At one time there was a republic called Yugoslavia, held together under the iron hand of Josip Broz Tito. But after he passed away in May 1980, ethnic, religious and economic conflicts broke this once large country into smaller entities. As of today, in 2013, there are seven republics, i.e., Croatia, Slovenia, Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia, Kosovo, and Montenegro, sharing three religions (Catholic, Orthodox, and Muslim), 4 languages, (Slovenian, Croatian, Serbian, and Macedonian) and  two alphabets, Latin and Cyrillic.  Some of the creation of these republics have been bloody; the secession of Montenegro, on the other hand, was very benign. We had a lecturer one day who claimed the split was even more peaceful than his divorce. Montenegro used to be part of Serbia, and the split came after a referendum on May 2006. Montenegro declared independence two weeks later. 

    The split also cut off access of Serbia to the sea. Which was of course a bother for Serbia. Even though Montenegro uses the Euro as their currency, they are not (yet) part of the European Union. When they split off from Serbia, they did not want to keep the Serbian dinar as their currency, and so they made arrangements with a German Bank. But because Germany is part of the European Union and uses the Euro as currency, Montenegro had to follow suit.

   The inhabitants call their country Crna Gora, which means Black Mountains in English or Montenegro in Spanish. Their largest city and capital is called Podgorica. The main alphabet used here is Cyrillic. They are classified by the World Banks as a middle-income country. They are a member of the UN and an official candidate for membership in the European Union. And they are also the second-tallest people in the world, after the Dutch. Why, I don’t know.