B A L K A N S (part 1 – Macedonia)

 

I am not a pleasant person to fly with. Not only do I find the whole airport experience ‘rather unpleasant’, I am also convinced that every plane I board will crash into a mountain, or the sea, or be hijacked, or explode (etc etc etc). Nothing, however, can prepare you for the sheer untold trauma of flying Wizz Air, from Luton Airport, having been awake since 4am. Once you accept, however, that there is no cheaper way to get from the UK to the Balkans (return fare for £75 each) it becomes slightly more palatable. We landed at Skopje Alexander the Great airport, making the Republic of Macedonia (or, to be compliant with UK Foreign Policy, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia) our first country.

Travel writing take 2 – Balkans

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.