New direct train from Sarajevo to Belgrade

Starting tomorrow (December 13, 2009), Sarajevo and Belgrade will be connected by a direct train service for the first time in almost two decades. The new service will run every day all year round, leaving Sarejevo at 11:35 and arriving at 20:18. In the reverse direction departure from Belgrade is at 17:35, arriving in Sarajevo at 20:18.

Until now travel by rail between these two cities has required an awkward change of trains in Croatia or northern Bosnia, so this development makes train travel a more appealing option. The trains still have to follow a rather indirect route through Croatia, and with a scheduled journey time of about 9 hours they will take longer than most buses, which typically take around 8 hours. However there is still only one bus (operated by Lasta) from Sarajevo's central bus station, so some travellers may find the train a more attractive option than a bus from the out-of-town Lukavica bus station.

The train fare (in either direction) is reportedly about 17 euro one way, 31 euro return.

Other people's journeys: Balkan travelogues 2009

Apart from a short trip to Romania I haven't had the chance to visit the Balkans this year, so I've been travelling vicariously by reading other people's online travelogues. In this post I list a selection of trip reports that may prove useful or interesting to readers planning a trip to the region. All of them date from 2009 or the second half of 2008 so the information should be up to date.

Most of the travelogues I've come across are about multi-country trips through Southeast Europe. A good example is "Traveling the Balkans", an account of a trip through Slovenia, Croatia, Montenegro, Albania, and Greece in May 2009. The site features detailed descriptions of some of the trickier cross-border transport connections in the region, including a bus from Venice to Ljubljana and a taxi-plus-minibus combination from Bar to Tirana. The author's overall conclusion: "I recommend this trip to anyone who has not spent time in this seriously awesome region".

The author of "Balkans2009's Great Adventure" reaches a similar conclusion: "All in all our trip to the Balkans was tremendously fun. We saw amazing sites, ate great food, and met some wonderful people. We'd strongly urge anyone who has a lust for off-the-beaten-path travel to consider visiting this part of the world". Craig and Efren also travelled by public transport, starting in Sarajevo and taking in the Croatian and Montenegrin coasts. They then headed further off the beaten path, flying from Tivat to Pristina in a plane with a total of just four passengers, exploring Pristina, Gjakova, and Prizren, before heading to Macedonia and finally Athens.

If you're thinking of taking a car to the Western Balkans, check out "Chokk's Road Trip", which describes a drive from Belgium to Albania and back again, with stops in Bosnia, Croatia, and Montenegro along the way. As well as descriptions of the sights and sounds of the journey, the blog includes descriptions of driving conditions on the E65 (Adriatic Highway), the Mostar-Metkovic road, and two border crossings between Albania and Montenegro.

"Travelvice" blogger Craig Heimburger chose a much slower approach to travelling in Southeast Europe in late 2008, spending about two months in Romania and a month in Bulgaria. If you are interested in the possibilities of CouchSurfing in the region this blog should be of interest, as Craig managed to rack up more than 100 consecutive nights staying in this form of accommodation (at the cost of what sounds like a frightening amount of time spent at a computer chasing up invitations). This method of travel brought him to a variety of places rarely visited by foreign tourists. To be honest, I suspect some of these place are rarely visited for a very good reason. Much as I love both countries, I can see how a tour of grey, run-down provincial towns in the depths of winter might not leave a very good impression, so I wasn't too suprised that Craig seemed generally underwhelmed by both countries.

Also travelling through Southeast Europe on a low budget was Wade at "Vagabond Journey", who visited Serbia, Croatia, and Bosnia. He seems to have had less luck than Travelvice in finding Couchsurfing hosts, and concludes that "Europe is expensive to travel in winter". In line with the site's overall theme of Budget Travel, several posts list the costs of basics such as bread, water, and cheese.

After all those multi-country itineraries, I'd like to mention two blogs that stick (mainly) to one country:

"Nothing Against Serbia" is the blog of a Swiss architect married to a Serbian. As well as many travel tips drawn from the writer's travels around Serbia, the blog features photos and descriptions of many aspects of Serbian architecture and design.

Finally, ""Ellis and Jodie's Bulgarian Adventure is a blog by a couple who moved to Sofia from Israel in January 2009, covering the highs and lows of adapting to life in a new country - including the challenges of learning Bulgarian and the unpredictable results of using GPS to navigate Bulgaria's road network.

An end in sight for the "Kosovo passport stamp issue"?

The Serbian Interior Minister has apparently indicated that Serbia intends to make life easier for foreigners entering the country via Kosovo, who until now have been regarded as illegal entrants (at least in theory) because their passports do not contain an entry stamp from a recognised Serbian border crossing. Unfortunately no date is given for the change, which would remove a minor but niggling worry that concerns many travellers planning a trip around the Balkans.

Full article from Balkan Insight:
Serbia to ease travel for foreigners coming from Kosovo

From Skopje to the sea by train

The "Balkan Travellers" website reports that two summer-only train services Skopje to the seaside beging operating this week. A daily overnight service from Skopje to Bar on Montenegro's Adriatic coast will run until 31 August, while a train to Varna on Bulgaria's Black Sea will run on Saturdays only until 4 September. For those of you puzzling over rail maps of Southeast Europe: both trains travel via Niš in Serbia.

Train timetable changes in the Balkans - December 2008

Once again we have reached the time of year when railway operators across Europe introduce new timetables. The next round of changes will take effect on 14 December 2008.

According to an announcement on the Serbian Railways website, a second daily train is being introduced on the Belgrade-Skopje-Thessaloniki route. Or rather reintroduced, as this restores the situation prior to December 2007. Any improvement to the poor public transport connections between the Republic of Macedonia and Greece is very welcome.

The IC "Avala", which currently runs from Vienna via Budapest to Belgrade, will now operate on the route Prague-Bratislava-Budapest-Belgrade. There will thus be no direct daytime Vienna-Belgrade service, although it will still be possible to travel between these cities by day with a change in Budapest, and the direct overnight "Beograd" service is retained.

The overnight train from Niš (Serbia) to Podgorica and Bar (Montenegro) will now leave Niš in the morning, at least during the winter - it is not clear what will happen in summer.

These are the only major developments in Southeast Europe that I have noticed so far. There are also numerous minor timing alterations.

Sadly there is no sign of any improvement in the rail links between Italy and Slovenia. Since TrenItalia withdrew their leg of the "Casanova" service earlier this year, the only direct train has been the "Venezia Express" from Venice to Budapest, which passes through Ljubljana at an inconvenient hour of the night. This seems a very strange state of affairs between neighbouring countries within the Schengen zone.

As happens every year, the various online train timetables are struggling to deal with the changeover - apparently this is too great a challenge for the current state of computing technology. So for the next few weeks, care will be required when using online timetables to plan journeys in advance.

It's a long way from Split to Dubrovnik ... if you believe Google Maps

Fellow blogger Stuart Pinfold has drawn my attention to the eccentricities of Google Maps in giving driving directions between certain points in Southeast Europe. In his post on the topic he points out that Google Maps comes up with a slightly overcomplicated route between Dubrovnik and Mostar. Instead of the conventional 150-kilometre drive that less creative mapping software might recommend, Google suggests a more adventurous approach: a ferry to Italy, some driving, another ferry to Greece, and more driving through Greece, the entire length of Albania, Montenegro, and finally Bosnia. At 1541 kilometres it's a mere 10 times longer than the usual route - and so much more interesting. I've always encouraged travellers to venture away from the beaten path and explore less well-known parts of the Balkans, so it's nice to see Google doing the same. Not only that, but it adds a sense of history by persistently referring to Dubrovnik as Ragusa - admittedly not a name that appears very often on Croatian road signs.

I tried a few test routes of my own in Google Maps to see if this was just an aberration. Surely the straightforward coastal drive from Split to Dubrovnik wouldn't cause any problems? Sure enough, Google's answer does involve a drive along the Adriatic Coast - unfortunately it is on the other side of the Adriatic, between Bari and Pescara.



I guessed that the small strip of Bosnian territory between Split and Dubrovnik (the "Neum Corridor") might be causing a problem, so I tried an even simpler request: directions from Split to Zagreb, a route that lies entirely within Croatia. The result was even more surprising: "We could not calculate directions between split, croatia and zagreb, croatia."

So the problem runs deeper than the Neum corridor; there seems to be a more fundamental problem with Google's Croatia database. But maybe it's just Croatia that is flawed and everywhere else in the Balkans is OK? I asked for directions between two neighbouring capitals, Belgrade and Podgorica. At first everything looked fine: as I expected, the results show a blue line heading southwest from Belgrade and continuing along major roads to Podgorica. But wait a minute - what is that thick blue line southeast of Belgrade? Closer inspection of the driving directions reveals the problem: Google wants us to head southeast for 150km, turn around, and drive back to the outskirts of Belgrade on the same road before finally taking the correct road towards Montenegro.



At this point I gave up.

As far as I know ViaMichelin is more reliable in providing driving directions in the Balkans. Certainly it acquitted itself well on the examples above. However it's possible that similar horrors lurk within the databases of ViaMichelin and other non-Google mapping websites - if you know of any, let me know.

Through the Balkans by motorcycle - a trip report

Not MY trip report, I hasten to add - I haven't suddenly taken up motorcycling. But I thought that readers of this site might be interested in a new travelog by Jayne Cravens about her journey through Eastern Europe, including several Balkan countries, in September 2008. The descriptions of road conditions and campsites should be particularly useful to anyone planning a similar journey, while motorcyclists and non-motorcyclists alike should enjoy the many stories of the random acts of kindness that add so much to the experience of visiting the region.

Bulgarian bus timetables - now in English

The "Avtogari.info" website, a database of interurban bus timetables in Bulgaria, has been around for quite a while. Until recently it was available in Bulgarian only, which made it difficult for many travellers to use - particularly given the difficulties of inputting place names in Cyrillic characters. Things have just got a whole lot easier with the launch of an English language version of the site - very useful for anyone planning to travel around Bulgaria by public transport.

Bus timetables in Slovenia: help is at hand

Until recently the best place to look for bus timetable information for Slovenia was the website of Ljubljana Bus Station. However this naturally has the drawback of only including routes that pass through Ljubljana. Information about other routes was scattered in the websites of Slovenia's numerous transport companies.

I've recently learned about www.vozni-red.si, an initiative of the Mountain Wilderness organisation to promote public transport. Using data from the Ministry of Transport, the site for the first time brings together the schedules of all domestic bus routes in one place.

You can input any two towns to find bus connections between them. Pay attention to the footnotes beneath the schedules as they often contain important information (vozi = runs, ne vozi = does not run, vsak dan = every day, vozi ob delavnikih razen sobote = runs on working days except Saturdays; for more vocabulary including the days of the week see the site's help page).

A few examples of schedules that previously were quite difficult to find:
Kranjska Gora to Bovec (over the Vršič Pass)
Bovec to Kobarid (in the Soča Valley)
Koper to Piran (along the Adriatic coast)

Montenegro introduces "eco tax" on tourist cars

Montenegro has announced that a tax of 10 euro per car will be collected from motorists entering the country from June 15. The money will supposedly be used for environmental protection. A spokeswoman for the Ministry of Tourism is quoted as saying "we hope that tourists will use alternative means of transport, like trains, buses or airplanes". Airplanes? That doesn't sound very eco-friendly. As for buses and trains - the Ministry's own promotional website has hardly any information about public transport, reliable bus timetables are almost impossible to find, and the trains are infamous for delays. If some of the money collected from foreign drivers was invested in tackling those deficiencies, perhaps public transport would become a more attractive alternative.

Train timetable changes: Zagreb-Thessaloniki no more

Please note that this post was originally written in December 2007. Since then there has been a further round of changes - see my later post about timetable changes in December 2008.

December 9th marked the introduction of new train timetables across Europe, with some important changes to international routes in the Balkans. After spending some time trying to reconcile conflicting sources of information, my current understanding of some of the changes in the 2007/2008 timetable is outlined here.

The "Olympus Express", which used to run from Ljubljana to Thessaloniki via Zagreb, Belgrade, and Skopje, will now run from Ljubljana to Belgrade only. This means that there is no longer any direct overland connection between Slovenia/Croatia and Macedonia/Greece. I've travelled on this train several times, and will miss it even though it always seemed to be late: I liked the idea of travelling from the Aegean to the edge of the Alps in a single journey. Of course it is still possible to do this trip by rail, but a change of trains in Belgrade is now required. The change also means that there is only a single daily train between Greece and the Republic of Macedonia - further weakening the already poor public transport links between those two countries.

Thessaloniki may now be less well connected to Croatia and Slovenia, but connections to some other parts of Central and Eastern Europe have improved. The "Hellas Express" continues to run every day from Thessaloniki to Belgrade, albeit with a slightly different schedule. This train will also carry through carriages to Budapest (23 hours from Thessaloniki), Vienna (27 hours), and Prague (32 hours). This is the first time in many years that it is possible to travel to these cities without a change of train on the direct route through Serbia, rather than looping around through Romania.

For truly hardcore train buffs, the Hellas Express will also have a through car to Kiev and Moscow - an epic journey of (gulp) 66 hours.

On the Belgrade-Bar line, the so-called "business train" has been withdrawn for the moment, and will now run during the summer season only. This leaves just one daytime train and one night train running year round on the route from Bar to Belgrade's main station. There is an additional night train from Bar to Novi Sad and Subotica which calls at Novi Beograd.

It's worth noting that at the time of writing, online information about Balkan train schedules is a bit of a mess. The Greek and Macedonia rail operators have not updated their websites to reflect the new timetables. It also appears that the European Rail Timetable on the Die Bahn and Austrian Railways sites has not been updated with complete information about trains through Greece or Montenegro. The nightly train from Bar to Nis seems to be missing from all online timetables, but I'm told that it still runs all year round.

I have updated the page about travelling from Croatia to Greece to reflect these changes.

All that remains is for me to wish all the readers of Balkanology a Happy Christmas and New Year - and happy travels in 2008.

New air route: Sofia to Skopje

This week Bulgaria Air began flying from Sofia to Skopje - the first air link between Bulgaria and the Republic of Macedonia. Fares are advertised at 49 euro one way. I tried a few test bookings on the Bulgaria Air site and found that flights are indeed generally available at this price - but taxes, charges, and services fees bring the price up to 90 euro.

For comparison, buses run about 6 times daily on this route, take about 5 hours, and cost less than 15 euro one way - with the bonus that they take you from city centre to city centre. Taking the bus also means you avoid having to deal with predatory taxi drivers at uncivilised hours of the night: the thrice-weekly flights leave Skopje at 06:05 and Sofia at 23:15. But given the relatively poor choice of direct flights from Skopje itself, the new route may prove useful to some travellers trying to reach Skopje from further afield.

Air Bulgaria also plans to start flying to Belgrade in 2008.

A slow train through Bulgaria

Regular readers will know that one of my favourite train rides in the Balkans is the narrow-gauge railway from Septemvri to Bansko and Dobrinishte, in the mountains of southwestern Bulgaria. You can find a short description in my page about scenic railways in the Balkans.

I've just come across a much more detailed account of a journey on this line by Andrew Grantham, who did the trip in June 2006. It's a few years now since I was there myself, so I was glad to read that most things remain the same, including the women in brightly-patterned dresses who get on and off at some of the most remote halts.

I hadn't realised until reading this aricle that there was once another narrow-gauge railway connecting Rila monastery with the main Sofia-Thessaloniki line. Apparently it closed in the 1960s. As Andrew says, if it had survived it might now be a popular tourist route.

By popular demand: How to Travel from Croatia to Greece

Balkanology has been up and running for about a year now, so I've been able to get a fairly good idea of the kind of thing that most visitors to the site are interested in. There isn't much doubt about the most popular topic: how to travel from Croatia to Greece (and vice versa). This conundrum of Balkan transport clearly troubles a surprising number of people.

Originally my attempt to answer this question was confined to a few paragraphs within the Croatia FAQ. In response to the level of interest, I have now created a completely new page to tell you everything you ever wanted to know about travelling from Croatia to Greece but were afraid to ask. Whether you prefer ferries or flights, buses or trains, I hope you will find a route that suits you.

To be honest, I have mixed feelings about all this. In creating this site I was trying to show that the other Balkan countries, the ones that don't appear so often in glossy travel supplements, are just as much worth visiting as Croatia and Greece. So it's a little ironic that so many people seem to want to find out how to zip through the heart of the Balkans as quickly as possible. I hope that just a few people who read the new page will be encourage to slow down on their way through the Balkans, and get to known some of the in-between bits.

Northern Albania on the move

When Albanian tourism is promoted abroad (which is not very often), the focus tends to be on the southern part of the country or on the capital Tirana. But some recent developments may encourage more people to visit the north of the country.

Reports on the Thorntree forum suggest that a ferry service is now operating on beautiful Lake Skadar/Shkodra, linking Virpazar in Montenegro with Shkodra in Albania. There are also strong rumours that passenger trains will soon run from Shkodra to Podgorica, the capital of Montenegro - perhaps as early as July of this year. If true, this will end Albania's status as the only Balkan country that you can't get to by train.

Finding information about the region can still be difficult, but things have got a whole lot better with the launch of Shkodra In Your Pocket, a guide to the northern city and the surrounding area. It might just persuade you to stop in Shkodra rather than hop on the first bus to Tirana on arriving from Montenegro. It also has the only clear information I have ever seen about the Komani to Fierze ferry, said to be a scenic highlight of Albania.

Railway revival in Kosovo and Macedonia

After a six-year break, Skopje and Pristina are once again linked by a passenger rail service. According to a report in the Southeast European Times, there will be two daily services in each direction.