A rare Macedonian mention

The Republic of Macedonia rarely appears in the travel pages of English-language newspapers, so it was nice to see a full-scale article about Lake Ohrid in last Saturday's Guardian. The writer of "A dive into Macedonia's past" recalls childhood visits to her grandmother (who came from Ohrid), enjoys a swim in the 26C water of the lake, and hires a boat to visit the springs at Sveti Naum.

Belgrade and Thessaloniki, party cities

Lonely Planet have listed two Balkan cities among the world's top ten party cities in their new book "1000 ultimate experiences".

One of their selections is quite predictable: Belgrade regularly features in lists of this type, thanks to its "varied nightlife, ranging from eclectic watering holes for those in the know, to the busy restaurants and bars of the Skadarlija district and the summer clubs in barges on the Sava and Danube Rivers".

The inclusion of Thessaloniki is perhaps more surprising. According to Lonely Planet, Greece's second city offers "great nightlife ... from arty cafes to Latin bars to discos pumping out house music to salacious bouzoukia (clubs featuring twangy, Eastern-flavored Greek folk-pop)".

Read the full list

Escape from British tourists in the Balkans

The Independent recently published a list of the "Ten best destinations to escape the British crowds this summer". Not necessarily free of tourist crowds in general, it seems - just British crowds. Destinations in Southeast Europe make up half the list: Sarajevo, Montenegro, Slovenia, the Romanian Black Sea coast, and (rather surprisingly) Croatia. Nice to see Balkanology.com getting a mention on the Sarajevo page, even if they didn't quite get the spelling right.

Balkan destinations have also popped up in several of the Independent's other "Ten best" features. Dubrovnik gets a mention as one of the "Ten best city beach breaks". Croatian's Motovun Film Festival features as one of the "Best alternative festivals" (Motovun is in Istria, not Central Croatia as stated in the article). And Romania is one of the "Best Harry Potter landmarks". Something to do with dragons, apparently.

Timeless Macedonia on video

The Macedonian director Milcho Manchevski, best known for the feature films Before the Rain and Dust, has directed a short promotional video that aims to encourage tourists to visit the Republic of Macedonia. The video will air on CNN and other television channels, and can also be viewed on the Macedonia-Timeless website.

Belgrade: the best nightlife in Europe?

Belgrade's reputation for nightlife seems to be growing unstoppably at the moment. An article in the Times this week claims that you can find "Europe's best nightlife in buzzing Belgrade", and points out a selection of highlights from the city's "ever-changing cobweb of clubs and bars".

Veliko Turnovo

Today's Guardian looks at Veliko Turnovo, which it describes as "Bulgaria's best kept secret". I have no argument with most of the content of the article, but I think the "best kept secret" line is misleading and likely to lead to disappointment. I like Veliko Turnovo and often recommend that people visit it, but I would never describe it as a "hidden treasure". It may not attract the mass-market tourism of the Black Sea coast or the ski resorts, but it's still quite a touristy place.



More about Veliko Turnovo on Balkanology

The mountains of Montenegro ... and more

Now that Montenegro airlines fly directly from Gatwick to Tivat, the country has become more accessible for travellers from the UK. Although the spectacular coastline will inevitably be the focus for many visitors, the country's less touristed inland mountains also deserve attention. A recent article in the Times looks at some of those inland attractions, including the primeval forest of Biogradska Gora. (The accompanying photo was apparently taken in Durmitor National Park, which is not mentioned in the text).

Meanwhile in "A touch of the Riviera in Croatia" the Independent looks at the two sides of Croatia's Hvar Island - glitzy Hvar town on the south coast, and the more down-to-earth Stari Grad in the north.

Venturing further off the beaten path, the Sydney Morning Herald carries an article about Albania. The author is very enthusiastic about quirky Tirana, but apparently not enthusiastic enough to explore Albania beyond the capital. Even so, it's nice to see Albania appearing in the Australian travel pages - a rare, perhaps even unique event.

Developing the Balkans' Golden Triangle

In today's Independent Sankha Guha reports on an initiative of the United Nations Development Program to encourage cross-border tourism in the former Yugoslavia. The plan is to promote a so-called "Golden Triangle" of World Heritage sites of Dubrovnik (Croatia), Mostar (Bosnia), and Durmitor (Montenegro).

It's questionable whether Dubrovnik needs any more publicity, but presumably the plan is to use it to entice tourists to visit the less well-known inland destinations. As the article makes clear, the people behind the plan have some serious problems to overcome: as if it's not bad enough dealing with the legacy of political tensions, they also have to worry about the impression made on visitors by terrifyingly kitsch Tito-era hotels.


Dubrovnik

Mostar


Durmitor

Learn to sail in Croatia

Today's Independent has an article about a family sailing holiday in Lumbarda on the Croatian island of Korčula.

A weekend in Pristina

The Guardian marks the introduction of Kosovo's new consitution by adding an article about Pristina to its "Instant Weekend" city break series.

A night in Albania

Following yesterday's article on Montenegro, today's Independent features neighbouring Albania. I was a little disappointed to find that the writer of "The beaches are clean in Albania... and they're almost empty!" spent only one night in the country. It seems a rather slim basis for a travel article, but given the general lack of coverage of Albania I suppose it's better than nothing. On the positive side, it seems the author greatly enjoyed his visit to Saranda and Butrint and left wanting to go back.

Exploring Lake Skadar

An article called "Montenegro: Peace at Last" in today's Independent looks beyond the coastal strip to find a less predictable summer holiday destination. The writer sets off from the village of Virpazar, driving through the isolated villages on the shore of Skadar Lake in search of the Holy Grail: "a beach in Europe that is clean and free from crowds, even in August".

The Balkans in the travel pages - Spring 2008

If you are searching for inspiration for a trip in summer 2008, perhaps one of the articles about the Balkans published recently in the English-language press will help you make a decision.

Albania made one of its rare appearances in the travel pages in March. In an article called "Once and future glories" in the Telegraph, Jeremy Seal focuses on the country's archaeological attractions, from the well-known (by Albanian standards) ruins of Butrint to less visited sites such as Byliss and Hadrianapolis. Albania's infrastructural shortcomings get several mentions, but overall the tone is positive. In "The ups and downs of Albanian tourism" the Southeast European Times also notes that tourism in Albania is being held back by the undeveloped infrastructure. The authorities are making all the right noises about developing a broad range of tourism rather than simply building bigger coastal resorts.

Bosnia, like Albania, sometimes struggles to convince outsiders of its merits as a tourist destination - and especially to persuade visitors to go anywhere other than Sarajevo and Mostar. In "Peace dividend: unspoiled hiking in the Balkans", the New York Times looks at so-called adventure tourism, following a group of American hikers on a guided tour through the Bosnian
mountains. At a price of US$3,000 for a 10 day tour (airfare not included), there doesn't seem to be much danger that these organised trips will lead to the Bosnian landscape being swamped by mass tourism.

Bulgaria doesn't seem to be getting a lot of a attention at the moment, perhaps because its tourism boom has been rather too closely linked to property investments that don't look too appealing in the current economic climate. I've already mentioned the Guardian article "I am starting to love this dirty town" in an earlier post. It's worth keeping an eye on the series "Across the Map of Bulgaria" published by Radio Bulgaria, which often focuses on less well-known aspects of Bulgarian tourism. Recent topics include wine tourism and the monasteries of the Central Balkan mountains.

Croatia continues to feature in many travel articles, many of which are interchangeable and not worth specific mention. The Guardian goes a little way beyond the usual destinations in choosing the "Top 10 Croatian islands" - in fact they go almost half way to Italy in recommending Palagruza as the best island for extreme isolation. Their other choices include Murter for learning to sail, Pag for partying, and Bol for water sports.

Romania is represented by two articles about Transylvania published in different newspapers on the same day. The Times concentrates on the region's Hungarian heritage in "The perfect budget eco break?", concluding that Transylvania is an ideal location for a family holiday. Meanwhile the Guardian looks at the Saxon (German-speaking) influences to be found in "the villages
where time has stood still". In an earlier post I remarked that it is apparently compulsory for British newspapers to refer to Prince Charles when writing about Transylvania; apparently this decree is still in force, and both articles duly comply. A less rural side of Romania, which I am fairly sure would be less appealing to the Prince of Wales, is featured in the Observer's guide to an "Instant Weekend in Bucharest".

The staging of the 2008 Eurovision song contest in Belgrade prompted a couple of articles about Serbia. The Independent aims for the city break tourist with "48 hours in Belgrade". The Telegraph also concentrates on Belgrade in "Serbia: a side we haven't seen", but ventures out of the city as far as the Vojvodina region. To prove that there is cultural life after
the Eurovision, the TravelConnect website lists a range of musical and theatrical events taking place in Serbia in summer 2008.

Finally, the Independent covers two of Southeast Europe's largest cities, Athens and Istanbul.

Southeast Europe, motorbiking paradise?

Travel writers listing their top 10 European destinations often overlook the Balkans. Whether the specific theme is the best hotels, favourite hikes, or top spas, the focus tends to be on Western Europe with a couple of places in Central Europe thrown in to give the appearance of balance. So it's good to see Southeast Europe being given in its due in Mike Carter's article in the Guardian, "Europe's top 10 motorbiking roads". The region account for three of his top 10 - four if you count Asian Turkey.

Mike is sufficiently enthusiastic about Romania's Transfagarasan Highway to cover it in a separate, longer article. He describes the road across the Carpathians from Sibiu to Curtea de Arges as "quite simply, one of the greatest buttock-clenching, white-knuckle biking roads in the world".

Also making the list is the route from Bar on the coast of Montenegro to Sarajevo in Bosnia. This inland route passes through Durmitor National Park, where the road becomes a "gravel track, threading its way across a vast treeless, boulder-strewn plateau".

Durmitor

The final Balkan entry is a road well worth following in a bus or car if you don't have a bike: Albania's Ionian Coast road from Saranda to Vlora. The climax comes with the Llogaraja Pass, "taking you from sea level to over 1,000 metres in just a few ear-popping minutes for the best view of the Ionian you'll ever see".

Ionian Coast

Bulgaria's Black Sea in the off season

A recent UK survey named Bulgaria as the best value destination for Britons looking for a cheap break abroad. The Guardian marks the occasion with an article about a visit to the Black Sea coast in the off season. Not surprisingly, a lot of tourist facilities in Varna and the nearby resorts are closed. That does tend to happen in off-season seaside resorts. At least it gives the writer time to rightly appreciate the wonderfully tomato-ey taste of Bulgarian tomatoes.

The article suggests that "with the Euro stronger by the day, the Bulgarian lev looks ever more appealing". As the Bulgarian lev has held its value at about 1.96 to the Euro for many years, this doesn't seem to make a lot of sense. Dodgy economics aside, it's true that that basic costs in Bulgaria remain low by European standards.

Cathedral of the Assumption, Varna

Croatia in 2008 - and a weekend in Belgrade

The Times Online site has two travel articles about Southeast Europe this week.

The Best of Croatia in 2008 takes an extended look at what the Adriatic country has to offer, including special interests such as sailing, long-distance swimming, gastronomy and accommodation in lighthouses. Meanwhile Instant Weekend: Belgrade advises readers to visit the Serbian capital before the Eurovision Song Contest in April thrusts it into the spotlight.

Adventure and history in Kosovo

It's not difficult to predict that Kosovo will make several appearances in our newspapers over the coming months, as the wrangling over its political future continues. So it's nice to see it appearing in the press for a different reason. Last week USA Today published an article entitled "Kosovo offers unspeakable beauty, history and adventure", looking at the region's attractions for travellers.

The writer scrupulously describes the Serbian as well as Albanian component of Kosovo's heritage, topping and tailing the article with a description of the Orthodox Decani monastery. With sad inevitability, most of the reader's comments on the article display the kind of one-eyed negativity likely to cause prospective travellers to put off visiting Kosovo for, oh, another 20 years or so.

Prince Charles strikes again in Transylvania

In an earlier post I mentioned the compulsion of UK newspapers to seek out the Transylvanian village of Viscri because of its association with Prince Charles. It seems that the Prince is becoming even more of a Transylvanian cliché than Dracula: he is mentioned yet again in an article in today's Guardian.

The article describes a stay at the Count Mikes estate in Zabola, in the Székely Land northwest of Braşov. Like a number of estates belonging to the old Hungarian-speaking aristocracy, Zabola has been restored and now provides accommodation to tourists. There are a couple of appropriate quotations from Patrick Leigh Fermor, who enjoyed the hospitality of Transylvanian mansions in an earlier and very different era. If you want to know more, the Mikes estate has an informative website.

A little piece of Narnia in Slovenia

The next instalment in Disney's Narnia series, Prince Caspian, is due for release in 2008. Some of the battle scenes were filmed earlier this year on location in the So&x10d;a Valley in western Slovenia. This has prompted a lengthy article in yesterday's Sunday Times.

The write describes the So&x10d;a as a "beautiful, unknown valley". Unknown? Hasn't he heard of Balkanology? The valley is a firm favourite of mine and has had its own page on the site for some time. That aside, the article is a useful survey of the many and varied attractions of the valley, from something called "hydrospeeding" to tours of the battle sites - from World War One, not the Disney film.

The tourist industry in Southeast Europe

A recent article in the Southeast European times surveys recent developments in the tourist industry in a number of Balkan countries. In general the article presents a picture of steady growth, albeit from a very low base in the case of Macedonia, which still attracts few foreign visitors.

Of course not all the effects of increased tourism are positive. The article points out that residents of Dubrovnik struggle to find a parking space or a reasonably-priced cup of coffee during the summer crush. Meanwhile there are signs that on Bulgaria's Black Sea coast, too many hotels have been built too quickly - a problem previously covered in an earlier article on the same website.

The Balkans in the travel press

There have been quite a few articles about various parts of the Balkans in the last month or so. Croatia now gets so much press coverage that I won't even bother to list the new articles here, but some newspapers have ventured a bit further.

The New York Times takes a look at the Montenegrin coast in an article entitled "An Adriatic Stretch is Awaiting its Riviera Moment". I was a little surprise to read that "hotel staff members speak perfect English", but perhaps this is explained by the list of hotels at the end of the article, most of which are in the 100 euro per night price bracket.

Even more daringly, the NYT checks out the nightlife in Bulgaria's Studenski Grad in "Partying amid Cold War ruins".

Both The Times and The Independent take advantage of direct British Airways flights from Gatwick to write about Sarajevo as a city break destination. Note that although the Times optimistically says that Sarajevo is a two hour flight from London, the scheduled journey time is almost three hours.

Two pieces in The Observer and The Guardian focus on walking holidays in Montenegro, and in particular in the Bjelasica Mountains around Kolašin. I remember Kolašin as a sleepy mountain town where, several years ago, I endured a fruitless search for a place to stay during a torrential rainstorm; apparently it is now an up-and-coming resort. Frustratingly, the Guardian recommends "a half-decent guidebook" for walking in the region, but gives no clues about where such a book might be found.

Finally, today's Sunday Times heads for Romania, specifically the Danube Delta and Transylvania.

There were no articles in the English-language press about Macedonia. Again.

Prince Charles leads the UK travel press to Transylvania

Today's Independent features an unusually long article about travel in Romania. In "Once Bitten, Twice Smitten", Simon Calder travels across the country by train (on some of the slowest "express" trains in Europe) and hitch-hiking (he nominates Romania as the second-best country in Europe for this form of travel). On the way he reminisces about his previous visit in the 1980s, when Romania was a far scarier place than it is now.

One of the places Calder visits is the village of Viscri in Transylvania. Oddly enough, a travel writer for the Guardian reported from Viscri only six weeks ago. No doubt Viscri is an interesting and picturesque village, but there are many such villages in Transylvania. Why would two British newspapers just happen to converge on this particular one? It's all down to Prince Charles, apparently. He has visited Viscri, spouted some guff about how it represents the primeval past buried deep within all of us (or something along those lines), and bought a property there. Cue sudden interest in the English press.

The Montenegrin Coast:: 22nd best thing in the world?

Rough Guides are celebrating their 25th anniversary by publishing "25s", a series of 25 books, each of which suggest 25 inspirational travel experiences.

Now they are have chosen the "ultimate" experience from each of the 25 books. The chosen candidate to represent Eastern Europe is the coast of Montenegro - no arguments from me there. Rough Guides are asking for votes for the "ultimate ultimate" experience. At the moment Montenegro is languishing in 22nd place, but I confidently expect the votes of Balkanology's readership to send it surging up the chart to ... well, perhaps to 21st place.

The pleasures and pitfalls of driving in Bulgaria

If you're considering exploring Bulgaria by car, you'll probably be interested in Driving Bulgaria, an article published in yesterday's Sunday Times.

In a pleasant change from the usual press focus on beaches and skiing, the author visits some of the highlights of Bulgaria's southwest, including Rila and Melnik. Although he does have some troubles with poor maps and poorer roads, his overall impression seems to be positive.

I can't help wondering if the writer really waited until he was actually on the road in Bulgaria before starting to learn the Cyrillic alphabet. A few hours of advance preparation might have made his first day a lot less stressful - but perhaps it wouldn't have made as good a story.

No escape from the Count in Transylvania

The golden rule of writing a travel article about Transylvania seems to be: refer to Dracula in your headline, in your introduction, and at regular intervals within the article. All the better if you can find a real live Count around which to to construct the piece. That's the approach taken in yesterday's Times article "On the trail of Dracula". At the very end of the piece there is an acknowledgement that "the people of Transylvania had never heard of Dracula before 1990, when Bram Stoker’s work was first translated into Romanian".

A while ago I mentioned the Independent's efficient recycling of an article about Dubrovnik; the Times adopts a more subtle approach, recycling items from its competitors. The very same Count Kalnoky featured in both the Telegraph and the Guardian in 2005.

Also in the travel pages recently, the Times includes Dubrovnik and Athens in a piece about summer city breaks, while The Guardian briefly mentions Timisoara. To be exact, it mentions somewhere called "Little Vienna". At least in the online edition, the reader is left to figure out the identity of this city.

A non-Balkan article that caught my eye was the Independent's Complete Guide to Travel Guides. Judging by posts to online travel forums, many guidebook users have unrealistic expectations of how up to date a printed guide is likely to be. The Independent attempts to quantify the typical lag between research and publication, saying that "many guidebook publishers would prefer to update personally their Siberia publication in the middle of winter than answer this question with complete transparency".

Montenegro plots a tourist future without little old ladies

In an article called The Next Top Destination?, Transitions Online takes a look at the future of tourism in Montenegro. Whether or not Montenegro opts for independence, its economic future will be heavily dependent on how its tourist industry develops. Apparently one in three people is expected to work in tourism by 2010, which seems like a rather frightening dependence on a highly seasonal industry.

Off season in Budva

An international ecotourism organisation is quoted as suggesting that the state "should work on preserving the current state of the environment". Given that "the environment" currently seems to be regarded as a convenient empty place in which to throw all kinds of waste, that sounds like a shockingly unambitious aim.

The same organisation discourages promotion of inland Montenegro as a destination for foreign tourists, saying that the country should "limit itself to offering daytrips into the mountains for foreign tourists staying on the coast during summer". So we can probably expect endless references to the luxury hotel at Sveti Stefan, combined with a continuing lack of practical information about reputedly beautiful places such as Biogradska Gora National Park.

Finally, the article predicts an increase in the number of hotel rooms with a corresponding fall in the availability of private accommodation. I've read similar predictions about Croatia. Are we witnessing the end of that beloved institution of the Adriatic Coast, the "sobe"-renting granny?

At the time of writing the article is in the free section of the Transitions Online site, but it will probably move to the paid section after a while.

Dubrovnik: so good they wrote about it twice

The "48 hours in..." series in The Independent regularly explains how to get the most out of a weekend city break. Today's chosen destination is Dubrovnik. Careful readers of Balkanology's "From the Travel Pages" section may experience a sense of deja vu: the same newspaper told us what to do in 48 hours in Dubrovnik only two years ago. The Indy likes to present itself as a supporter of environmental causes - apparently this extends to the recycling of travel articles.

Tirana appears on the UK press radar

The recent launch of flights from London to Tirana seems to have awoken British travel journalists to the existence of Albania. In the last week both The Observer and The Times have published articles about the country.