It’s been 3 years & 3 months since any uninvited officials turned up and rocked our world. The last Inspectors wanted proof of our permissions and when we showed them that the land usage documents permitted us to build a structure as long as it was not a house for living in, they were satisfied & left us alone.
The visit in August was not so straightforward…
I was in the garden pottering around dead-heading flowers & tying up tomatoes before the sun got too hot, when Daisy started barking. Occasionally it means there’s a cow wandering up the road but normally it’s an indication that visitors have arrived. Steve grabbed my sarong and headed out to investigate. Minutes later Steve walked past (looking very fetching in my peach-coloured wrap!) and casually introduced me: “This is my wife Denise.” And to me, in my birthday suit, trying to melt into the foliage as I sensed that the stern looking woman and young man may be more foe than friend, he says: “These are Inspectors for Tourism dear.” I smiled & tried to look innocuous as my tummy did a flip…
Steve rose to the occasion (peach sarong notwithstanding!) and kept his nerve. He was charming & co-operative. He patiently answered all their questions and when they asked about camping licenses, said sweetly: “I’m not sure I have one of those. Do you think you could help me get one?”. Stony-faced woman mellowed visibly. She was impressed by what she saw. “Is the garden organic? Is it permaculture? Are you vegetarian?” He tried to stay on her side but even in a crisis Steve couldn’t ditch his allegiance to eating meat…
Since the paperwork pertaining to the company was back at the house and couldn’t be produced on the spot, Steve was asked to meet them at the Opstina the following day. Before leaving Tanja (on first name terms by now…) who had been frantically typing notes of the meeting as they spoke, printed off the minutes & gave a copy to Steve (who knew that Montenegrin officials had got so ‘geared-up’ – portable power packs an’ all… !!).
Armed with the minutes and a bunch of papers he’d been told to present, Steve met Simonida (our legal rep) at the Council offices the following morning. Reading through the notes, Simonida looked shocked. “What did you do to them?” she asked. “I have never seen such polite, non-confrontational, complimentary notes of a meeting in Montenegro!” A good start!
They went to meet Tanja and Mr X as we’ll call him as his name is unknown. Mr X saw Steve with his armful of papers and asked of Simonida: “Are all the papers in order?”. “Yes” says she and no-one bothers to check. Tanja arrives and very jittery locals clear a path for her, for she is representing the Ministry of Tourism at a National Level no less…
It is established that Steve doesn’t have a licence for a campsite and Tanja regrets to inform him that he will be fined if he cannot produce the necessary paperwork within 15 days. She prints off more paperwork to this effect, but in the paper copy she gives Steve, 15 days has shrunk to 10. Mmmm. Mr X tells Steve that obtaining the licence is simple – all he has to do is go down to office number blah and the woman there will sort it out. Optimistically, he & Simonida go to office number blah. Simonida is increasingly bemused as everywhere she goes, she starts to explain to everyone who her client is and they all say: “Oh yes, the eko kamp – we know all about that”.
Lady in office number blah has also heard about Steve & the naturist eko kamp and thinks it’s a brilliant idea (“I have a load of land up in Trebesnj that I don’t know what to do with. I wish I had thought of this”) but is sorry she has no idea how to go about issuing a licence. She suggests that Mr Y from Podogrica is the only one who can issue such a licence. Simonida phones Mr Y and is astonished to find him roaring drunk at 10.30am. She establishes that he is on holiday (ok, slightly better than being at work and totally hammered, but even so…). Yes he could issue the licence no problem but he won’t be back from holiday until some time in September – more than 10 days away, that’s for sure…
So they phone Tanja and explain that there is no way that they can meet her 10 day deadline and what should they do now? It seems that now a fine must be paid and a ‘stop trading’ notice will be issued (because these things are automatically generated). Oh dear – things are not looking so good after all…
It is suggested that there will need to be a certificate to say that the electrics on the campsite are safe so we might as well get onto that now. Simonida phones a guy who says he will come up & do the necessary tests for €400. She reckons that can’t be right and pulls another business card out of her hat. This guy says he’s not sure exactly until he visits to see the size of the task but thinks he can do it for €150 or less.
3 men turn up the next day to do the “A Test” as it’s called. Steve is quietly confident but we fail spectacularly. Communication becomes an issue as the dialogue gets increasingly technical and there is much drawing of diagrams. Eventually Steve understands that the parameters they test are based on a mains voltage supply and since we are off-gride & we use a generator which delivers 2 x 120v not 1 x 240v, we failed all the tests! The real irony is that if we were just operating with our 12v system, we’d be absolutely fine as anything below 50v doesn’t need a safety certificate (despite the fact that a recetn guest suggested that 12v DC is pretty dangerous!).
Meanwhile Steve phones our accountant Bojana, anticipating that we might need to get our books in order now that we have been busted. Turns out she has just bumped into Mr X who she knows from school and when she explains that Steve is her client and they will be meeting to ensure that all the accountant are in order, Mr X says: “Don’t worry, we won’t give him any trouble.” Steve arranges to meet Bojana the following day with some examples of our guest invoices for the season to see what we need to do to comply. Meanwhile he gets a call – Tanja wants to meet him in the morning to discuss the fine!
The next morning Steve meets Tanja in a local café. They spend over 2 hours together (by now I’m convinced that she fancies him and am wondering exactly how far my hubby will go for the Camp Full Monte cause!). Tanja explains that she has screwed up – she made a mistake when issuing the fine because the entire Ministry of Tourism is on holiday until September (call me fussy, but peak season seems like a really stupid time for the entire Ministry to be absent…). It seems unfair to issue a stop notice in light of this fact so she charges us the minimum fine instead. The fine is issued and paid immediately. Using Bojana as a translator via frequent phone calls, Tanja itemizes all the things that Steve has to do to become legal. She gives him very helpful steers along the way: “Apply for ‘wild camping’ permission only. Do not apply for permission for more than 15 tents” – she is clearly on our side. The naturist angle it seems is completely irrelevant – Steve is told it doesn’t make any difference to licencing so to forget about it. In the middle of their meeting, Tanja’s boss phones. Steve understands that she is explaining that she is with him and trying to sort out the licencing for the eko kamp. When she comes off the phone Tanja says: “My boss says I must give you all the help you need.”
We are now pretty convinced that all the publicity we have had recently has worked in our favour after all. There was an extensive article in the national press about our project in which we were portrayed very well – nice British couple living a low impact, healthy lifestyle, with a few campers here & there, blah, blah… The interview also made it on the TV (we still haven’t seen the programme ourselves, but we are assured we come across ok) and due to Camp Full Monte’s great track record on Trip Advisor with 100% satisfaction in the 20 or so reviews, we have made it onto the main page of the National Tourist Organisation in Montenegro. I guess someone finally said: “For God’s sake someone go & do what it takes to make that eko kamp legal. They are getting too much good press to be renegade…”
TO BE CONTINUED…
So I enlisted the help of the friends she mentions to arrange a dinner date. To be doubly sure I contacted all other friends with whom she might make conflicting plans to tell them to be ready with excuses as to why they were busy. The stress of it all going horribly wrong and the potential for considerable waste of time and money was huge but the plan worked like a dream. 
). All too quickly it was 6.00 am on Friday and I was heading back to Gatwick with a big grin on my face. The memories of our precious time together will have to keep me going until Denise returns to Montenegro in March. I’m counting the days honey. 
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