Wrestling with Cyrillic

If you are planning a trip to the Balkans, the good news is that lots of them share a language, known outside the area as Serbo-Croatian (since the middle of the 19th century), and inside by a number of very complicated things: Serbian, Croatian, Serbian/Croatin/Bosnian/Montenegrin...and then those from Herzegovina feel left out. the Croatians do not want to be associated in any way with the Serbs, the Bosnians want to be recognized, and the Montenegrins, while not wanting to be part of the region, want their linguistic roots recognized. Much like everything else in the Balkans, the language is complicated. Add to it Slovene, which is a Slavic language, with many overlapping aspects with Serbo-Croatian, but many more aspects that are separate.
The good news is that from a pronunciation standpoint it is an easy group of languages--once you learn the rules (of which there are a limited number), you can pronounce anything with ease--which makes using your phrasebook, or asking for directions to a specific location very doable, even in the first couple of days of a trip. My husband's name begins with a 'J', which is 'Dz' in Slavic languages, so while startling to see the first time we made a reservation, we soon learned the ropes.
The difficulty lies in the alphabet. Which we did not master. Much of the region, for historical reasons, uses the Latin alphabet--but not so with Serbia. The Orthodox church reigns in the religious realm, and the Cyrillic alphabet is alive and well in Serbia. There is a blessed effort to mark road signs on the highway in both Cyrillic and Latin, which was much appreciated, but on the streets of Belgrade, Cyrillic is king.
Serbia is not the only country using a non-Latin alphabet that we have been to by any means, but many of them give a nod to the non-native speaker and have signs in both Latin and non-Latin forms. Makes a huge difference. Greece certainly posed an equal challenge to us in that it was not common to have Latin signs, but in contrast to Cyrillic, we had some exposure to the Greek alphabet before we went. Admittedly, four of the six of us were on constant vigil as we traveled down the highways of Greece to try to identify the exit we sought before passing it--not always successfully--but it was far easier than learning the alphabet on the fly mid-trip. If I had it to do over again, I would have spent some of the pre-vacation prep time familiarizing myself with the letters that differ from ours.