jutro (good morning) may produce a grunt in reply, but don’t count on it.

Breakfast is from 7 a.m. to 10 a.m. Plenty of outside seating--a necessity with over 2,500 guests. You collect your food in one of two dining rooms. One has a better selection than the other--for example: fresh melons and peaches, cakes, nicer bread, and hot milk for coffee.

The first morning I went into the better dining room--and was immediately collared by two female wardens (sorry, staff) who started quizzing me in Serbian. “I don’t understand,” I said. “Do you speak English?”

I was then told: “This food is for Italians and Germans only”.

Why? I don’t know. Stray Brits (presumably stray Americans, too) are supposed to eat the same second-class slop as Serbs, Russians, and Montenegrins. The boiled eggs are fine--but I don’t thrill over raw cabbage and rubbery hot dog sausages for breakfast. Nor leftover pasta from the night before.

Luckily I’d brought my husband on this trip. While I was being mistaken for a Serb, he was guarding an outside table. Phase two of Operation Breakfast: Turn Michael into an Italian (he’d never pass as a German).

Before the staff could ask his nationality, he cunningly greeted them with a “Buon Giorno.” The plan worked. Every morning he was allowed to load our plates with a cabbage-free Italian breakfast. I suppose I should have gone to reception and created merry hell, but it seemed simpler to let the newly-fledged Italian go and get both breakfasts.

Judging by the one night we tried it, dinners in the Slovenska Plaza are even more woeful than breakfast. Presided over by what appeared to be factory canteen ladies, the hot-plate choices were giant boiled sausages...pasta with ketchup...nasty-looking unskinned fish...sloppy goulash...bony pieces of fried chicken...and carrots and peas stewing in hot water.

Everything looked revolting, which is inexcusable given what’s on offer in real Montenegrin restaurants. Michael reported that the only extras in the Italian/German dining room were skewered pork kebabs, some kind of meat escalopes in breadcrumbs, ice-cream, squidgy fake cream cakes, and bottled peaches in syrup. Everyone else had the choice of unripe plums or some sickly-sweet type of fig biscuit for dessert.
If you do eat here in the evening, your best option is to go for soup and bread rather than forage at the salad table for cheese, tomatoes, and cucumber. Or more raw cabbage, pale green boiled peppers, and fish paste from giant tubs. Italians and Germans can also fill up with salami and low-quality ham at their salad table.

Thankfully dining elsewhere in Budva is cheap, and you can have a pizza for less than $5 (or $1.30 for a quarter pizza on the prom). We never paid more than $25 for two, even in fish restaurants; $12 to $15 was more the norm.

Steenie Harvey
Roving Europe Editor, International Living