I started this blog after finding my travel notes from the Middle East, and wanted to write them up into prose so I don’t forget the things I’ve done. I found myself really enjoying this – actively taking the ephemeral scribblings of my trip and constructing them into a more logical narrative – so have decided to just keep on writing, this time about my most recent trip to the Balkans (Macedonia, Albania, Montenegro, Croatia, Bosnia & Herzegovina and Kosovo). Considerably more contemporary than my Middle East trip, what I’m going to write might actually be useful for anyone thinking of undertaking a slightly different but fantastically rewarding European adventure – so hopefully this manages to inspire someone to do something a little different to usual.
I enjoy visiting less mainstream places and just generally exploring what an area has to offer. If I do have to visit mainstream destinations, I’ll always make sure to throw in something a bit less ‘done’ into the mix, purely because I enjoy going places that are less visited. Whilst i’m certainly not claiming to be some kind of intrepid traveler, I enjoy the chance to visit places people don’t usually visit and aren’t on the usual trail. The Balkans region is an area I had always wanted to visit – and a part of the world very engrained in recent memory for the complex situation following the breakdown of Yugoslavia and subsequent conflicts. Nonetheless, the region is being discovered more and more for its Mediterranean beauty and rural simplicity, and offers a unique chance to visit a host of different counties, environments and cultures in a relatively short area.
When understanding why different parts of the Balkans are how they are, it is important to have a *basic* understanding of Southeastern European history. Rather than attempt to understand one of the longest running and most deeply divisional military and peacetime ‘disagreements’ in the 20th and 21st centuries in one paragraph, throughout my blog I will attempt to explain and understand what has happened in each of the countries we visited to make them how they are today.
I went with my boyfriend, Rich (the world’s least adventurous traveler; thought he was going to be kidnapped every day) but managed to convince him of our Balkans adventure by demonstrating the vast area and numerous places to visit, as well as the overall minimal cost of two weeks driving around the area. We used online flight comparisons to find the cheapest return flights to an airport in the region (Skopje won at £75 each, return) then used Google Maps to come up with a semi-logical route to take in all the main sights and locations, whilst being able to end in the same place we started. The end result was as follows;
Trying to find a logical way to organise this blog is a bit complicated, as numerous countries were visited multiple time, but I will organise as so;
- MACEDONIA – Skopje to Ohrid (red on the map)
- ALBANIA – Ohrid to Tirana & Durres (purple)
- DRIVING ADVENTURE – Tirana to Dubrovnik via Montenegro (green)
- BOSNIA & HERZEGOVINA – Dubrovnik to Podgorica via Trebinje (orange)
- MONTENEGRO – Exploring Podgorica, Kotor, Tivat and Budva (yellow)
- KOSOVO – Podgorica to Prishtina via Albania (turquoise)
All we’d booked before leaving was nightly accommodation in various Airbnbs and car hire from Skopje Airport – the rest would be up to us to work out interesting places to go and things to see.
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