#10 Cheese trip in the Balkans
It has already been 9 months since we started travelling. Five months through Latin America, four in Asia and we are now back on the old continent! We’ll have the last month of our adventure in Serbia, Montenegro and Croatia. We landed in Belgrade, Serbia, and the choc was brutal: we leave Katmandu, a dirty and crowded city where the influence of Buddhism and Hinduism shaped everything, for a modern, green and post-Yugoslavia Belgrade, waking up as summer was coming. We stayed at Blandine’s apartment, Tanguy’s cousin. She was a French teacher and showed us the way Belgrade people live, from the typical kafanas – local restaurant – to the gorgeous barges along the Danube, drinking beers and the famous rakia. Rakia is a fruit liquor that every Serbian people – and actually everyone from the Balkans – like to offer to his guests, at anytime of the day and night. Be careful with Serbian hospitality…
Tara National Park
A few days passed and we decided to go camping in Tara National Park, at the Bosnian border. We did not see a single tourist. Not even someone speaking English. Only some bears wandering in the nearby valleys and forests – true story. It did not prevent us from grilling some smoked bacon in reward for our hours of walking. After two days, we had almost eaten all of our food. Fortunately, a local family had some pity and offered us a delicious meal with a sweet bottle of wine. We had not seen wine for months then. We would go back to Belgrade for the weekend, and we would stay a a small hippie hostel named the Green Studio. It had been a few days then since people started to tell us that techno music is really popular in Belgrade. We experienced it with our new friends, Dorian, Bim and Katryn. Then the Serbian part of our trip took an end as we left for Montenegro.
Panorama on Bosnia
Bacon and sardines for dinner !
After an exhausting night in the bus, we arrived in Kotor. The Old City’s walls faced a bay depending on the Adriatic Sea. We enjoyed finding sea and beach again, as we had not seen it since Thailand’s southern islands. As our legs began to itch, we walked up to Mount Lovcen (1749m). After five hours of walk, we could contemplate all of Montenegro – from the Adriatic Sea to the Durmitor massif – and the surrounding countries: Serbia, Bosnia, Croatia and Albania. We left Kotor for Ulcinj, at the Albanian border. The city is known for its nudist beaches and pirates creaks. You know us: as we were looking for strong sensations, we went exploring the unknown part of the coast in search of climbing and jumping from vertiginous cliffs.
The Bay of Kotor
Going to the nudists
In the heart of all this agitation, our last adventure in a farm was awaiting for us. Olga and her three children – Andrew, Ivan and Lisa - would welcome us. She arrived from Russia seven years ago with her husband, fleeing Saint Petersburg’s climate, she started growing hens and quails. A year ago she bought her first goat and started making cheese with the goat milk. Now 19 beautiful goats give her 25L of milk per day. She is using it to produce more than 40 different cheeses. She also had 18 kids, a donkey, dogs, ducks and gooses. No need to say we enjoyed the food there.
Let's milk !
The lady-killer
Feeding the baby
As we are now used to it, we started learning the daily routine. We woke up at 8:00 am to eat a breakfast made of homemade eggs, cheese and bread with the other volunteers: Luciana, Maewen and Dyson. Olga and Dyson usually took care of the milking at 6:30 am. At 9:00 am we went to give hay, water, cereals and cuddles to poultry and goats and then came back to our personal occupations waiting for lunch. We started our first milking – second one for the goats – at 2:00 pm. During the afternoon, we used to go exploring the nearby paradise beaches. We came back at 6:00 pm to feed the young goats, had dinner around 8:00 pm and went back to milking at 9:30 pm. Then we could enjoy a well-deserved night.
Exploring the coast
Climbing...
... and jumping !
We became professional of goat milking. Short or long, large or small, hairy or not, no goat breast would resist our agile fingers. All the milk produced then went to the kitchen to be cooled down. The milk would not be pasteurized. Olga taught us a lot about cheese making. First step: coagulation. Lactic acids are added to separate cheese curd from water. Cheese curd is the main ingredient to make cheese. Second step: we put the curd in molds to give the cheese its final shape. Third step: draining. To remove the water from the cheese curd, the cheese is hanged in cheesecloth to drain. You could then eat a tasty fresh cheese. When Olga wanted to make more elaborate cheeses, she salted the cheese. She explained us that salt kills bacteria, helps storing it and gives it taste. Last step: aging. The cheese was kept in good humidity and temperature conditions. The crust would appear and the smell and the taste of the cheese would become stronger.
Filtering
Unfortunately, Olga did not have a cheese cellar offering her the right conditions to age her cheeses. She used a room with air conditioning owned by her neighbors for her production. She sold the cheeses to local people. As she wanted to increase her production, she planned on building a cheese cellar from scratch near her home. It would allow her to experiment new cheeses, increase her production and meet the criteria of food inspection. Total cost: 15,000 USD. We realized a small video to help her raise funds through a crowdfunding campaign she would like to launch in July.
Seasoning
And nice cheeses !
Due to an overdose of cheese, we left our Russian friends for more festive lands. Actually, our plane for France will land from Split, Croatia. We planned to spend our last week going up along the Croatian coast and then put a final end to this worldwide farming trip we started 10 months ago. The Travelling Farmers are about to retire with nostalgia and pride.
Tanguy & Yvan
