Montenegro

If you were to judge Montenegro by its airline company and the quality of their aeroplanes you might consider it to have some similarities with a bathroom that hasn't been redecorated since the 1990s. Slightly tired looking, with beige walls and hospital-blue curtains, fraying at the edges. Old but not ancient with questionable reliability. The airhostess gave the most laid back safety demonstration I have yet seen, waving her arms in various directions indicating that oxygen masks were somewhere in the plane and that the emergency exits might be above you, below you or have been missing for several years depending how you interpreted her gestures.
     Emerging from the clouds over the Adriatic, however, and swooping majestically towards Tivat Airport, the view was one of dramatic hills covered with trees and red roofs beside blue waters. The small towns were busy and the beaches crowded. Montenegro is a great clash of everything: people, culture, history. There are many nationalities in a very small space and it is hard to know who is a 'local' and who is just visiting. Ancient cities (dating into the centuries BC) are surrounded by modern developments and always there are the steep sided mountains, alive with the sound of Cicadas, that plunge into the salty waters of Kotor Bay, or lakes further inland.
     The people are neither overwelcoming nor standoffish. Visitors, and attackers, have been coming to this part of the world for millennia and no one seems surprised any more. Progress, also, might be coming; new buildings are going up, the tourism industry is strong, but there's no rush, things will happen in their own time and meanwhile the water is warm for bathing, there is food on the table (along with bottled water - no one seems sure if the tap water is safe to consume) and there is peace between politicians and governments it would seem.
     On the way out of Tivat Airport I noted that 6 of the first 12 flights that morning were headed to Russia. I had already seen a submarine base, hidden in a hillside, from the Cold War. This strategic location has always been more that a destination for holiday makers but I hope its days of war may be behind it, because Montenegro is pleasant, a refuge, quiet and yet strong, small and yet valuable, a highly treasurable piece of beautiful earth.