I visited Montenegro in May 2023, arriving in the capital Podgorica and spending close to a month in Zuzalu at a nearby village called Radovići. I then rented a car and did the rest of the country, spending a day each in the resort cities of Budva, Tivat, and Kotor (with a speedboat trip to Perast).

Montenegrin Cities

• Luštica Bay – 4/10 (2023)
• Radovići – 3/10 (2023)
• Budva – 6/10 (2023)
• Kotor – 6/10 (2023)
• Perast – 5/10 (2023)
• Tivat – 3/10 (2023)

I… cannot say I enjoyed Montenegro from a political or social perspective (in stark contrast to Zuzalu). Graffiti (official and otherwise) can tell a lot about a place, and the story it tells about the really existing state of Montenegro isn’t a happy or uplifting one. The tension between pro-NATO propaganda posters and Serb loyalist graffiti is commonplace, and the vibes from this are sad and dystopian. This is amplified by the fact that this is visibly a poor and crumbling country – notably creakier and less functional than their Serbian coethnics – despite the influx of tourist dollars.

Everyone drives like a maniac, including through the winding crumbling mountain roads with sharp turns and steep cliffs. I’m no virgin in this department, but to this day, Montenegro is the one country I felt unnerved driving (in a way that wasn’t true for Romania, Turkey, or Russia). Restaurants are a hit and a miss. I got a massive plate of meat with soup and beer for 10 Euros in Podgorica. In Lustica, the resort where Zuzalu happened, the “elite” restaurants preyed on the foreign tourists. The most shocking example was when somebody (not in our party) ordered a bottle of wine without specifying which one, and was brought a $600 bottle. So it pays to take care in this country.

One Russian downshifter slightly famous in transhumanist circles told me that Tivat is for millionaires, Budva is for the middle class, and Kotor is for tourists. That was my cursory impression as well. I enjoyed Kotor most because the view from the Stairs of Kotor was out of this world stunning. Budva has some nice historical buildings and probably constitutes what passes for the cultural center of Montenegro. Tivat struck me as spiritually barren and vapid, a haunt for dumb and tasteless Russian petty millionaires.

I think I saw most everything that I needed to see in this 0.6M country. The sea is nice enough, but there are plenty other places even just in the Balkans that I would prioritize.