Last minute Aussie catch up in the Balkans

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Due to some gentle nudging and prodding, I shall be posting a few musings from my recent (last minute) trip to the Balkans!

A friend from high school was over in the region and asked if I was free, as it turned out I was due to having some forced R&R between contracts so I decided to fly over to the eastern side of Europe to catch up and do a whirlwind tour of 4 countries in 5 days. We covered a decent amount of (car) miles, but the scenery on the drives, company and places we visited made this a wonderful trip and has whet my appetite to go back and explore the region a little more with Mrs Flashback when time permits in our busy schedules.

 

[LadyC]

Waiting for the next instalment

 

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Getting the car rental right was the biggest challenge here - 1 way rentals made the price far too high so we instead looked at doing a loop, which seems common for the area.

There's a few things you need to take into account when looking at your car rental options:
- Which countries will they allow me to drive through? (the rental company will ask what countries you are driving through and then sort out the green card and / or vignette for you, although in Bulgaria you need to actually purchase the vignette yourself once in the country - you can do that based on weekly, monthly or yearly and buy them from most service stations)
- Do I need any additional insurance?
- Where do I want to visit and how long will it take to do the loop?

The most common issue I found amongst companies were that Albania and Kosovo were countries you were not allowed to take the car in (with permission, anyway).

Now this does present a few issues, depending on where you start as it either alters the route you have to take (longer drive) or means you get to miss out on some places you wanted to visit. That's fine as you could leave the car in southern Serbia for example and then bus it down to Kosovo but it all depends on your appetite (and time) for such things. You can of course take the car through the border anyway but if you have any issues, you're on your own. Some countries also will charge you if you don't have the right car documents (see above re: green card) and you may have to buy on the spot and could pay as much as 100 EUR for the privilege. Research this one thoroughly, for example starting in Croatia seemed to present some better options and had companies that would allow you into into Albania. If I recall there was even one that allowed Kosovo too.

What you need to keep in mind is with the break-up of Yugoslavia there is a deemed perception of some of these areas being unsafe. In our travels we never felt that at all and that was with us having Serbian plates on our car (what was deemed to be the central power).

So with that out of the way..... onto a little bit more about the trip!

 

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The plan consisted no more than flying into Sofia, meeting up there and spending a night in Plovdiv (he knew a local there, so she came with us and showed us around).

My mate flew into Belgrade and picked up the car from there, so did the loop from Belgrade to Belgrade, however with myself joining in Sofia I'll show the route we took from there. Apart from a night in Plovdiv and a night in Sofia, the rest of the journey was planned 1 day at a time. Each night once we finished our activities for the day, we'd open up Google Maps and have a look at where to go next. We would then spend 15 minutes or so looking at accommodation options and on average even though we were booking ~12 hours prior to check-in our spend averaged £30/night for 2 people (2x single beds).

The route I took was as follows:

1. Pickup from Sofia airport and drive to Plovdiv, Bulgaria (1 night)
2. Back to Sofia, Bulgaria (1 night)
3. Novi Pazar, Serbia (1 night)
4. Kotor, Montenegro (1 night)
5. Dubrovnik, Croatia (1 night)

When driving from Sofia to Novi Pazar, you could have added in a night in Niš but as time wasn't on my side I had to skip past it. My mate, having picked up the car a few days earlier was able to visit Novi Sad, Belgrade and Niš - so I'll have to check those out when I take Mrs Flashback over for a trip!

Additionally, once I departed Dubrovnik for my flight back to London, he travelled on to Mostar, Sarajevo and a small town near the border to break up the long drive back to Belgrade to return the car.

Although you end up passing through some more major cities doing these kind of trips, the value in having a car means you can go anywhere, anytime and there are no limits as to what you can do. Some of our more fun photo and exploring stops were in such places but I may not necessarily know what the name of the small town or village was! Novi Pazar was the only non-well known city we spent a night in as it was on the route from Sofia to Kotor (without stopping in Niš, otherwise that would have been the option for that night) and it turned out to be a really decent option. Even the border agent was surprised when we crossed into Serbia from Bulgaria, he thought we were referring to Novi Sad - which is a much more popular place to visit!

 

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Been a busy few weeks, I promise I'll bust out the rest of the posts and have this completed by the end of the weekend!

 

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Been a busy few weeks, I promise I'll bust out the rest of the posts and have this completed by the end of the weekend!

Well that turned out to be a lie, thanks to man-flu. Shall start attacking them in the evening and close it out hopefully by the week's end.

 

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First stop was Plovdiv, a small town east of Sofia which seems to be flagged as the European Capital of Culture for 2019; so I suspect it'll start to get a little bit busier. I was picked up from Sofia airport after having arrived in on BA with a nice exit row seat and empty middle and the drive took close to 1.5 hours as we had to swing past downtown to pickup a friend who lives there.

It absolutely chucked it down for part of the journey, but it was all nicely maintained motorways so a pretty simple drive in the end. It was interesting seeing the mixture of modern and old architecture, it seems like Bulgaria is the new China for Europe.



Upon arriving in Plovdiv, after taking a few wrong turns trying to find our accommodation we parked up and wandered around town for the day. Fortune was on our side as the weather improved and when the sun was out it was actually quite warm, so shorts and t-shirt weather for me! I liked that one of the old amphitheaters was built around and there's cafes and shops that look straight out into it.



There was quite a bit of street art around the place which made for interesting viewing.


The majority of these photos are taken in the newer part of town, where there is a high concentration of shops, restaurants and of course people!

 

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With the "new town" out of the way, it was time to explore the old town. Very quaint and really cool architecture. I'll let the photos speak for themselves. The old Roman amphitheater is used for concerts quite a bit and my friends agree it's the best venue they've been to for the metal/rock bands they've seen play there.



The meals were huge and pretty tasty, one thing I really noticed around the Balkans is that meat grilled in any way, shape or form is definitely a popular thing to have. Citizens' Club was the venue we chose for dinner, taken as a recommendation from our host who was kindly showing us around Plovdiv.



Plovdiv is definitely worth a visit, it seems really popular with the locals as well so is good to mix in with the local culture a bit more. Easily doable as a day trip from Sofia if you have a car, but I'd recommend spending a night there as wandering around the old town and then out to the lookout point in the evening is magic. We got by pretty easily with English, but I won't deny we did get a bit lazy having a local with us so she was able to converse on our behalf in Bulgarian which made life a lot easier.

 

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After having spent around 24 hours in Plovdiv, it was back in the car and off to Sofia for the evening. There was something going on in one of the parks and everyone was joining in, but we instead opted to just sit back and enjoy the people dancing around and having a good time.

I don't think I'll try out the Sofia Hilton.


Dinner was a on the edge of town, recommended by our local friend and was alright - very busy so was obviously popular, but wasn't really my cup of tea.

Made in Blue, Sofia - Restaurant Reviews, Phone Number & Photos - TripAdvisor

Given we had only booked our accommodation that morning, we opted for AirBnB which came in at a very reasonable £30 (~$50).

 

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A day wandering around Sofia... it's easily walkable, most of the attractions are in a fairly central area so you could easily whizz through in a day. There's a few museums to have a look in as well, but having already been to Sofia once before it was more of a photo tour for my mate so we started early and got around to everything then we were in the car around 2.30pm as we had a long drive ahead of us to get to Novi Pazar.



There is a history of the better educated Bulgarians learning French too, so you will often see a bit of French around and it's more common to say merci for thank you rather than the Bulgarian word.

There is a strong orthodox influence on Sofia and that can easily be seen looking at the churches, there were quite a few around the place.

 

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With our self-guided walking photography tour around Sofia being completed it was time to cross the border into Serbia and make out way to Novi Pazar. Why Novi Pazar? Well, we wanted to stop somewhere in Serbia on the way to Montenegro and it was roughly half way between Sofia and Kotor. We had a 6 hour drive ahead of us, so worked out well to just bash it out for the rest of the afternoon and arrive in the evening.

The easy option would have been taking the E-80, but how boring is that!? We opted instead to go for a more southern border crossing as it would lead to more interesting sights, rather than just motor way driving and also bypass the much busier main crossing, which when my mate entered previously took a fair bit of time. Just before we crossed the border we ran into this, already we felt like we had made the right decision.


We stopped in for a fuel top-up prior to the crossing as it seemed to be cheaper in Bulgaria than Serbia and that's when we then discovered we had been driving illegally in a way - we didn't have a vignette covering our car. We discovered this as we were pulled over by the police and they asked where it was. When he realised we weren't Serbians (we had Serbian plates on the car) but were Aussies, I think they went a little bit easier on us. "Bloody tourists" they said, no doubt! You can buy them per week, month or year and usually at the border or at a servo. Given we were nearly out of the country we could have just taken the risk and skipped it, but we thought we should do it just in case the border crossing does ask to see it. It was pretty unlikely though, given when my mate entered into Bulgaria they didn't care or mention it at all!

We pulled into the servo and fuelled up with one small issue, we were told the credit card machine (3 of them!) didn't work. Oh no..... no close ATM's nearby, either. Not to worry, she said give it a try and hopefully it'll work. Fortunately, it worked. Crisis avoided! We bought our vignette too, which is now a lovely souvenir and made our way to the border. The border crossing was non-eventful and really quick, one of the better things about having taken the scenic route is that although it added an hour onto our overall driving time the border was like a ghost town, so we were able to pass through pretty quickly.

 

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The drive from the border down to Novi Pazar was fairly non-eventful, although a minor GPS mishap which I luckily caught in time meant we added a little bit of extra time. My mate was using a fairly decent GPS app on his phone whereas I was using Google Maps. We had the route planned out the night before, ensuring we stayed purely in Serbia. At some stage though, somehow his route changed and had us trying to travel through Kosovo - a big no no, per the reasons I mentioned in my earlier posts. Fortunately I’m a bit paranoid and liked to dig out my Google Maps offline mode every now and then and check we were on track!

A short trip down the motorway, 180 degree turn and then back in the right direction. It was pretty smooth sailing after that. We stopped in a tiny roadside restaurant in Razbojna for yet again, BBQ grill meat. Very unhealthy, but most delicious.


Back on the road and on our way to Novi Pazar. As we cut across the southern part of Serbia, our optional route had us passing through a mountain range. Given it was late by the time we hit it, it was pretty dark and lots of steep up and downhill windy roads. Great run and I think it was probably better that it was quite dark as some of the sections felt a little bit hairy!

Eventually we arrived in Novi Pazar, parked up our car at our accommodation and went for a walk into town. It was quite busy and there was quite a student vibe to the town, it was interesting to note also a very heavy Turkish influence. At least it meant there were lots of little shops to buy Turkish sweets! Yum! On reflection later, it was the last night before Ramadan started so with the heavy Muslim influence on the area it seems people were out enjoying the evening before the start of Ramadan.

After a short wander around town, it was back to our accommodation after what had been a pretty long day of sightseeing and driving. We pulled out the map, after already having had a pretty good idea of where to next and confirmed that Kotor, Montenegro would be our next stop and after a short search for accommodation we settled on a place. There doesn’t seem to be a huge amount of options in Kotor, I think most of the tourist traffic is via the cruise ships that come in each day. That worked well for us, last minute we were yet again only paying £30 ($50) or so.

 

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As would be our standard schedule for each day, we spent the morning wandering through some of the town’s sites although Novi Pazar was a little more spread out in terms of things to see. The town itself was pretty compact and had some interesting things to see, but what we were interested in was the monastery and also the ruins of the former Serbian capital (Stari Ras, which means old town).

We had a wander around town........................


Then we fired up Google Maps and our GPS and off we went.



The monastery was free to visit, which seemed quite common for a good chunk of the attractions we saw in the Balkans and it was quite pleasant to take a stroll around the grounds, soaking up the views over the valleys and the architecture.


Next, it was off to Stari Ras. We followed the route as our GPS told us down to a tee….. questioning ourselves at times……

 

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But eventually we made it to the top……


And once there, wow! Pretty cool. It was very tucked away and I think it’s an attraction that few people would actually stumble upon, even if deliberately trying to make their way there.


With that out of the way, time was rapidly getting on and we had another fairly hefty drive ahead of us, which would turn out to be one of the best drives of the trip. We got back into the car and made our way for the Serbia / Montenegro border, but not without first stopping at a bakery to get some provisions. There were little bakeries everywhere and boy was the food good! Cheap, plentiful, fresh… and a nice big loaf of Turkish bread to keep us from starving as it would be a while before we were able to fit in some dinner.

A comment on the architecture, I'm not sure if it's something common to the region or not but we did notice in both Bulgaria, Serbia and to a small extent Montenegro a trend to have the "brick effect" on buildings, so whether they just never got around to rendering or not..... I don't know!

 

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As I've noted a few times, one of the highlights was the drive from Novi Pazar, Serbia to Kotor, Montenegro....... we had another mountain pass to navigate, lots of tunnels and some all out amazing scenery. The border crossing was really easy, it was pretty quiet - so we were through in no time.

I'll just leave these here.........


........ stunning stuff! It was only a glimpse of the amazing things we were going to see in Montenegro.

We were well on our way to Kotor when we had just passed through the capital (Podgorica) and were driving along the main road down to the coast. Did I mention Montenegro seems a lot more "on the law"? Well, Bulgaria was happy for you drive at any speed.... ditto with Serbia. We'd often be overtaken by cops. Montenegro, not a chance! We were pinged at 20km/h over the limit, on what was a road that should have been the speed we were going anyway.... but I digress. Anyway, after a lengthy chat I think he decided it was too hard and let us off with a "don't do it again, drive safe!". From what my mate told me regarding the chat he had with the copper, they take your licence and you then have to go pick it up the next day and pay the fine. As we mentioned we'd be in Croatia the next day I think we got a free pass. Phew, lucky!

It was after that the heavens opened on us. There were no half measures here, it absolutely poured and poured and poured. It was so heavy at one stage we considered pulling over, but alas we had to be at our apartment by 9pm and we were already looking at just missing that; so we pulled into a servo, used their free WiFi (great tip, if you need internet just stop at the servos as most of them have free internet!) and let our host know we'd be a little bit late due to the weather.

We eventually arrived at our accommodation and due to the weather, she ushered us into the closest apartment which just happened to be the best one they had - a 3 bedroom behemoth with loads of space! We were only there for a night, but it was nice to spread out a bit.


Where we were lucky is that this apartment was higher up than the small one we had booked, so the views of Kotor bay were stunning. Here's a shot from the next morning, as I was sitting on the phone conducting a few interviews for an upcoming gig.

 

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It was a 5 minute walk down the hill towards the main part of town, we spent most of the day just wandering around and soaking up the atmosphere and sights.

If you're keen for more grilled meat, then check out Tanjga Family Restaurant. You order your meat platters by the g/kg and it's cooked fresh and brought out to you to eat. There was a constant flow of traffic whilst we were there and the food was oh so delicious. Given Mrs Flashback is vegetarian, I took the opportunity whilst travelling with my mate to meat it up in the land of grills!

You can easily lose yourself in the streets here and the best thing to do is just wander around and see where the paths lead. If you have the time then it's worth doing the walk up the upper town walls, which winds its way up the cliffs. This is definitely a place I'd love to come back to, there's quite a few hikes you can do to some old fortresses and waterfalls; you could easily spend 2-3 days here I would think.

A few highlights from the day in Kotor.....


After a good few hours of exploring and having lunch it was starting to get a lot busier with the tourists from the cruise ship, so it was back to the apartment to collect the car and then travel around the bay to get to the border crossing into Dubrovnik, Croatia.

 

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However, we weren't heading straight to Dubrovnik without a few stops along the way!

First, we stopped in Perast - very scenic and a pretty little island sitting out in the bay.


The roads were really quiet, so it was easy to just pull up anywhere and snap a few shots. We probably stopped at least 10 times along the drive, with constant amazement at the beauty of the place.

We continued around the bay and eventually made it to Herceg Novi (or "New Castle" in English), which again felt very quiet and relaxed and it was great to be able to wander around and enjoy the sites.


By now the weather was absolutely stunning, awesome blue skies (hey, I don't get that often in London!) and perfect temps with it hitting around 25 degrees.


Note, that if you're stopping in at the restaurants or bars here... no budgie smugglers allowed!

 

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Crossing the border into Croatia was the longest crossing we had, given there's no easy direct flights to Montenegro from London a lot of people seem to do a day trip from Dubrovnik as it's about 1.5-2 hours drive each way. As we were crossing the border late afternoon I think we hit a lot of the daytrippers heading back across. There were quite a few tour busses lined up too, all up it took around 45 minutes to exit Montenegro and then enter Croatia.



It was good to be back in the EU though as I could turn data roaming back on and be reconnected to the world! We drove through the countryside and made our way to our accommodation for the evening, we were staying a bit out of town but were only just down the road from the marina where a lot of the boats dock that do the sail Croatia type trips.

We considered driving into town, but in the end decided on Uber. That worked out to be a much better option as parking prices there make your eyes bleed! It's not cheap and I think I've paid much less for parking even in central London. Dubrovnik is definitely riding off the back of Game of Thrones and is pricing itself accordingly.

We had a short wander around the old town, inside the city walls and soaked up the atmosphere before having dinner knowing that we'd be back the next day to do some more serious sightseeing.

 

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I won't go into too much detail on our day in Dubrovnik, purely because it's a well visited area and I dare say many people have already been before and reported on it in here. What I will say though is I'm slightly conflicted on how I feel about the city. While it is pretty and the photos I saw looked amazing, after having just been in Montenegro where I was in awe of everything it was difficult to feel the same way. I think the main reason I felt like that too is that everything was just priced so highly here. Parking. Tours. Food. While I appreciate tourism is the industry that helps the town tick over, I do think there is such a thing as going too far. The walking tour we went on was easily clearing £3k (~$5k) for 1.5 hours work..... not bad work if you can get it!

Upon arrival at the old town... it looked so peaceful.


Alas, it was going to be another day of playing dodgem cars with the tourists. Of course, we were one of them too!


We did the obligatory Game of Thrones tour, I'll post a few photos from our days meanderings and rather than point out specific places and spoil for those who may not have been yet - I'll just leave these here and see if you can work out what scene from GoT they may have come from. To be fair to our tour guide, she was pretty good and she actually had a very small role in Season 4, Episode 1. Her sister had an even more involved role by being a body double, acting out scenes in full before the real actress would come in and do the same scene so it was nice to have a deeper insight to the impact of filming on the locals as well as a bit of insider knowledge.

 

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Whilst it was a pretty busy place, it also didn't feel too in your face and rushed. People were happy just sitting around hanging out......

And sitting around, practising their drawing skills.....


After we finished the walking tour, we broke off for lunch - our final meal together for some time and I was then dropped off at the airport as my mate continued on his journey through Bosnia & Herzegovina (stopping in Mostar and Sarajevo) on his way back to Belgrade to return the car. The one thing I can't stress enough is that your best option when doing the Balkans is to do a circular trip, one way rentals are going to hurt! Having now had a taste for the area, I can't wait to head back and spend more weeks exploring. The best thing was all the little places we stopped along the way, but also most of the major towns (Dubrovnik excepted!) were not really that overrun with tourism. I think May/June is a great time to go also, May more so because the weather is absolutely cracking and it's still not really got into peak tourist season.

At least my flight home was as comfortable as British Airways can get, I had a whole exit row to myself.....


I hope you've enjoyed reading this! If you have any questions, I'm more than happy to attempt giving you a reasonable answer!