Montenegro

Known as Crna Gora in Serbian/Montenegrin, Montenegro ("Black Mountain") is one of the world's newest independent states, after an independence referendum in 2006 led to the breakup of Serbia & Montenegro.

However, Montenegro was already independent once in its history : During the later parts of the 19th century and a big part of the early 20th century, when it was a small Balkan monarchy. After WWII, it became a member state of Tito's Yugoslavia and the rest is history. During the 1990s it stayed together with Serbia, going through much of the same trouble Serbia experienced as well (including sanctions and the 1999 NATO bombing). During the 2000s and the 2010s the country recovered significantly thanks in part to it's big tourist offering on the coastline (the Montenegrin coastline is the second most developed on the eastern Adriatic after the Croatian coastline), albeit at the cost of losing some of it's authenticity (with the city of Budva's rapid construction boom being a laughingstock even outside the country's borders).

Culturologically the country has three regions: the mountainous North is basically identical to Southwestern Serbia, the Central region (which is also known as the "Old Montenegro and the Highlands") has a distinct clan-based society where one's clan membership means all (though this has been changing since the Second World War and clan admixture is not rare), and the Littoral is basically an extension of Dalmatian culture, except it's Orthodox Christian rather than Catholic. As mentioned above, it's the Littoral region that rakes in almost all the tourism money: the old city of Kotor in the Boka Bay is a standout example of Serbian and Italian ethnic architecture, being declared an UNESCO World Heritage Site. Other cities on the coast include Igalo (the country's biggest spa resort), Herceg Novi, Tivat, Budva (the so-called "Queen of Montenegrin Tourism"), Petrovac, Bar and Ulcinj (notable for the neighbouring Ada Bojana Island which is a center of ex-Yugoslav nudism and freikörperkultur). The north of the country, while comparatively underdeveloped, shows decent potential for winter tourism: highlights include Mount Durmitor as well as the Tara River Canyon - the deepest in the entire Eastern Hemisphere and second on Earth only after the Grand Canyon.

The big national stereotype of Montenegrins is their extreme lazyness. The village of Brezna holds an annual Laziest Bum championship - the record has been two and a half days of nothing but being lazy under a tree (and no, going to the toilet doesn't count as being "lazy" - you'll have to endure it).

The capital city is Podgorica. The country is a candidate for the European Union and a member of NATO since 2017.

Montenegro's appearances in fiction:

• Casino Royale, although the filming of Montenegrin scenes took place in the Czech Republic.
• Fictional detective Nero Wolfe hails from here, although he is mainly based in New York. He does come back once in the aptly named The Black Mountain to catch the murderer of his best friend.
• Jay Gatsby received a medal from King Nicholas I. (since Montenegro was still an independent monarchy back then).