A series highlighting the very best in bars, pubs, taverns, saloons, commons, watering holes, cocktail lounges, drinkeries, tap rooms, ale houses, cantinas, bier halls, bacaros and izakayas around the world.
The best travel bars don’t announce themselves. They don’t necessarily require investigative journalism to locate (although I’m sure Ronan Farrow could tell you exactly where the dopest speakeasy in Mozambique is), but they also aren’t typically showboats. This is in part because they don’t usually need to be. Travel bars are a need-to-know type of location, with the exact number of frills their very specific clientele are capable of supporting. No need for any theatrics beyond that. 
The other reason is because they are by nature so intrinsically linked to their respective destinations, that to shout any louder than their surroundings would come off too eager and artificial. To be a great travel bar is to evoke a great travel location. So blending in and honoring your surroundings is part of the gig.
It makes sense then, that Kotor’s best explorer-patroned pub is basically just a corner alley in the grey stone jigsaw that is the Adriatic’s most impressive old town. Without its distinguishing multi-colored Edison bulbs, you would think it was another cramped corridor leading to certain spacial perplexity and eventually a cat museum.
But Letrika is there, and when moonlight illuminates the mineral maze of Kotor, its sound system is its siren song, luring travelers down an alleyway they would otherwise overlook. Given that the stone structures of Kotor might be the most beautiful example of primitive soundproofing still standing though, you could stand the right 15 meters away and still not notice its existence.
Letrika occupies an L-shaped passageway in an intermediate cluster of walking streets connecting the city’s more visited squares and monuments. The bar is a one small room, always crowded and thick with tobacco exhaust, but the real action is in the surrounding alley. 
There are sporadic tables and chairs, but chances are you’ll be standing, conversing quasi-audibly over thundering electronic remixes of 90’s classics, watching backpackers attempt to teach each other to floss while holding gargantuan 2-liter plastic bottles of Nikšićko, looking up every spare moment at the intricate surrounding stonework and wooden window shutters and wondering how a town so tiny, ancient, and ornate can have this much audacious energy. 
But it does. And it seems to night after night. Is the music loud to the point of richter-scale measurement? Perhaps. Is the air inside smoke-filled to the point of being considered a chemical solid? Of course, but this is Montenegro and objecting to absurd music and chain-only consumption of cigarettes would be to wear a bachelorette party tank top to a funeral. And some times it’s best to make like a travel bar and disappear into your surroundings.
