Montenegro.

Montenegro is a small, young country; they gained statehood in 2006. After Yugoslavia dissolved in 1989, Montenegro and Serbia were a unified country until Montenegrins voted for independence in 2006. It’s a country the size of Connecticut with a population of 620,000.

Google Translate doesn’t include the Montenegrin in its list of languages, so we searched using Croatian, Serbian, or Bosnian. Apparently they are all the same language.

In our five short nights in Montenegro we experienced the sizzling heat of the coast and cool summer nights in the mountains. We paddle boarded in Kotor Bay (where salt water took out Katie’s phone), took a boat ride into the Adriatic, and hiked Black Lake in Durmitor National Park. Especially memorable was Nada, the owner of the place we stayed in Ďjablak in the mountains. Between her little English, our zero Montenegrin, and Google Translate, we talked and laughed for hours into the night.