Walking around Podgorica, Montenegro and its bizarre transformer figures

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(the article below accompanies this video)

I woke up with a BG of 164 this morning, and it wouldn’t get much better than that all day. Despite ending the day with my first 300+ BG in a couple weeks, I enjoyed the day because Masayo and I walked around Podgorica, Montenegro and saw some of it.

Breakfast was muesli cereal with a banana, and I was quite happy to eat it in the nice, modern, new room we were in. Atos Apartments I will miss!

Around 12:30 we decided to head out, and my BG unfortunately was now up to 233. Surprising, but having had some beers last night, perhaps it’s to be expected. I shot up a little and we left.

Masayo had found an unofficial Podgorica walking tour map on some blog before we left, one that included a walk through a park on a big hill north of town and also all seven Transformers statues placed around town. Podgorica is small enough that we could glance at the map and remember most of it.

It began really easily for us: the path leading up to the hill overlooking the town goes right by the apartment. We walked up, stopping at a cute little church before entering the actual park.

The park turned out to be a nice place for people to walk, jog, or bicycle, and that’s what they were doing. Masayo and I walked around at random on the paths until we came to a big white World War II monument. A big slab lay under the monument, and two soldier statues stood at one end of it.

After that we decided to head down the hill since neither of us felt like going all they way to the top, though the view over Podgorica is supposedly nice from there. Instead we left the park and headed to see the seven Transformers statues.

I am a little unclear about the purpose of these statues — although I was the world’s biggest Transformers fan in the 1980s, that was then and I don’t know anything about the Transformers of recent decades. The statues in Podgorica were made by a local artist who used parts from his father’s scrap business, or something like that. I don’t know if they are supposed to be actual Transformers™, or if they are just robots that happen to look like that.

At any rate, they are all different, and we stopped at each one to take photos. The route we were walking went by a large building with UNITED NATIONS on the side of it, then over a bridge on a striking green river, the Ribnica.

On another bridge returning us to downtown, I checked my BG and it was 155. Not bad, but it wouldn’t stay.

After what we counted as the seventh Transformer, we broke off the walking route to find food. But it was Sunday, and most things seemed closed. Finally we stopped in a small shop that had an attached bakery, and asked for burek (which was on a sign out front). They said it would be ten minutes; we were weakening but said ok.

The burek turned out to be bigger and thicker than we were expecting, but it was hot and looked good. We took it back to the room and ate it. Burek for some reason often makes me really high, while other times it does little to my BG. This version seemed thick, so I tried to take enough insulin for it.

Later, Masayo started preparing dinner: fish and some soup we had picked up at a supermarket. I checked my BG, and was 295. Oops.

We had the soup, and some leftover crackers from yesterday. It was really good, and we also had some leftover burek with it. Remembering how high it had made me, I counted the carbs on the soup package and shot up accordingly for everything.

But it didn’t work like I was hoping: at 12:30 am I was 324. It is my first 300+ blood sugar of February (today was the 8th). That’s a good thing, though I wish it hadn’t been that high. But I took some insulin and hit the sack.

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