In happier times they could have been day trippers. Women carrying plastic bags of bread, the odd man with a blanket and others walking with their babies in their arms and toddlers in tow.
But this was a group of 50 Kosovan refugees, carrying all their worldly possessions, among the first to make their way on Wednesday to Albania's sole border control at Hanihotit, between Montenegro and Albania.
In the past four days roughly one thousand Kosovan refugees a day have passed across this border from Montenegro to Albania. Once across the border, the Albania government has paid for their transport by buses and taxis into the town of Shkoder, 32 km away.
Skender Ahmetaj (23), is one of the group and is travelling with his cousins and aunts. When he was driven out of Kosovo, almost six months ago, he was training with the KLA in the village of Dubovik outside his hometown, Peja.
"Under the heavy artillery fire of tanks," he says, "there was no point in firing a Kalashnikov. The only thing to do was run."
After two days being pursued through village after village by the Serbian army, he and roughly 4,000 refugees ended up being herded across the border by the army. Now he's hoping to find his mother and sisters, whom he last contacted three weeks ago in Peja.
He thinks they must be somewhere in Albania, probably Kukes.
While the majority of those crossing the border speak about going to Albania to find their families, there are also those who left because they didn't feel safe in Montenegro.
Shelzen, a Kosovan, now living in a refugee centre in Shkoder says he saw violence by Serb army "chetniks" who smashed the windows of buses carrying refugees in the town of Roznar.
Jsuf Smajl Qerimaj, a 60-year-old refugee now staying in an Albanian family's home in Shkoder, spoke of how his family were pursued by the Serbian army some months ago right through Montenegro until they reached the Albanian border.
He said "You can't rely on that place, life is dangerous all the time there."
Albana Progni from the UNHCR at Shkoder also expressed worry. "Already we have had even a few Albanian families who had been living in Montenegro for years coming into Albania. They just don't feel safe there anymore. It not what is happening today but what could happen tomorrow."
The situation, however, is not considered nearly as volatile as Macedonia. Out of a population of roughly 800,000 in Montenegro only 25 per cent are ethnic Albanian, so there is no sense in which the majority feels under threat.
Although it was the ethnic Albanians living in Montenegro who took them into their houses, in the towns of Ulqin, Podgorica and Plava Gicia, Kosovan refugees spoke favourably of the Montenegrin police who they say offered them assistance. One man said he thought the Montenegrin police had tried hard to treat them well because they wanted to distance themselves from the Serb army. "Maybe because they already have been bombed by NATO, they want to show their sympathy to the Kosovan people, they don't want the war to move into their country."