The mountains of Bulgaria: a new hiking guide

Keen hikers hoping to explore Bulgaria's mountain ranges may be interested in a new guidebook that has just been published by Cicerone. "Walking in Bulgaria's National Parks" describes 12 treks in the Pirin, Rila, and Central Balkan national parks, with detailed information about the plant and animal life likely to be encountered along the way.

Julian Perry, the book's author, also maintains a blog about Hiking in Bulgaria, where he has recently been keeping readers up to date on the exceptionally icy weather that has gripped the region.

Updated Bradt Guide to Macedonia

The third edition of the Bradt Guide to Macedonia has recently been published. Like the first two editions the updated guide was written by Thammy Evans, and it remains the only English-language guidebook dedicated entirely to the Republic of Macedonia. This edition is about 50 pages longer than its predecessor, and the publishers say that it includes "new material on battlefields and historical figures, as well as updated information on outdoor pursuits, folk festivals, wine, archaeology – and, of course, Macedonia's fast-improving hotels, restaurants and bars".

What's new in Lonely Planet's "Western Balkans"?

Judging by the clicks through to Amazon from the links on this site, Lonely Planet's "Western Balkans" is the single most popular guidebook among readers of Balkanology. I mentioned the imminent publication of a second edition back in March, but I had few details at that stage. Now that I have my own copy, I thought some readers might be interested in a comparison with the first edition.

The most obvious change is that the chapter on Slovenia has been quietly dropped, presumably for not being Balkan enough. Along with an increase of 44 pages in the total size of the book, this has allowed quite a lot of extra material to be included in the individual country chapters, which have been completely rewritten. The following countries are now covered: Albania (53 pages), Bosnia (68), Croatia (92), Kosovo (12), Macedonia (52), Montenegro (40), and Serbia (51). There are also more than 100 pages of general material about the region as a whole.

I was pleased to find that much of the extra space has been used to write about less well-known regions. Eastern Bosnia, for example, was ignored in the first guide but now gets four pages, including details of accommodation and transport (details notably lacking in the rather confused coverage of this region in the Bradt guide to Bosnia). Theth (Albania), Biogradska Gora (Montenegro), and Krushevo (Macedonia) are similar examples of destinations that have been added in the new edition.

It's impossible to thoroughly judge a guidebook without using it on the ground, which I haven't yet had the chance to do. But leafing through the new edition of Western Balkans certainly prompted me to daydream about another visit to the region, taking in places I haven't yet seen - which has to be a good thing.

New and updated guidebooks: Montenegro, Albania, and more

Despite recurring reports of the death of the print guidebook, spring 2009 has seen plenty of activity among publishers of guides to the Balkan Region. Some of the books listed below are already in the shops, others are due to be published in the next few months and are available for pre-order. I haven't yet got my hands on any of them, so the following listings are not necessarily recommendations.

Montenegro

Travellers to Montenegro will soon be spoilt for choice as the Adriatic country moves further towards mainstream destination status. Two brand new guidebooks make their debuts in April 2009, Rough Guides and Lonely Planet shadowing each other as closely as ever: their guides have identical official publication dates. In keeping with the usual pattern, the Rough Guide has more pages than its LP competitor. Rough Guide author Norm Longley has also been responsible for the excellent Romania and Slovenia guides. There are now at least five English language guidebooks dedicated entirely to this small country (for the full list see the Montenegro Books page).




Albania

Albania trails some distance behind Montenegro when it comes to being perceived as a "normal" tourist destination, but it is certainly moving in that direction. Until recently the successive and ever-improving editions of the Bradt guide had the field to themselves (in the absence of an update to the 2001 Blue Guide, still worth referring to for its incomparable level of detail). Now Thomas Cook is publishing "Travellers Albania". The same publisher's CitySpots series already covers Tirana, and the new guide extends to the whole country. See the Albania Books page for the full list of guidebooks.



Western Balkans

The new guides to Albania and Montenegro will be of interest to travellers concentrating on a single country, but are probably too bulky for the many people who visit these countries as part of a longer trip. Those travellers will no doubt be interested in the second edition of Lonely Planet's Western Balkans guide, which will hopefully take account of the many changes in the region since the first edition appeared three years ago. Details are still sparse - all I know right now is that it is just 12 pages longer than the first edition. Presumably the same countries are covered - I wonder if Kosovo, barely touched on in the original edition, will get its own section?

Please see this later post for an update on the Western Balkans guide.



Other updates

The roster is completed by two other updates from Lonely Planet: their guide to Croatia has moved on to its fifth edition in a relatively short space of time, while the venerable Turkey guide is on edition number eleven.

A guide to Montenegro in your hands

For several years Bradt has been the only publisher offering a general-purpose guide to Montenegro in English. While browsing recently in the excellent "Algoritam" bookshop on the main street in Dubrovnik I noticed that they now have some welcome competition. "Montenegro In Your Hands" was published in June 2008 by the same team that brought us "Serbia in Your Hands", and follows a similar format.



Books about Montenegro
Books about Serbia

New In Your Pocket guides: Ljubljana and Belgrade

Three new cities in Southeast Europe have recently joined the ever-expanding line-up of In Your Pocket city guides: Belgrade, Ljubljana, and Athens.

In fact one of them is not exactly new: many years ago IYP published a guide to Belgrade, on which I relied during my first visit to the city - at that time it was almost the only source of English-language information about Serbia. That turned out to be a once-off edition at the time, so it's great to see IYP giving Belgrade another go.

The Ljubljana and Athens guides really are brand-new ventures. All three guides are available online as free downloadable PDF files.

New edition of Albania guidebook

Bradt Guides have just published the third edition of their guide to Albania. Like the first two editions it is written by Gillian Gloyer.

One of my few quibbles with the otherwise excellent earlier editions related to the way the chapters were organised based on the (then reasonable) assumption that travellers to Albania would be visiting on short trips from neighbouring countries. So I'm pleased to see that the new edition has been reorganised, with chapters that will be more coherent for the increasing number of travellers treating Albania as a destination in its own right. Naturally I'm also pleased that several of my photos (the ones shown below) have been included in the colour section!

Cover star debut

Bradt guides recently published the third edition of their guide to Montenegro. It's good to see that Bradt are continuing to keep their strong line-up of Balkan guides up to date. I also have to admit to a more personal reason for welcoming this edition: it is the first guidebook to feature one of my photos on the front cover.

New editions of the guides to Slovenia and Albania are also due from Bradt in the next few months, and will also include some of my pictures, this time in the inside colour sections.

New Kosovo guidebook

Bradt Guides have recently published the first guidebook in the English-speaking world dedicated to Kosovo. The authors promise that the curious traveller will find "Ottoman mosques, Tito-esque administration buildings, Serbian Orthodox churches, monasteries, vineyards and extravagant KLA war memorials", as well as "some of the best skiing in southeastern Europe". It seems unlikely that Bradt will be overwhelmed by a rush of tourists eager to get their hands on the new guide, but it should find a market among the many "internationals" currently resident in the region.

Bradt have now achieved complete coverage of the Western Balkans, with seven separate guides to the countries of the former Yugoslavia, as well as one on Albania. They are also turning their attention to the eastern half of the peninsula, with the first edition of their Bulgaria guide due out later this year.

New guide to hiking in Montenegro

Montenegro is potentially a great country for hiking, but up to now it has been frustratingly difficult to get hold of relevant, up to date information in English. So I was very pleased to hear that Cicerone have just published a guide to The Mountains of Montenegro.

The guidebook includes single-day hikes and multi-day treks. Not surprisingly Durmitor National Park features strongly, but the guide also covers ranges that are less well known to foreign visitors, such as Orjen and Prokletije.

Guidebook news: Belgrade, Kosovo, and more

From Serbia news reaches me of a new entrant in a surprisingly crowded field: city guides to Belgrade. How to Conquer Belgrade is a locally produced guidebook that aims to provide visitors with an insider's view of the city, taking an honest and wryly humorous look at Serbia's idiosyncractic capital. In addition to the usual descriptions of monuments and museums, you can find out about the best songs to request from a Roma brass band, which cafes are frequented by girls who like books, and which part of the stadium you should sit in at a Red Star home game. The guide comes with a separate map of the city, and is available in six languages.

Another new city guide is the Bradt Mini Guide to Zagreb. Croatia's capital is often overshadowed by the more obvious attractions of the coast, so it's nice to see it getting a guidebook if its own. Bradt have also published new editions of their guides to Croatia and Dubrovnik.

Lonely Planet have also been updating their range of single-country guides. The 4th edition of Romania and Moldova is still, as far as I know, the only guidebook with any kind of decent coverage of Moldova. Although I prefer the Rough Guide to Romania, right now LP is considerably more up to date - hopefully Rough Guides will follow suit with a new edition soon. Meanwhile Lonely Planet Slovenia has moved on to its 5th edition.

Perhaps the most interesting piece of news is about a book that doesn't yet exist. Bradt Guides have pioneered the publication of dedicated guides to small Balkan countries, so it's not surprising that they plan to produce the first English-language Guide to Kosovo. The expected publication date is September 2007 - sadly too late for the hordes of foreign tourists who are no doubt planning to descend on Kosovo this summer.

New edition of the Bradt Guide to Macedonia

Bradt have recently issued the 2nd edition of their guide to Macedonia - just in time for my visit there, as it happens. The author outlines changes since the first edition on the Bradt website. A new feature that caught my eye is a chapter dedicated to hiking, with descriptions of twelve walking routes. There are also more details about public transport.

The same publisher has also just launched a completely new Zagreb City Guide.

A roundup of new guidebooks

In the last couple of months Lonely Planet have published new editions of their regional guides to Eastern Europe, Mediterranean Europe, and Europe on a Shoestring. These editions mark the debut of Serbia and Montenegro as separate countries.

Other new editions appearing in recent months include Lonely Planet Croatia, Rough Guide Slovenia, and The Bradt Guide to Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The Rough Guide to Slovenia is excellent, but on this occasion the blurb writer has rather let the side down, describing the new edition as a guide to "one of Europe's least discovered countries". That description might apply to Belarus or Albania, but Slovenia??

Lonely Planet have also released a new version of their Eastern Europe Phrasebook. The most obvious change is that the section on Serbian has been omitted - or rather subsumed into the Croatian section. This certainly makes practical sense, and avoids duplicating large amounts of text (although I would have liked to see more examples of Serbian Cyrillic). While I'd like to think that LP have done this as a reflection of linguistic rather than political reality, I can't help suspecting that a desire to save space may have played some part - in keeping with the general trend in LP's guidebooks, this phrasebook is slimmer than its predecessor.

Apart from that, my first impression is that this edition is better organised than the previous edition, with better use of colour coding to make it easier to find the section you want. But if you have an earlier edition, I wouldn't advise rushing out to get the new one, as the content doesn't seem much different. If anything there are more omissions than additions. One that I immediately noticed is the section about how to say "I am English/Australian/whatever". The previous edition included Irish,
Scottish, and Welsh in the list of nationalities, but apparently we Celts are no longer considered part of the English-speaking world by Lonely Planet.

In Your Pocket, in full

The In Your Pocket people have recently started to make full versions of their excellent city guides available for free download. They have been providing condensed "instant guides" in this way for some time, but this new development means that you can get your hands on all the information on the web site in a convenenient format.

Balkan cities for which full downloads are available currently include Tirana, Shkodra, Skopke, Pristina, and Bucharest. Instant guides are also available for Dubrovnik, Osijek, Rijeka, Sofia, and Zagreb.

New and improved Balkan guidebooks

The guidebook publishers have done quite a lot of juggling of their Southeast European lineup in the last few months. I've updated the Books pages of Balkanology to reflect all the changes mentioned here. (The links below will take you to the relevant page on the Amazon UK site; within Balkanology you will also find links to the corresponding pages on amazon.com).

Perhaps the most interesting development is the release of the second edition of the Bradt Guide to Albania. Revised versions sometimes amount to little more than window dressing, but that's not the case here. The new edition is 50 pages longer and has quite a lot of new material, particularly about hiking and mountain biking opportunities. Even the maps - never a strong point with Bradt - have been improved. Bradt also plan to issue a second edition of their Bosnia and Herzegovina guide this year, but too late for the summer season - a publication date in November has been mentioned.

Over in Serbia, local publishers Komshe have issued the second edition of Serbia in Your Hands. I was pleasantly surprised to find it on sale this week in a shop here in Ireland. It's a very well-produced volume that whets the appetite for exploring the more far-flung corners of Serbia. Don't expect it to have the same level of practical details as the Bradt guide - it tells you about all the places you might want to see but is relatively silent about how to see them. That aside, it's good to see one of the less touristed Balkan countries taking positive steps to encourage travellers. A companion guide to Belgrade is planned for later this year.

Back in the world of mainstream publishers (and mainstream destinations), both Lonely Planet and Rough Guides have issued the 11th editions of their guides to Greece. Lonely Planet has also launched a seried of "Best of" city guides. These are very slim volumes indeed, aimed very much at the short break market. Belgrade, Dubrovnik, and Ljubljana are all covered.

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.

Lonely Planet publishes Western Balkans Guide

The Western Balkans (the former Yugoslavia plus Albania) has received rather patchy coverage from guidebooks. The rapid assimiliation of Croatia and Slovenia into the tourist mainstream has been accompanied by the publication of a wide variety of guides, but the other states in the region have had to be content with brief chapters in larger guides, plus the pioneering but uneven Bradt Guides to individual countries.

Lonely Planet's new Western Balkans guide aims to fill in some of the gaps. It will be convenient for people visiting several countries in the region, but for several of those countries the material is not a huge improvement on the existing Eastern Europe guide. See the Books page for more.