Podgorica, Day Three: Diplo-spouses and Traffic
Being a diplo-spouse.
I think most people think a diplomat's wife spends her time shopping, sunbathing and going to cocktail parties. Or, maybe organizing cocktail parties. That might have been true a few decades ago, but these days, it's not.
For one thing, the man in the couple might not be the diplomat. The wife might be the diplomat, and the husband is the "trailing spouse." Or it might be a same-sex couple (try throw gender roles at that!), or an unmarried couple. Or maybe both adults are diplomats (a "tandem couple").
For those of us with kids, it might be very similar to being any other American parent, except that we have all the added logistics of living in an unfamiliar foreign country - and there are a lot of logistics. Setting up utilities, paying bills, buying groceries, getting the kids enrolled in school...all in a language you don't speak very well, if at all. The working spouse naturally tries to help out, since more often they have actually received some language training, but they have an actual job to do, and the U.S. Government doesn't give time off to get the household set up. (I really don't know how the officers who are single parents or the tandem couples do it...I guess they have to take vacation days.)
So while Alex and I spent yesterday running around and trying to get things done and failing, and I therefore was going to attempt to get those things done again today, my husband has informed me that today is not a good today to attempt More Things and we should just take it easy. E.g., I was going to go to the embassy today so I could call Verizon to attempt to resolve the phone issue, but interrupting others' work day to do so is sort of obnoxious, and Bill doesn't have all his access codes and stuff set up yet, so he can't be the last to leave the building, so going in after work is also an undesirable solution. You may be thinking we could ask someone to stay late, but there's sort of an unspoken code in the diplomatic corps that you don't ask other people to go out of their way too much when you're transitioning in or out, because, frankly, there is always someone transitioning in or out, and you just can't treat it like it's such a big deal that we all have to go above and beyond to help each other with moving-related stuff all the time. It would be exhausting. We reserve favors like that for close friends or extreme circumstances, like emergency evacuations.
So I tried to make today more representative of our typical routine. Alex and I got up, ate breakfast, I showered while he watched a Thomas movie, we went to a park for a bit, and then we came back to the hotel room for a snack/lunch and I put him down for a nap. I don't know what we'll do this afternoon - probably I'll go to a grocery store for tomorrow's snack/lunch food, we might go to another park, and that's as far as I've made it.
*****
Traffic.
Traffic...no, not so much. Podgorica is a city of 180,000 people. (Though a taxi driver yesterday told me it was 200,000...I guess it just sounds better than 180,000, though it is a very generous rounding error.) I was expecting...well, I don't know what I was expecting, but people had told us traffic here is terrible and the drivers are like maniacs and god forbid you consider riding a bike here - it's just not safe. Maybe that's true if you're used to small-town America, but coming from D.C., and before that Bogota, and before that Monterrey, Mexico, this is all tame, tame, tame.
For one thing, pedestrians legitimately have the right of way here. If you step into the street, the cars stop. If you're standing on the sidewalk, half the time they stop and wave you across. There is no sprinting for your life when you have the right of way, like there is in D.C., and there is no weaving like in Mexico, and no going the wrong way like in Russia. I think traffic is even calmer than in my hometown of Owasso, Oklahoma. (I've only been here two days, so there is much time yet for me to be proven wrong, but surely if it were as bad as I'd been told I'd have seen something by now, right?)
For another, I have yet to see a traffic jam. I mean, surely they must happen some time, but as far as I can tell cars just move along at a pretty normal speed, and there are cars on the roads, but they don't seem crowded. Our hotel is in the center of the city, which is very pedestrian-friendly, and there are even some pedestrian-only streets around here, but if there were traffic jams, surely there would be some around here in the center, right?
Speaking of pedestrians, I see a lot of people walking, but Montenegrins have what I call "small country syndrome" in relation to distances. Like, anything that is more than a 15-minute walk away is "far." (My family visited Puerto Rico when I was in junior high and my aunt complained that her son was going "so far away" to college because it was a 45-minute drive.)
And as for cycling, I've seen a few people on bicycles, but I'm inclined to agree with the advice against cycling - there aren't lanes for it, the sidewalks are not in consistently good condition, and there are lots of stairs (though some ramps as well). But cycling recreationally (as opposed to cycling for your commute) is reported to be nice in some parks.
I'll end with this, a picture of a crosswalk signal control box. I'm still not sure where or if one should push a button to cross the street, but I've decided that the relief design is so blind people can "see" the layout of the intersection befoe they venture across. Pretty cool. It says on the top it's a Swedish design.
https://flic.kr/p/okcPtx
I think most people think a diplomat's wife spends her time shopping, sunbathing and going to cocktail parties. Or, maybe organizing cocktail parties. That might have been true a few decades ago, but these days, it's not.
For one thing, the man in the couple might not be the diplomat. The wife might be the diplomat, and the husband is the "trailing spouse." Or it might be a same-sex couple (try throw gender roles at that!), or an unmarried couple. Or maybe both adults are diplomats (a "tandem couple").
For those of us with kids, it might be very similar to being any other American parent, except that we have all the added logistics of living in an unfamiliar foreign country - and there are a lot of logistics. Setting up utilities, paying bills, buying groceries, getting the kids enrolled in school...all in a language you don't speak very well, if at all. The working spouse naturally tries to help out, since more often they have actually received some language training, but they have an actual job to do, and the U.S. Government doesn't give time off to get the household set up. (I really don't know how the officers who are single parents or the tandem couples do it...I guess they have to take vacation days.)
So while Alex and I spent yesterday running around and trying to get things done and failing, and I therefore was going to attempt to get those things done again today, my husband has informed me that today is not a good today to attempt More Things and we should just take it easy. E.g., I was going to go to the embassy today so I could call Verizon to attempt to resolve the phone issue, but interrupting others' work day to do so is sort of obnoxious, and Bill doesn't have all his access codes and stuff set up yet, so he can't be the last to leave the building, so going in after work is also an undesirable solution. You may be thinking we could ask someone to stay late, but there's sort of an unspoken code in the diplomatic corps that you don't ask other people to go out of their way too much when you're transitioning in or out, because, frankly, there is always someone transitioning in or out, and you just can't treat it like it's such a big deal that we all have to go above and beyond to help each other with moving-related stuff all the time. It would be exhausting. We reserve favors like that for close friends or extreme circumstances, like emergency evacuations.
So I tried to make today more representative of our typical routine. Alex and I got up, ate breakfast, I showered while he watched a Thomas movie, we went to a park for a bit, and then we came back to the hotel room for a snack/lunch and I put him down for a nap. I don't know what we'll do this afternoon - probably I'll go to a grocery store for tomorrow's snack/lunch food, we might go to another park, and that's as far as I've made it.
*****
Traffic.
Traffic...no, not so much. Podgorica is a city of 180,000 people. (Though a taxi driver yesterday told me it was 200,000...I guess it just sounds better than 180,000, though it is a very generous rounding error.) I was expecting...well, I don't know what I was expecting, but people had told us traffic here is terrible and the drivers are like maniacs and god forbid you consider riding a bike here - it's just not safe. Maybe that's true if you're used to small-town America, but coming from D.C., and before that Bogota, and before that Monterrey, Mexico, this is all tame, tame, tame.
For one thing, pedestrians legitimately have the right of way here. If you step into the street, the cars stop. If you're standing on the sidewalk, half the time they stop and wave you across. There is no sprinting for your life when you have the right of way, like there is in D.C., and there is no weaving like in Mexico, and no going the wrong way like in Russia. I think traffic is even calmer than in my hometown of Owasso, Oklahoma. (I've only been here two days, so there is much time yet for me to be proven wrong, but surely if it were as bad as I'd been told I'd have seen something by now, right?)
For another, I have yet to see a traffic jam. I mean, surely they must happen some time, but as far as I can tell cars just move along at a pretty normal speed, and there are cars on the roads, but they don't seem crowded. Our hotel is in the center of the city, which is very pedestrian-friendly, and there are even some pedestrian-only streets around here, but if there were traffic jams, surely there would be some around here in the center, right?
Speaking of pedestrians, I see a lot of people walking, but Montenegrins have what I call "small country syndrome" in relation to distances. Like, anything that is more than a 15-minute walk away is "far." (My family visited Puerto Rico when I was in junior high and my aunt complained that her son was going "so far away" to college because it was a 45-minute drive.)
And as for cycling, I've seen a few people on bicycles, but I'm inclined to agree with the advice against cycling - there aren't lanes for it, the sidewalks are not in consistently good condition, and there are lots of stairs (though some ramps as well). But cycling recreationally (as opposed to cycling for your commute) is reported to be nice in some parks.
I'll end with this, a picture of a crosswalk signal control box. I'm still not sure where or if one should push a button to cross the street, but I've decided that the relief design is so blind people can "see" the layout of the intersection befoe they venture across. Pretty cool. It says on the top it's a Swedish design.
https://flic.kr/p/okcPtx