Balkan roadtrip - May '13

In May '13 me and my girlfriend did a 2.5 week road trip along the Balkans. We did this trip by public transport and tried not to book too much in advance in order to be flexible along the way. In this blog I won't go into much of the 'on day 2 we did X and on day 14 we saw Y'-stuff', in all cities/places we saw the main tourist attractions, which in many cases are the old towns. Sites like Wikitravel and Tripadvisor or the Lonely Planet'Western Balkans' guide (out of print, try to get one) will help you identifying those if interested. Instead of all the details I will do some write ups on certain categories. This will range from basic things like the route we took, transport in the region (intercity as well as inner-city), accommodation, food, tips about the cities, budget but also some weird things that I couldn’t fit in other categories.

Route:

We started in Belgrade (Serbia) and flew back from Thessaloniki in Greece. The cities/places we visited during this trip were the following: Belgrade (Serbia) – Sarajevo and Mostar (Bosnia and Herzegovina) – Herceg Novi, Kotor, Budva and Ulcinj (Montenegro) – Tirana (Albania) – Ohrid, Bitola and Skopje (Macedonia) – Paralia Katernis and Thessaloniki in Greece. As you can see on the map, our route has been about 1800 kilometer. We stayed in 11 different cities, and only stayed more than 1 night in Belgrade, Sarajevo, Kotor and Thessaloniki. Most of the places aren’t that big and most transport is rather frequent, so we didn’t feel we got pushed by our schedule. Other places we thought about but skipped on this route: Dubrovnik (Croatia, seems outrageously expensive compared to the region), Berat (Albania, couldn't find good accommodation nor easy transport) and Pristina (Kosovo, weather forecast was better for the Greek beaches ;)). They're on the list for next time.

Our route

Intercity transport:

On most transfer between cities and places we took the bus. Bus travel is the way to go in the Western Balkans. Every bigger town in former Yugoslavia has a bus station with timetables, some shops, luggage storage and mostly English is spoken for buying tickets there. On most routes we just bought tickets less than an hour before the bus left, but you can buy it up forehand, to be sure. Tickets can also be bought at the driver, mainly on shorter trips or at smaller bus stations/stops. For a general impression of bus routes and times you can check Balkanviator, although it isn't perfect, in general local bus stations always know best. ;) One thing to know: in general, buses go quite often. Only the Skopje – Thessaloniki and Mostar – Herceg Novi connections went once a day, but between cities in Montenegro you can easily have 4 buses an hour.

Sveti Sava, Belgrade

Although bus travel is the most common way of travelling, it's not that fast. Highways aren't frequent and busses stop at many places to pick up passengers, packages or whatever since the bus also functions as a surrogate DHL. Busses generally range from quite okay to quite bad. We haven't been in super good or super bad ones.

As for prices, you can think of anywhere between 2 and 5€ for an hour of travelling, in which, depending on the roads, the amount and duration of border controls and the number of stops you will travel between 30 and 60 kilometer. Greece is a little more expensive and faster, we paid 6€ for a 45 min/70 km trip. The one hour stretch from Dubrovnik to Herceg Novi is about 15€ for some weird reason. Some other examples:  Kotor – Bar (7€, 65 km, 2 hours), Tirana – Struga, via Durres (13€, 200 km, 5.5 hour) and Bitola – Skopje (7,5€, 170 km, 3.5 hour).

 

Train travel isn't really common in this region. In some countries there are practically no train tracks, and if there are some, trains only go once or twice a day, with international connections being even more limited. The only option on our trip to take a train was on the Sarajevo – Mostar route (once a day, 6:55, 6€), were we took an old Swedish train, packed with fellow backpackers, travelling on the scenic route for 3 hours.

Sarajevo - Mostar train

Local bus in Montenegro

The fastest option in this region however are (shared) taxis. If you travel in a group of 4 or find enough people to share a taxi with you, taxis won't even be much more expensive than buying bustickets and you won't have to depend on bus schedules/routes. In most cases with shared taxis you will be dropped off at more central points than a bus station too. We took a shared taxi (arranged through Geatours) from Belgrade to Sarajevo (25€ pp, 6 hours), arranged a private transfer from Ulcinj to Skhodra (30€ total, 1.5 hour) and a taxi from Struga to Ohrid for example.

Shared taxi/furgon in Albania

If you're travelling in Albania: forget most of the above. Albania has no real bus stations or schedules. For travelling between cities in Albania at certain points of a city all kinds of transport congregate. Busses, furgons (minibuses), shared taxis to a particular direction all wait until they are full/almost full and leave. Transport in different directions usually waits on different places of the cities, ask locals. Or check this site for a global idea. For international travel from Albania: busses mainly leave directly in front of the door of the travel agency that sells the tickets, or from random bars/gas stations in other cities. There is some schedule, but again, only locals know. 

 

Sebilj, pigeon square, Sarajevo

Inner-city transport:

None of the cities we've been to has a metro network, the bigger ones have a bus and/or tram network and in the smaller ones no real public transport is available, although intercity transport can be used from outskirts to the center. Just wave the bus and it will probably take you for 1€. In the cities where we took local public transport (Belgrade, Sarajevo, Thessaloniki) it was quite okay, tickets are widely available (or on board) and cheap. For short rides taxis can be quite useful too. Depending on your haggling skills, it’s cheap: we paid between 1 and 4€ for short rides, mostly from/to bus stations to our hostel.

Mostar's iconic old bridge.

Accommodation:

During this trip we stayed in hostels, hotels and apartments. We always had a private room, with in some cases a shared bathroom. In Serbia, Bosnia, Albania and Macedonia we mainly stayed in hostels. Hostels have their advantage that they are mainly run by travelers who know what other travelers need, regarding to travel-tips, (cheap) restaurants, 24h reception and information about the main sights in a city. In Montenegro most of the places we stayed in were apartments, where we had much more private space, but also lacked some valuable information and easy contact with (English-speaking) hosts. The two places we went to in Greece we stayed in hotels and especially our hotel in Paralia Katerinis was a steal, 30€, balcony facing the beach and beds to kill for. A couple ones we can really recommend: Olive Hostel (Belgrade), Shanti Hostel(Bitola) and Hotel Avra (Paralia Katerinis).

View from our apartment over Ulcinj

Ever had a fishtank in your hotelroom?
We did in Belgrade!

Except for a little more expensive hotel in Thessaloniki we paid anywhere between 20 and 32€ a night for the room. All rooms we had were located (quite) central and received good reviews on Booking.com, Hostelworld and/or Tripadvisor. Dorm beds and badly reviewed places are cheaper off course, high-season is probably more expensive. Due to the limited budget options in Kotor we booked the first week of this trip in advance, most of the other hotels we booked just the day before, through the Booking.com / Hostelworld-apps.

Food:

Baklava in Belgrade

When eating out, grilled meats, grilled fish and pizzas and pasta are the things you cannot miss or even avoid in the Balkans. In bigger cities like Belgrade the choice is bigger and you can get whatever you want for fairly low prices. In bakeries, the specialty all over the Balkans is Burek/Byrek, a puff pastry filled with cheese, spinach, meat or other filling, for about 1€ you can have a piece which will keep you going for quite a while. As for self catering: shops are opened for a good amount of the day and 24/7 shops are also quite frequent, even in smaller cities. We definitely couldn't have done this trip without packed croissants, bruscettas and crisps. They are sold everywhere, are dirt cheap (0.5€ for a pack of mini croissants or bruscettas for example) and are almost necessary as a late night snack on your room or especially in an early bus or train ride.

Best burek in Sarajevo!
One of the largest muslim cities
 in a non-muslim country

Local beer is available everywhere, Jelen and Lav in Serbia, Sarajevsko in Bosnia, Niksicko in Montenegro, Korca in Albania, Skopsko in Macedonia and Mythos in Greece for example. International brands like Amstel, Heineken, Tuborg and Carlsberg are everywhere too. In a bar/restaurant in the former Yugoslavian countries and Albania expect to pay anywhere between 0.90€ and 2.25€ for 0.5l draught or a bottle (0.3/0.5), with Macedonia probably being the cheapest county and Greece being more expensive (3€).

Budget:

We spent our money on mainly three things: travelling, food/drinks and accommodation.

Since we travelled from city to city quite a lot, and in the end almost every day, travel expenses make up for quite a big part of our expenses. Local busses, trains, taxi's have cost us about 200€ for the 2.5 week. Including our flight tickets and transfer to the airport, our total travel fees were about 350€ per person. Travelling in the region isn't that expensive, but we travelled a lot, and had some long travels costing us 25-35€ for one day (Mostar – Herceg Novi via expensive Dubrovnik and Skopje – Paralia Katerinis, with 2 busses and 2 taxi's for example) which affects the average quite a lot.

 

Stari grad, Herceg Novi

The second big chunk in our budget was food. Food and drinks have also cost us around 350€ each. This comes down to around 20€ per person for a day. We went out for dinner every night, for lunch quite often and occasionally for breakfast too. We also had drinks at bars quite often, both in the afternoon and at night. We spent the most money in Belgrade and Thessaloniki, in Belgrade we splurged a little more because of the bigger variety in restaurants/nightlife and Thessaloniki just is a little more expensive. The region is cheap, so if we'd go on a budget, we could have done this way cheaper.

Our accommodation was about 240€ for the trip, so basically just under 14€ per person per night. Other things like souvenirs (mainly different notes/coins for the collection) and entrance fees add another 30€ to our costs, to bring the total to about 970€ per person for the whole trip. If you want more information about the detailed numbers: check this blog. I've got pretty much every budget-thing written down on my phone, so I can dig up all numbers into detail.

View from Kotor fortress

Tips:

No blog would be complete without some tips/recommendations/opinions about the places we’ve been to. So let’s do it briefly, city by city. In most of the cities we only spend 1 day, but since the majority of the cities can rather be called villages with less than 100.000 inhabitants, we are not the type of people to visit every museum to its full extent and distances are short, it worked for us. Between parentheses you can see how long we’ve been everywhere.

Ugly piramid, Tirana

Belgrade (3 days): Big, cosmopolitan and the most ‘middle-European city of the Balkans’, good party city.

Sarajevo: (2) Didn’t feel the vibe over there, 10 degrees colder than the other cities didn’t really help. Very hilly city, views from the mountains are great, walking back isn’t.

Mostar (1): One of the nicest situated cities we’ve been to with the iconic bridge and the water. Desolated at night since most tourists are day trippers from Croatia:

Herceg Novi (1): Small town, nice old city, boulevard along the water stretching all the way to Igalo.

Kotor (1,5): The highlight of the region, nice views over the fjord from the castle on top of the hill.

Budva (0,5): Party town, with quite a few tourists, could be a beach-get-away for a day.

Ulcinj (1): Nice sandy beaches, and the ideal starting point to go to Albania quickly, quite hilly too.

Tirana (1): At first the atmosphere can be a little intimidating; now we regret not staying longer. Despite it being ugly as fuck, Blloku area is a really interesting and welcoming area with bars/restaurants.

Ohrid (1): If you’re not interested in tons of Dutchies, get the fuck out. That’s what we did.

Bitola (1): Nothing much to do but eating and drinking, but this small town really lives.

Skopje (1): See further in the blog.

Paralia Katernis (1): Beach town, nothing special.

Thessaloniki (2) : Not a real part of the Balkan, slightly more expensive too, but worth the visit.

Paralia Katerinis: beach, pita's with gyros and fur coats.

Other remarks:

Weird things that are sold:

Throughout this trip I had quite a few 'why the fuck are they selling so much of this/that here'-moments.  For example, in my remark Belgrade has a stall that sells packaged ice creams every 10 meter. Nice to know: quite a few of those offer a free wifi signal. The bazaars in Bitola and Skopje that are mentioned in all guidebooks aren't quite what you expect. The shops in Bitola that are still in function sell all kind of rubbish no tourist will ever need (unless you wanna play plumber in your hotel room or something) and the one in Skopje only sells jewelry and wedding dresses. In Thessaloniki, the boulevard along the water is filled with terraces, and every single person there is drinking frappe or another sort of ice coffee. Doesn’t anyone fancy a cold beer? But Paralia Katerinis is the one place I'm still amazed about. Why the hell would a 30-degrees beach town in Greece have 100+ shops selling fur coats? Why? And why can you only buy a pita with gyros there if you're hungry?

Archeological site in Thessaloniki

Skopje:

Skopje deserves a mention on its own. When you enter Macedonia you will get a text message saying 'welcome to the cradle of civilization'. That makes Skopje the capital of the cradle of civilization. I can still only laugh about Skopje. Why would a city build brand new 'old looking' buildings on the entire riverbank? And why would they put gigantic statues everywhere in the centre? And what is the function of building an Arc the Triomphe replica somewhere on a totally illogical spot? It's still under construction and I'd like to laugh my ass off again when everything is finished. How many statues do they have?

Skopje loves statues, part 2

Skopje loves statues, part 1.

Traffic sign terrorism:

Language is a big part of local identity in this region, but since the difference between for example Bosnian/Croatian and Serbian isn’t that big linguistically, they magnify the differences by a different script. Latin script in Croatia, and the Republic-part of Bosnia, Cyrillic in Serbia and the Serbian part of Bosnia for example. Albanian is also used, not only in Albania, but also in border regions in Macedonia and in the southern part of Kosovo. For traffic signs, this linguistic diversity has the consequence that traffic signs in the region are often bilingual or even trilingual. That’s where the traffic sign terrorism comes in. From the moment I first noticed it, I kept looking for it, and the region is filled with traffic signs where locals just scratch off the language/script they don’t like/feel it doesn’t belong there. Small gesture, but I think you can still feel the recent history by this kind of actions. Everyone is still fighting for their own territory.