Returning To Montenegro

US President Donald Trump described the country as “very aggressive.” A writer familiar with it couldn’t disagree more.

When planning a family trip to Montenegro last spring, I found myself telling perplexed friends who knew next to nothing about the Balkan country: “Imagine yourself in Venice, sail down the Adriatic coast, look to your left and stop before Albania.”

But since US President Donald Trump described the country, in a televised interview in July last year, as a possible trigger to a third world war and Montenegrins as “very aggressive,” the questions have trended from “Where is it?” to “What’s there?”

For starters, there's dramatic natural beauty, including the imposing mountains that wall the coast and inspired its name, Monte Negro, or Black Mountain, in the 13th century.

More invested in tourism—which accounts for over 20 per cent of the economy—than war, Montenegro attracted two million visitors last year, more than three times its population, according to the national tourism office.

A statement from the government in reaction to Mr. Trump’s characterisation cited Montenegro’s “peaceful politics,” noting that during the Balkan Wars of the 1990s, the country was “the only state in which the war didn’t rage during disintegration of the former Yugoslavia,” of which it was a part.

As the granddaughter of immigrants from Montenegro and a repeat traveller in the region, my experience of Montenegrin aggression is limited to receiving large portions of food and admonishments to clean my plate.

President Trump wasn’t wrong about the country’s size though. NATO’s newest member, which declared independence from Serbia in 2006, is indeed small. Less than half the size of Belgium, it's diminutive, but it’s just right for a time-pinched vacation, which, in our case, was eight days in May.