 and we're here at the Montenegro Pavilion, hi! Hi, welcome, welcome to Montenegro. And who are you? My name is Dado, I'm an informant here, along with my colleagues and I'm going to show you our pavilion and explain you a little bit about Montenegro and all we have to offer. Over here, you can see where Montenegro is located. It's in the western Balkans area of Europe, right across Italy. And over here, we have the capital, size and population of Montenegro. So there's a lot of flight connections? Yes, so there are a lot of direct flights to Montenegro, especially during the season, during the summer. With the Ryanair or EasyJet and everything? A lot of different air companies. And from Dubai, it only takes five hours to reach Montenegro. So there's a flight Dubai direct? Yes, so during the summer, we have flight Dubai. They have direct flights to Montenegro. If there aren't any direct flights, you can always go from Dubai to Istanbul and then from Istanbul to Montenegro with Turkish Airlines. Alright. Over here is the main theme of our pavilion, Blessed by Nature, accompanied by a great quote from the English poet Lord Byron and some information about Montenegro to bring the idea closer to you. Alright, there's a lot of mountains, right? Yes, actually Montenegro means Black Mountain because all the mountains in the area are pitch black because the forests are evergreen, so they have this lush green color. And there was a story that a long time ago, sailors who were sailing around the coast of Montenegro, they didn't know what Montenegro was called. It didn't have a name. But looking up at the mountains, all they could see was pitch black forests, so they gave it the name Black Mountain and later turned to Montenegro. This over here is our interactive wall. You can place your hand on any of the yellow icons like this, which will activate an animation that adds information for the various locations, first in Arabic, then in English. And for example, this is the Biogratzka Gora rainforest, which is protected and untouched since 1878 and it's a very special forest that has various different types of trees, animals and plants. And it's so special and beautiful that we dedicated this light infrastructure as a tribute to that forest and it's lavish and enchanting beauty. You can see over here. Who's the designer on the... Symmetriku is the designer of this pavilion. And Montenegro is 70% forest, which is why it's very important to us to dedicate a part of this pavilion to those forests. And this is really fully touched. Yes, so all the yellow icons you can interact with. How does it work? There is a sensor that notices your hand when it's near any of the yellow spots and then it activates an animation that is played by a projector and then you can see the information and animations that it has to show. Designed by Montenegro designers? Symmetriku was the designer of pavilion. And over here we have Lake Skadar, which is a very special lake that has over 270 different bird species. This Dalmatian pelican being one of the more famous ones in the area, which is why it's also the symbol of that lake. If we go over here, we have the old olive tree, which is 2000 years old. And it's a very special tree that is protected by the government and still alive and healthy to this day. And there is a story that a long time ago, families who had feuds would come under this tree to reconcile and make peace. It became like a national symbol of peace. Over here is a very famous place in Montenegro called Thara Canyon. And it's the second deepest canyon in the whole world. It's 1300 meters deep and it has 14 rivers flowing into it and over 40 cascades. So it's a very special place. And this over here is another canyon. In this case, canyon Nevidio, which is one of the harder canyons to pass in Europe and its name Nevidio actually means not seen because once you enter its narrow passages and you look up at the sky, you cannot see it. And this is the long beach in Ulcin, which as the name says is a relatively long beach. It's 13 kilometers long and 50 meters wide. It's the longest beach on the Adriatic Sea and its sand is very beautiful and also healthy because it's rich in minerals, and special medicines for specific illnesses. And the last one is this declaration on the ecological state of Montenegro, which was signed in 1991, the year when Montenegro became the first ecological state in the whole world. And it's basically an agreement that the country made that we will do our very best to protect all our nature, keep it safe, green, prosperous and sustainable. So one of your businesses is like tourism? Yes, one of the main sources of income in Montenegro is tourism, the second is agriculture, because we have plenty of different natural resources and beautiful places for tourists to visit, enjoy and vacation in. Over here you can see on this big screen some of the locations that we have to offer. This is the Biograzka Gora Rainforest that we mentioned before. It's a very beautiful rainforest. You can see various different shots. This is a black lake, also a famous place in Montenegro. You can see from all these videos you can see that Montenegro has plenty of natural beauties. That's a very big screen. Yes, we call this the Zen area because it's a very good place to just sit back, relax and immerse yourself in the beauty of Montenegro. Over here are the natural treasures of Montenegro and you can see the various species that we have in the area and how we protect and preserve them. Starting with this one, it's the long snouted sea horse which is found at the Adriatic Sea. It has a 360 vision and when they decide to lay eggs the female can hold up to 1,000 eggs at a time but it's actually the male that does the birth process. She passes the amount of the male and the male gives birth to the babies. This is a Lofchen bellflower found in the mountain of Lofchen in a specific part of that mountain and it's a very special and very rare flower and because it's so rare and beautiful some volunteers wanted to help protect it from wildfires that happened during the summer so they created this system of water balloons that will hang right above the flowers and when the fire reached the balloons they'd pop and the water would fall on the flowers saving them from the flames. This over here is a golden coral which is found in the bay of Kotur and the golden coral is very special so the country decided to help save it by not allowing ships to drop anchors near the coral or fishermen to use fishing hooks because they can get caught up in the coral and rip it apart and for this reason the coral became so expanded and massive that it's really helping the ecosystem grow and the water to be safe and clean for the fish. Here we have the Dalmatian Pelican that we mentioned before that's found in Lake Kotur it's actually a symbol of that lake and our country created this fake nest in the area so that the pelican can lay their eggs in them and be safe in them while in the environment because the lake can sometimes get flooded and usually destroys their nests. Do they know that it's a fake nest? Yes, they know that it's safe they know that it's not made by them but they use it regardless to be safe in them because again, like I said the lake gets flooded and it can destroy their nests and it's made, so this helps them. And this over here is a golden eagle which is a very special bird in our country it's actually on our national flag and the golden eagle has two sides the beautiful and the dangerous side so you see the beautiful side, the dangerous side actually is that it can fly really really high it's usually found in the higher mountains of Montenegro and it can take down an animal twice its size but the beautiful side is when a male and a female eagle come together and fall in love they do this thing we call a wedding dance where they hold their claws together they fly up in the sky and they dance around declaring their love to the people and it is said that once the eagles marry they rarely ever part ways as they're usually very loyal to each other so they stick together till the end and they can take down like a cow or something I'm pretty sure they're very tough creatures but again, very very romantic so we'll give them a pass and over here we have the brown bear and the brown bear is like any other typical bear you'd find in the world in our country it's found in the mountain forests and they are a bit peculiar how many do you have? bears? so there's a couple of them I'm not exactly sure on the number but they're usually found in the mountain forests and they're a bit peculiar so some scientists wanted to see why you see they placed some trackers on a few bears to see where they went, what they ate and what they did and they found that one of the bears actually enjoyed swimming more than walking and another bear they wanted to test out in a special location in the forest they put a trail for the bear to follow but the bear was very suspicious of all of this so he didn't eat any of the food until they put down the cake and the candy and the bear immediately went to the location and the last one is the black pine which is usually found in the Cinnapoda forest but also scattered throughout Montenegro and it's a very tall tree it can grow up to 47 meters high and it's very thick it has a dark green color appearing almost completely black from a distance and here comes again the story of how Montenegro got its name you see over here this is like a shot a different perspective of Montenegro that you'd see from the coast and this is actually what the sailors would see when they were traveling to Montenegro and all they could see was pitch black mountains because of all the dark trees one of them the black pine which is how again we got the name Black Mountain Montenegro you can see the story over here as well here you can see Montenegro the black mountain so when you talk about being in ecological country you're serious yeah actually over here you can see a quote from the declaration on ecological state that we that we signed see it's in 1991 and it's again an agreement that the country made that we will protect all our nature keep it safe, green and prosperous and here which is why yes all our nature which is why we invite you to join us on our sustainable journey and hopefully visit Montenegro soon can anybody just come and live there the citizenship visa currently active if you go to Montenegro you buy a piece of land and make a small donation to the country dependent on the plot of land that you buy you can actually be valid for a passport of Montenegro so you can become a citizen how many years do you have to wait before you can get approved I'm not exactly sure if you're currently in Dubai in United Arab Emirates we actually have an embassy of Montenegro in Abu Dhabi so you can actually go and ask them or send them an email and answer more questions about that more precise questions but I think it's a relatively short process but it has to be checked with the officials because it's the dream of most human beings to live in nature have an harmony with the ecology and everything what's happening in this little store there this is our gift shop and all the items you see here are actually handmade and eco-friendly excuse me sorry so starting from these we have handmade bags who's the designer so they're from the designer so this is the sticker it's a designer we have over here also these are 100% eco-friendly made with material and these are magnets as well also made eco-friendly we also have over here these children toys these are ecological games this is like a puzzle game that helps children use their minds more creatively and think outside the box and while playing with this toy and making all these puzzles they also learn about Montenegro because each image is related to something from Montenegro and teaches them about it and over here we have these 3D printed accessories you have earrings, bow ties, bracelets all made with zero waste material and a machine a 3D printer so these you can see over here they're made by Miju Jewelry it's this lady over here and this is a message that she has for zero waste let me print your jewelry cool very cool initiative these are bracelets solid good quality and it's not all these effects when I turn them in the light and there's zero waste so if you buy them you protect the nature while doing so and here you're giving out some stamps yeah here we have the stamps it's over here you see what happens when you can you stamp something this is the stamp you get when you fly in from outside the Schengen right? yeah yeah if you have a Schengen visa you can visit Montenegro freely and over here we also have one more thing it's related to the business side of Montenegro you can place your hand above this sensor over here so it's COVID safe you place your hand right here you can control this cursor and you can see how Montenegro is improving in its areas of mobility, opportunity and sustainability and for mobility Montenegro is improving by making it easier for travelers to travel to Montenegro one of the ways we do that is adding another airport so we used to have one in the capital now we have another one in Tivat so this increased the influx of tourists and another important thing to know about Montenegro you see Montenegro is strategically located in Europe so if you do business in Montenegro you're not doing business with just Montenegro both with the whole vicinity many friendly neighbouring countries yes so the western Balkans consist of six countries we have Serbia, Albania, Bosnia Kosovo, North Macedonia, Montenegro and they're all very friendly countries working together to make the world a better place not competing so the western Balkans is an initiative to work together and be a better country here we have sustainability and now opportunity and for opportunity we show a few business sides of Montenegro like the GDP income tax which is 9% and we also show how we are helping young entrepreneurs run businesses in Montenegro by creating a friendly environment for start-ups which is helping them try and make their businesses grow in Montenegro and the vicinity how do they come in there and do the start-ups so there are options for people outside Montenegro, there are options for foreigners but there are plenty of like programs built for people to like compete with ideas and the winning idea usually gets a financial help from very different organizations and that usually ends up in being a successful company that is trying to change a certain part of Montenegro so you have like climathons which are like hackathons made for like climate change and you have hackathons as well with different like programs How has it been going the event for you? The expo event? It's great it's really perfect, we have plenty of visitors that are visiting and discovering Montenegro because Montenegro is such a small country not a lot of people heard about it but this is exactly why expo is a perfect and a great event because a lot of people learn about it and hopefully visit and see for themselves the beauty that we have shown them here