Before the trip
The prologue to the Montenegro kite trip — why it starts in Pirna, why the Adriatic, why kitesurfing, and why coming home is part of the story.
Before the first beach, before the first kite lesson, before the first photo from the Adriatic, the trip starts at home in Pirna.
Niko vs Wind is a simple story on the surface: one man, two weeks, a long coast, and a serious attempt to learn kitesurfing in Montenegro. I have wanted to do this for years and kept finding reasons not to. This year I stopped finding them.
Why Montenegro
Montenegro has the right kind of contrast for a compact trip. The mountains drop straight into the sea, the coastal towns are old enough to be honest about it, and the beaches run long and sometimes empty. There are enough rough edges that it still feels like travel rather than a packaged resort.
Velika Plaža is the anchor. It is long, sandy, beginner-friendly, and — most importantly — windy on most reasonable afternoons. Exactly the kind of place where a kite dream can become muscle memory instead of another browser tab.
Why kite
Kitesurfing is the opponent here. It doesn’t care about my plans, my schedule, or my dignity, and over two weeks it will take all three apart in front of strangers.
The wind will not care about plans. The board will not care about dignity. Progress arrives in small salty instalments: a cleaner body drag, a slightly less chaotic waterstart, one more second upright before the inevitable. I am not expecting to come home a kitesurfer. I am expecting to come home wetter, browner, and with a notebook full of falls.
Why now
I have been putting this off for years. This year I bought the tickets first and worked out the details afterwards, which is the only method that has ever got me out the door. The train out of Pirna, the detour west through Germany, the flight south, the lesson days, the no-wind mornings with coffee, the slow walks at Kotor, the long beach at Budva, and a quiet way back.
The shape of the journey
The trip falls into three chapters, and the site is told the same way:
- The prologue. Departure logistics, the road through Germany, the flight south, and the first sense of being out of normal life.
- The kite week. Velika Plaža days, lesson rhythm, wind-driven detours, and whatever the body remembers.
- The coast and the road home. Kotor, Budva, the slow return to Podgorica, the flight north, Berlin, and the train home to Pirna.
Each chapter has its own page on the site. The diary fills in between them, one day at a time.
Coming home counts
The story does not end when the plane lands in Montenegro. It ends when the same train pulls back into Pirna, dignity mostly intact, with a slightly different person sitting on it. That is the part I came back to write down.