Easyjet flies from Switzerland to Kosovo

Easyjet has announced that it will link Pristina, the capital of Kosovo, with two Swiss cities starting in June. Flights from Geneva will operate on Wednesday and Saturday while flights from Basle will leave on Thursday and Saturday. Fares start at 30 euro one way, but you may need to move fast if you want to snap up a flight at that price - especially if you are looking for a Saturday flight in summer.

Flights from Liverpool to Dubrovnik ... and more

Following its announcement of a new route from London Gatwick to Dubrovnik last month, budget airline Easyjet yesterday launched another connection from England to the southern Croatian airport. Flights from Liverpool to Dubrovnik will operate three times weekly (Tuesday, Friday, and Sunday) from early June.

It seems that the Dalmatian coast will be busy with Easyjet customers in summer 2009. As well as the new UK routes, the airline will fly to Dubrovnik three times weekly from Berlin and twice weekly from Geneva.

Easyjet is also making it easier to reach Greece from the English regions: over the summer they will fly twice weekly from both Bristol and Manchester to Corfu, and from Manchester to Athens.

Easyjet flies from London Gatwick to Dubrovnik

Earlier this month Easyjet announced the launch of a new route from London Gatwick to Dubrovnik. Flights will start on 1st May 2009 and will operate four times weekly (Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday).

At the time of writing one-way fares of £34 including taxes are available on a variety of dates in May and June. Not surprisingly, cheap fares in July and August are a little harder to come by, but early bookers should still be able to find some reasonable deals.

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.

British Airways cancels flights to Sarajevo

Less than two years after launching the route, British Airways has announced the suspension of its direct flights from London Gatwick to Sarajevo. This is one of a number of cutbacks made by the airline due to "the difficult trading environment". The last flight to the Bosnian capital will be on October 21.

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.

Easyjet brings Croatia closer to the West Country

Yesterday was the first day of operation for Easyjet's new route from Bristol to Split on the Croatian coast. There will be two flights weekly over the summer period.

Last month also saw Easyjet launch two new routes from London Gatwick to Corfu and Thessaloniki. As well as being of obvious interest to travellers visiting Greece, both towns make good starting points for further exploration of the Balkans. Corfu is just a short ferry ride from Albania's Ionian coast, while Thessaloniki has connections to Albania, Macedonia, and Bulgaria. In particular, given the lack of direct flights from the UK to Skopje, a flight to Thessaloniki follwed by a train trip is a plausible alternative way of getting to the Republic of Macedonia.

Airlines are good at making a fuss about new destinations but tend to be much less forthcoming about publicising abandoned routes. According to In Your Pocket, May will see the last flights on Easyjet's London-Bucharest route. The route began less than a year ago but apparently has been dropped due to "lack of interest". Or perhaps the inhabitants of Bucharest didn't fancy joining the list of popular Eastern European stag party destinations?

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.

Aer Lingus to fly fom Dublin to Bucharest

Today's news is actually about a month old, but I missed it when I was travelling. The subject of flights from Ireland to the Balkans is probably of interest to only a small minority of readers, but it is close to my heart. So I was delighted to hear that Aer Lingus has announced a new route from Dublin to Bucharest. Flights will start on October 30 and operate on Tuesdays and Saturdays. One-way flights are currently available for less than 70 euro including taxes and charges - which certainly beats trying to piece together connecting flights via Central Europe.

More flights from the UK to Romania

Wizzair have announced that they will be operating two new routes from England to Romania: London Luton to Tirgu Mures, and Liverpool to Bucharest. The first flights will be in October 2007.

The Tirgu Mures route is likely to be of particular interest to travellers, as means that for the first time it is possible to fly directly from London to Transylvania. Tirgu Mures is in the heart of the province, close to Sighisoara and Cluj Napoca, and already has flights to Barcelona, Rome, and Budapest.

London to Sarajevo

Last week British Airways began operating direct flights to Sarajevo for the first time. Flights from London Gatwick will leave on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Sundays. The cheapest fare I could find in a quick test was £158 including taxes.

Following on from last year's introduction of London-Tirana flights, I believe this leaves Skopje as the only Balkan capital not served by direct flights from London - BA does list it as a destination, but it's a codeshare with Malev and involves a change in Budapest. It's probably quicker to fly to Pristina, a quick cross-border trip away from Skopje.

Returning to Bosnia, the Christian Science Monitor this week published an interesting article called Come See the Pyramids... in Bosnia?, looking at the growing pains of the Bosnian tourist industry - including the somewhat dubious promotion of the (in)famous Visoko Pyramid.

Ryanair flies to Zadar

Ryanair this week announced a new route from London Stansted to Zadar, on the central Croatian coast (news release). There will be three services weekly, starting in April. The airline already flies to Pula in Istria from both Stansted and Dublin.

But it's not all relentless expansion in the world of low-cost airlines. Wizzair have announced the cancellation of their London-Ljubljana flights from March onwards.

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.

Low cost flights for Serbia ... or not?

Low cost airlines have taken their time about getting involved in the Balkans, and the market has developed at a much slower rate than in countries such as Poland and Slovakia, but things are changing fast.

Or not, if you live in Serbia, which has lagged behind several of its neighbours in this respect. An article in the Southeast European Times this week suggests that things maybe be about to change. Many of the proposed developments seem to still be at a rather theoretical stage, so it remains to be seen whether they will come to fruition. As the article points out, it's not much use being able to fly for 1 dinar if you have a problem getting a visa - which is sadly the case for many Serbians.

New flights to Romania with Wizzair

Wizzair this week announced a major expansion of their operations in Romania, with none new routes to Bucharest, Arad, and Targu Mures, including three flights weekly from London to Bucharest's Baneasa Airport (the smaller of the city's two airports). More details here.

Turkish Airlines flies to 24 new destinations ... including Dublin

Turkish airlines has announced flights from Istanbul to 24 new destinations, including Ljubljana, Belgrade, Venice, and Dublin.

The last of these touches on a topic particularly close to my heart: getting from Ireland to the Balkans. It seems simple but in practice often turns out to be complicated, expensive, or both. The only direct scheduled flights to the region until now have been to Dubrovnik and Ljubljana - both seasonal services. Alternatives usually seem to involve (a) a painfully early start from Dublin (b) a recklessly tight connection at a hub airport, which you may survive but your bags probably won't, or (c) an overnight stay at an extortionately priced hotel near a London airport. The Istanbul flights on Tuesdays and Fridays are a step in the right direction and the advertised prices seem very reasonable. For some reason it doesn't seem to be possible to book online at the moment - I tried the Turkish Airlines site, Gohop, and EBookers without success. Surely they don't expect us to call an actual real-world travel agency?

British Airways flies from London to Albania

British Airways has begun flying three times a week from Gatwick to Tirana, until now one of the few European capitals with no direct link to London. A quick look at their website suggests that many flights in June are available for GBP100 one way including taxes - not exactly Ryanair pricing, but not outrageous for a niche destination. Flights currently operate on Monday, Thursday, and Saturday.