It's holding at +18°, and I've made it to Montenegro. These pictures from Tivat are just for attention, but I'll tell you about Montenegro's independence.

For practically its entire history, except for a brief period before World War I, the country has been under someone's protectorate. And even after Yugoslavia fell apart, it remained part of a union state with Serbia. This was so recent that even today on various websites with particularly lazy developers, you can still find Serbia and Montenegro listed as one country in the list of countries (here's the first example that comes to mind, look for Montenegro in "Country of residence"). If it works, don't touch it (:

In 2006, the Montenegrin authorities decided to ask residents whether they wanted to live in an independent state. The opposition fought this tooth and nail, and even managed to push through raising the threshold for the decision from the constitutional 50% to 55%. Though the prime minister at the time did make statements that he'd accept any result with more than half the votes "for", and if turnout was below 50% or the referendum decided "no", he'd resign altogether.

In any case, turnout ended up being almost 90%, and 55.49% voted for independence. In percentage terms it looks good, but in absolute numbers not so great: the population is small, and 0.49% is less than 2,000 votes. Considering that 3,500 ballots were deemed invalid, there was plenty of room for all sorts of conspiracy theories.

The choice for or against naturally correlated with ethnic background and place of residence. Bosniaks and Albanians living near the Albanian border ensured a high level of "pro-independence" votes in their regions. Serbs from border areas with Serbia — against.

The announcement of the final result was delayed several times due to objections and appeals from supporters of integration with Serbia, but ultimately they announced the creation of a sovereign Montenegro, and the international community went along with it. It all ended in a peaceful separation. Today that's seen as a miracle.