what a funtastically fascinating country! unbelievable natural beauty, with these lush forested mountains dropping off into the adriatic sea! also, a lot more developed (and expensive) than albania. the bus took me to a nice seaside town called ulcinj, from where i caught another to budva. i decided to stay there merely because it was on the way – little did i know that budva happens to be to russia what cancun is to north america! so much burning russian skin. tourism is basically the entirety of montenegro’s economy. there was a nice long (rocky) beach in budva, and a very picturesque walled old town. also nearby was this amazingly beautiful islet called sveti stefan.
montenegro only split from serbia in 2006. also, unlike most of the other countries in the region, there isn’t really a montenegrin ethnicity. thus, everyone in montenegro is first a serb, albanian, bosnian, etc. i took a bus to the town of kotor, which is another beautiful walled town. they built the walls up the side of a cliff so it would be super-defensible, and the place even used to have its own navy. i then continued around the huge, extremely beautiful, awkwardly shaped bay of kotor and into… croatia!