The prevailing feeling in Montenegro is that for independence. Main newspaper, although it is printed in Cyrillic, does not miss an opportunity to flatter Croatia - for its help to put down forest fires, for its help with emergency electrical power, and for its superior tourist economy, which Montenegro will like to imitate, and which Montenegrins believe, they will have better luck doing if they are on their own.

As in the other places in the Balkans, for their Southern and Eastern neighbors, there is always a healthy dose of suspicion present.

Pure pragmatism supports that idea in general. Small, impossibly mountainous place, like Montenegro, with population the size of Vermont, would be easy to manage if it is moved apart from its poorer and much more numerous neighbors Serbia and Kosovo.

On the other hand, almost nothing is produced in Montenegro, making the place fully dependent on imports from Serbia, Croatia, and Slovenia. Montenegrins still use 15 year old Gorenje laundry machines. The largest number of under-repaired old Yugo and Zastava 101 cars can be found there.

Suicidal driving habits, garbage collection apathy, and other visible maladies, are symptoms of a society damaged by years of war economy, in which large number of males in their productive age is unemployed and shattered by their participation in the wrong war, and in which life does not have the same value as in the Western societies to which Montenegro, as all other post-communist societies, accustomed to buzzwords, aspire. The buzzword is the same as it is in Croatia: euro-atlantic integrations.

As they had decided to stick with Serbia for all those unfortunate years of war and mismanagement, they share Serbia's problem, only, because of their size, on a smaller scale. In that there is the case for independence: it would be easier to tackle those problems on that scale, and it would open an opportunity to learn how best to do it, making it easier to apply that experience on larger scale when trying to help Serbia.

Montenegro would have a chance to get in the EU sooner than Serbia - just like Slovenia will before Croatia - but that would not be bad for Serbia: on the contrary, Montenegrin experience could be used to accelerate Serbian accession. The alternative may be that together Serbia-Montenegro may need a decade to get to that point.

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On airport in Podgorica it seems like time stopped 15 years ago. So, landing on airport in Ljubljana, glossy, air-conditioned, ultra-modern structure, that looks like having been freshly built yesterday, is a culture shock.

True, Slovenia was the most advanced part of former Yugoslavia, long before the country's collapse. In the eighties it had the highest income per capita in the entire country. But now the gap looks even wider.

While Montenegro and other former Yugoslav republics were fighting wars, Slovenia built highways, and today it looks like Germany in the seventies. There is a couple of healthy ideas that Slovenia may export to Montenegro - particularly in the realm of garbage collection.

Still, there are other sad things to observe in Slovenia. First is the loss of its uniqueness to the Westernization. It is becoming slightly too perfect. And too eager to prove that it is worthy of being there where it is, at the price of freedom. To the point that has more stringent traffic enforcement than Germany.

The other is hunger. Once the capitalism is discovered, the most important question, for those interested to remain sane, is: when is enough? Rule of law offers plenty of opportunity to screw other people for profit, perfectly within reams of legal books.

The newly capitalist countries often become wild places like Montenegro, where there is a very thin line between business and looting. Slovenia is more "civilized" and maintains a better social safety net (which in Montenegro is provided by ones extended family, mostly), but not less rapacious.

Everything is about winning a race: who is going to be the first in the EU, who is going to control which EU traffic corridor, etc. There is no place for cooperation. Only competition. Ultimately, that destroyed the movement that brought about the change that put Slovenia on course to democracy, and that set the stage for the dissolution of Yugoslavia.

Paradoxically, the movement was helped out of existence by early abundance of foreign help: it was literally drowned in money. Today its members are immersed in bitter quarrels, rarely on speaking terms with each other, competing in formal professionalism to attract more foreign money. Alternatively, they are out of the game, altogether, living on the farm with sheep, bees, and a bull.

This pages are under constructions, pictures from the trip will be added soon