The first thing I noticed about Kotor was the cats. Weaving among the town’s cobblestoned streets with the feline grace of animal that has been ‘domesticated’ but chooses to roam wild. My friend Eri once told me that you can always tell where the nice suburbs are by the amount of street cats wandering around them, providing a measurement of the inhabitant’s generosity. Walking around Kotor you have to dodge the little piles of kibble that have left out for these feline friends. Here it is not a bad sign to have a cat cross your path but an omen of luck. Kotor is a town that spills off the mountainside pooling where the cliffs meet the sea. According to local legend the cats first appeared on ships, accompanying sailors who were returning home from their oversea adventures. They were viewed as protectors, defending the town from mice, rats and snakes that would descend the mountains. Now the only pest that comes from the mountains are tourists.
It’s an interesting thing being in a tourist town off-season. The few boats docked by the harbor are covered in their winter drapery. The old man in front of you is probably from here, proven when he waves someone down on the other side of the street for a chat. The beaches are no longer covered in towels and topless sunbakers but plastic bags and odd shoes. Waiters sit smoking out the front of restaurants, no pressure to perform when there is no one waiting. The pace is much slower then summer, it’s a pace I’m learning to embrace. Max von Sydow once said “A vacation spot out of season always has a very special magic.” Off season travel has often been promoted through a lens of economic frugality – cheaper accommodation, flights, food , experiences. This perspective fails to capture the magic found in these places, made more visible because you do not have to dodge other people to see it.
Without the distraction of tourists, an areas natural beauty is able to shine through. You start noticing things that would have been swept away under the footsteps of people walking the same road as you. I went for a stroll one evening and saw a woman sitting by herself smoking a cigarette on the beach. She looked extremely content looking out over the bay and I stopped for a moment to appreciate the scene. Two hours later I walked back along the same road and she was still there. During summer she would have been hidden among the other hundreds on the shore or she would of hidden herself, realizing that solitude isn’t the same when you are forced to be around people. When it’s the off-season the locals seem friendlier because they are not drowning in the masses of unappreciative tourists who only come for a couple of days, take their fridge magnets and then leave behind the smell of suncream and overpriced cologne. The locals are able to breathe again and inhale the air that belongs to them. The overall feeling is much more relaxed , inspiring you to also relax.
We become effected by the pace of a place. Often finding ourselves moving to a speed that we dont set. Bustling cities with streets packed full of people running from bar to club and back again encourage us to take part in this mass hysteria and often we will find ourselves running along with the crowd. Peer pressure, herd mentality, group think , social influence. It takes many names but the overall effect is the same – we sacrifice our pace for those of others, becoming out of step with ourselves. When this happens, it can be hard to find our feet again. You are in a busy tourist town and go out everyday drinking and partying with friends but something feels wrong, you don’t feel like you really know the place at all . It’s because you are going out in town but you are not really seeing the town, seeing it for what it is underneath the glossed over surface that has been painted on to attract the naive eye of passing tourists.
If you slow down the town will reveal itself to you. Like a timid cat you have to be small and quiet, let them come to you, and reach out a hand. The first day I was in Kotor and I went and sat on one of the piers to watch the sunset. Immediately a cat come over and introduced itself. We became good friends and it spent the next two hours curled up on my lap drifting in and out of sleep. It looked so peaceful I didn’t want to move so ended up watching the sunset and the night rise. It was beautiful witnessing the street lights flicker on, then many little golden squares appearing as people fended off the dark. The esplanade suddenly started sparkling as the fairy lights were turned on, followed shortly by the boats in the harbor. The last thing to reveal itself was the walls of the fortress that snake their way down the mountain, each lookout post commanding its position on the hill with a orange light. If I did not accept the pace asked of me by the place (in this situation a cat from the town) I wouldn’t have witnessed these beautiful scenes.
