Why Living Close to the Sea Stopped Being
My Top Priority

Almost everyone who has ever considered buying a home by the sea seems to begin with the
same question.

One hundred meters. Two hundred. Five hundred.
It often feels as though this single number is what will determine the quality of your future life.
After moving to Montenegro, I noticed something that genuinely surprised me. People who come
here for a holiday and people who actually live here year-round often choose completely
different beaches.
And there is a perfectly logical explanation for that.
If you are on vacation for a week or two, you naturally want to leave your hotel and reach the sea
within a few minutes. But when you live here permanently, the beach stops being part of your
holiday and simply becomes part of everyday life.
That is why many local residents are perfectly happy to spend another fifteen or twenty minutes
in the car to reach a different beach. Not because the city beach is bad. Quite simply, when you
have dozens of beaches to choose from, sooner or later you start looking for the one that feels
right to you.
Over time, everyone develops a favorite place. Some prefer Utjeha, others choose Veliki Pijesak,
while some enjoy small hidden coves that are known mostly to local residents.

Whenever we want to spend a peaceful weekend, our family almost always goes there. And
sometimes, when I know I have a particularly demanding day ahead, I leave home earlier than
usual just so I can swim before work.
I love its incredibly clear water, the pine forest stretching almost to the shoreline, and the feeling
of calm that remains there even during the busiest weeks of the summer season. The drive takes
about twenty minutes, but over the years I have never once caught myself thinking that it was too
far.

Over time, I realized that many people I know do something quite similar. Everyone has their
own favorite beach, and it is not always the nearest city beach. This is probably not surprising.
The Bar Riviera stretches for more than forty kilometers, and the municipality has around twenty
beaches. When the choice is that wide, it is only natural to look not for the closest beach, but for
the one you genuinely want to return to.
There is another thing people rarely think about while they are on vacation. Popular city beaches
follow their own rhythm in summer. In the morning, cars begin moving toward them. During the
day, finding a parking space can become difficult. In the evening, restaurants, cafés, and bars
open, and in some parts of the coastline music continues almost until morning. For someone who
has come for a few days, this is part of the resort atmosphere. For someone who lives here
permanently, that rhythm stops feeling like an advantage quite quickly.

If many people who live by the sea year-round still choose other beaches for swimming and
relaxing, why do we so often evaluate a home only by the distance to the nearest one?
Perhaps because, without realizing it, we continue to think like tourists.
On vacation, it is natural to want to reach the water as quickly as possible. But permanent life
gradually changes the coordinate system. We spend only a few hours on the beach. Home is
where the rest of life takes place. And that is why you begin to pay attention to completely
different things: whether you can open the windows at night and hear silence, whether there is
enough greenery around, whether the air feels easy to breathe, whether it is pleasant to go for an
evening walk, and whether you actually want to come home after a full day.
Perhaps this is why, over time, the main question a person asks when choosing a home by the sea
also begins to change.
Not “How many meters is it from here to the nearest beach?”
But “How comfortable will my life be during all the time when I am not on the beach?”
And strangely enough, the answer to that question often turns out to matter more than the
distance to the water.

When we began working on the concept of Zen Gardens, we talked a great deal about layouts, engineering and infrastructure. But at a certain moment, the conversation became completely different. We began asking ourselves: “What should a home look like if a person is going to feel good living there not for one week of holiday, but for the next twenty years?”
This question ultimately determined most of the decisions in the project. From air quality and sound insulation to public spaces, the garden, and areas for sport and relaxation.
We are convinced that a good home is not the one that makes an impression on the day of purchase. A good home is the one that continues to take care of you years later. Because after several years, most people stop noticing the distance to the sea, but they continue to notice the quality of their life, their level of health and their energy every single day.