There is also a 13 km long sandy beach, called simply "The Long Beach", outside of the town, where tourists from Belgrade go.

I stay in a house perched atop a cliff. One kid jumped off today. It is 60 feet, maybe higher. But jumping from crazy heights is a rite of passage for boys here. One that precedes, agewise, rally racing on the poorly maintained, narrow mountain roads.

What would they think of New Jersey - where most of the pools had their springboards removed for insurance purposes? And what of the 55 mph speed limit on six-lane highways? The opposing cliff is covered with modern man litter: PVC bags and type 2 clear recyclable plastic.

It is easy to guess that most of the guests here are Kosovo Albanians: restaurants play corny music, restrooms in private accommodation have a bottle of water near the toilette, and no toilette paper; and the beggars, which, with stray dogs, are commonplace in Ulcinj, beg in Albanian. Germans and even Czechs do not manage to reach Ulcinj.

Officially there is 120,000 tourists in Montenegro. Unofficially, there is twice as much. Every homeowner in Ulcinj rents every room of their houses to guests and sleeps in the kitchen. By not reporting all the guests, they save on taxes. That ads 40% to the population of Montenegro during Summer.

In dry years that is bound to cause water shortages - as there are now in Bar, Budva, and, somewhat, Ulcinj. Also, sewer pipes tend to break under increased pressure, causing the unpleasant smell of some locales. And the drought also nurture forest fires - often caused by a cigarette butt thrown through the car window. Everybody smokes, and everybody just throws things out from the car, as if the nature is a big garbage bin.

All the roads look like they can barely be one way, yet they are all two-way roads, plus the pedestrians walk right in the middle, and in the country, not that seldom, you can run into a cow.

Also, it is very good to be a man. Men can walk around dressed (or undressed) as they wish, they can drive as they please, do what they desire, and women are supposed to hover around them looking to be of some help to them.

Ada Bojana: no Kosovars there, but the place to see Belgraders literally naked, and ‘the Montenegrin lawnmowers’ (cows graze freely) in action. Also, it is a little cleaner than on the Ulqin side. Still, no paper in the bathrooms. No water either. It is interesting how most of the foreign help focuses on democracy and freedom, while people here feel and behave much more uninhibited than in many other places I’ve lived at, including the U.S.

Yugoslav snowboard team spends their summers here kite-surfing. Snowboard instructors from Kopaonik teach basics of wind-surfing and kite-surfing. They also rent that equipment and kayaks to tourists. But, like everyone else there, they are not really very interested in making a buck. I observed how they nearly drove away a group of Albanian-Americans from The Bronx, when they inquired about renting a boat. Don’t expect the eager service with an obsequious smile there.

With its relaxed attitude to dress-code, driving, smoking, and other little sinful pleasures, Montenegro overall feels more free than a US city (and there is no constant looming threat over your head). Oh, of course, I took a kayak to the Albanian border. No patrol-boat with 120mm guns showed up. Just one soldier in camouflage (camouflage uniforms became the fashion choice of all armies liberated from communism, because of their association with the mighty Hollywood), whistled after me, and shouted: "Hey, you can’t go down there." Very little is regulated. The police is more courteous and respectful than NYPD. They gave up on giving a damn. They definitely let me go on driving without a seatbelt, surprising my wife (who said that this was only because I was a guy in this ultra-macho society).

The new tourist attraction of Montenegrin coast, however, is becoming the "sewage waterfalls." Rugged and intimidating cliffs with broken pipes draped over them. One lady, close to where I stay, just walks out of her house with the garbage bin, and empties the garbage right over the fence, that marks the cliff. Some of it ends in the water, some of it stays covering the cliff. Garbage container is too far to walk to, they say.

And the sewers were never built - because all this housing is the temporary accommodation, established after the big earthquake, that devastated Ulcinj eight years ago. There was a Hotel here before the earthquake. Now there are houses of those that lost theirs due to it.

They, however, have no ownership rights, hence no interest in investing in an expensive project like a 3km long sewer pipe. So, the pipi and kaka of the local tenants goes over the cliff into the sea, right in their backyard. For most of the year, that means less than 50 people, and very turbulent seas that do a quick clean-up.

In summer the sea is calm, and local families sleep in their kitchens, renting all their rooms to tourists, most often Kosovo Albanians, at least doubling the population using the same broken sewer line. So, it would be really smelly and disgusting for a spoiled American tourist, I guess. Or a European. They, seeing that garbage is everywhere, contribute with their own litter.

Otherwise, this place has one of the most breathtaking ‘extreme backyards’ I’ve seen so far. As I said, the house is perched atop a 60 ft cliff, with the living room window having a view over the sea that extends all the way to Italy. The cliff ends in a natural ramp that reaches deep in the sea like an arm of a giant rocky creature.

The ramp is vertical on both sides, and, fortunately, the bigger sewer line empties on the side that is not deep enough to jump. On the other side one can jump from 50 ft right from ones backyard into refreshingly cold, deep sea.. The path to the sharp edged ramp is a narrow passage framed by the torny Montenegrin vegetation and guarded by Rocky, a small yellow dog that barks very loud when somebody comes close to his passage.

That punk kid and his friend came again, he jumped right from the top, while the other again hesitated, than, teased to death by the first kid, walked half, or, perhaps, three-quarters way down and jumped from there. I was told by my host’s teenage daughter that those two are the worst pupils in her school. They proudly admitted to that.

Naturally, the company that owned a hotel here before the earthquake wants to build another one on the same spot. Then, of course, they would built a sewer and organize the garbage collection. But they have no money to begin with, and the current tenants, of course, do not want to leave their lucrative location.

The land-ownership is unclear, since the privatization drive occurred in Montenegro only after the earthquake, when this location was already assigned the temporary relief status. Left to the market regulation of this liberal’s paradise without clear ownership, tenants stay where they are until further notice, and nobody is building a sewer or organizing garbage collection, since they are there just temporary, well into their ninth year.

Because of one parameter of their location - closeness to the sea, they can rent their rooms in summer, and because of another - open sewer, they have to rent them to the poorest of tourists - Kosovo Albainians. They can’t care less about littering, since they see the garbage everywhere around anyway.

This by far is not an isolated problem: the municipal sewer line of the town of Ulcinj is also broken. This, looks like a much more urgent target for USAID and/or EU help, than making more political parties in Montenegro. Local joke says: one hundred Montenegrins went to war, one hundred one returned.

Montenegro is between US and EU, and between Kosovo and Belgrade. US invests more money, but in the less tangible projects. EU built public lights in Bar and Golubovac, and repaired the main road between Podgorica and Bar, but earmarks a little money for Montenegro.

Belgrade tourists contribute to car accidents, Kosovo tourists contribute to littering. Both groups are involved in drug trade that comes from Albania - I felt as if I am in my old neighborhood’s subway station on 110th Street and Lexington Avenue, when I found a used syringe in the background of a dilapidated house at the river Bojana’s estuary.

Given the garbage problem, and the natural beauty that is endangered by it, Montenegro has plenty of environmentalists. They ask: did we deserve such beauty? Eco-society Kalimero of Ulcinjj established Eco Patrol that fights illegal fishing with dynamite, pollution of River Bojana, and the excessive littering everywhere. They are too small, though, to stop the massive assault on the environment cause by unregulated summer tourism. Eco Center Delphin from Kotor is luckier: they are included on the town’s appropriations committee and receive USAID funds. Also, with most of Belgrade tourists in Budva, and most of Kosovo tourists in Ulqin-Ulcinjj, Kotor is a relatively safe haven for environment.

Of all river-canyons in Montenegro, the most polluted is Zeta. It is the widest valley, so it was suitable for settlement, agriculture, and industry. The results are devastating. The second largest Montenegrin city of Niksic, often disposed untreated sewage waste directly into Zeta, for the lack of resources to do anything else. There are couple of murmur factories along the river, which empty their waste in it. People who live along, use the river banks for garbage disposal.

Generally, if the car brakes down, or is involved in an accident, and it is not recoverable, in Montenegro, people just live it where it died, or hurl it down the steep slope to the river at the bottom of the canyon.

Ecological Society of Spuz is particularly angry at the murmur factories, now. That’s because the main polluter- aluminum smelter in Podgorica, the second largest in Europe - operating at 40% is not any more the main threat to the survival of the river.

One can argue for independence of Montenegro on ecological grounds - with their borders, they would be more capable of controlling the influx of tourists. Alternatively, the independence of Kosovo would also help. As foreign citizens, Kosovars would be required to pay double the tax (as I am), and given their numbers, that would increase the Montenegrin budget, and thus ability to deal with the waste collection, forest fire prevention, and sewer repair - which should be the utmost priority now. Unless, of course, that money does not end up in a private pocket - which would not be that surprising here, where everything is run as a small business.

Needless to say, I acquired stomach pains and diarrhea during my short stay at Ulcinjj.

This pages are under constructions, pictures from the trip will be added soon