Today was about taking care of two bits of business, we needed to see if we could get our Carte Grise from France, and find a place to look at François’ headlights. Tito had arranged to pick us up at 3pm to take us around town so I had the morning to get things figured out.
At first it was a frustrating start as we were having a hard time with the internet which made it tough to call France. We eventually worked the internet out and after a couple of emails and phone calls we learned that our Carte Grise was still being processed but they could provide us with an official document telling the border guards that it was not our fault we had a copy but the French Governments. It seemed just weird and French enough to be true so we are going to proceed with our two new documents.
I also spent the morning trying to figure out what was going on with François’ headlights. I could not get them to work and most of the evidence pointed to a bad switch which would require a part. More research showed that the only Fiat dealer in Montenegro was in Podgorica which is about 80 kilometers from here. There was one mechanics shop in Bar that specialized in Italian Cars and had good reviews so our plan was to take it by tomorrow.
When Tito came at 3 I told him about our plan for the lights and he recommended we go by now to make sure he could take us tomorrow. He also said he could explain the problem to them in Serbo-Croat in case they did not speak English. When we arrived weirdly the guy did not speak either Serbo-Croat or English, but only Italian. This did not phase Tito who seamlessly switched to Italian and explained the problem. After some tinkering around it turns out that somehow both low beam light bulbs had burned out simultaneously, so the fix was easy.
What had started as a potentially frustrating and hectic day turned out to be relatively easy. The day ended with Tito taking us to a very good and inexpensive restaurant where we all enjoyed a good meal with some excellent local wine.