Cue Hotel, Podgorica (from the hotel website)
It was unmistakable. As I stepped into the stylishly modern
lobby of the Cue Hotel in Podgorica, my nose twitched at the sophisticated fragrance
of cigar smoke.
I turned to see a cigar lounge complete with leather Chesterfields, ashtrays and a splendid humidor displaying
true Havana
cigars, some the size of torpedoes, right down to delicate cheroots. It was
right there open to the lobby and evidently well used. The smell was of quiet
enjoyment, hedonism and but more than that, the smell of freedom.
Look, I know, smoking is a filthy malodorous habit. It is
bad for smokers and all those around them. There are a million reasons not just
to ban it but to abolish it altogether. Yet it is another freedom lost — its
odour to be replaced by the sweet, cloying, artificial pong of vapes – until they ban those to be
superseded by who knows what new horror?
I do not know what the laws are in Montenegro. People seemed not to
smoke in public indoor spaces except for the Cue Hotel cigar lounge, but they
certainly smoke at outside tables. That evening, I watched four men at an
outside table of the Cue. A bottle of wine rested in an ice bucket. All four
men sat back in the evening light smoking fragrant cigars. I could see that the
conversation was calm and sporadic. Just four men enjoying a proper smoke and
companionship.
Montenegro
is applying to join the European Union. It will adopt new values that will
extinguish such blatant hedonism. It is their choice and they will have much to
gain but something will be lost.
I was travelling with the excellent PTG Tours
