International Field Project (IFP) to Montenegro, by Naomi de Kort

This Bachelor is focused on educating students into being ’agents of change’, where we learn about the impact of tourism on the natural environment, society, cultures, and the economy. To minimise our CO2 emissions, we travelled to Montenegro by train instead of plane, which allowed us to see many countries (cities) along the way: Prague, Vienna, Bratislava, Budapest and Belgrade. On the way back to the Netherlands, I went through Dubrovnik and Split in Croatia, Siena and Bologna in Italy, and then with my final stop in Lugano, Switzerland. 

This project encourages us to ’learn by doing’, which is unique for an academic degree programme. Our class of about 20 students was split up into four groups, all receiving a specific value chain that we needed to research. Other than that, we were completely free to design our whole research ourselves (with some guidance from our professors, of course). My group had the value chain of ’gastronomy’, where we compared the local food sourcing of a tourism hotspot by the sea (Kotor) with a growing tourism destination in the mountains (Kolašin). 

We tackled this research by firstly visiting restaurants, looking at what they serve as ’local dishes’. Quickly, we realised that fish, meat and cheese were the foods we needed to focus on, as these are mostly considered local in Montenegro. We conducted interviews with restaurant and wholesaler employees, fishermen, and farmers to find out where the ingredients come from. We wanted to see whether the value chains of these foods differ between Kotor and Kolašin. As expected, Kotor had longer value chains in comparison to Kolašin. One of the most interesting findings was that in Kotor, where many restaurants advertise their squid dishes for being ’local’, most of these squids are imported from countries such as Croatia or even Norway!

Besides spending a lot of time working on our research like the good students we are 😉, we also made time to enjoy the country as much as possible. We went out for dinner numerous times (with the excuse that these were participatory observations), visited the many beautiful beaches, walked through gorgeous (old) towns, and did a lot of hiking in the impressive mountains of Montenegro. In addition to all this, there was the occasional party in several towns we visited. 

Looking back, I realise how much I have learned about doing research in the field, such as how to approach people in the best way. However, what really sticks with me the most is what I learned about the people and the culture in Montenegro. It was so interesting to me to interact with the local people, and to understand how they live their lives. I am so happy that our research allowed us to experience so many places I would have never found otherwise. I think the aspect of interaction with the locals is what makes the IFP especially unique in comparison to visiting a country during a holiday. I had already visited Montenegro once, though now I see and understand the country on a completely different level, which I think is really special.