Blitzing across the Balkans

After receiving news that our flight from Istanbul to Italy had been canceled, we prepared our hitch-hiking thumbs to cover some serious ground across the Balkans. Our path couldn't have been more crooked, as we kept discovering more interesting things to do! Despite the Balkans recent wars, these lands have some of the most spectacular natural beauty we have seen in our travels. We found it interesting that Turkey, Georgia, and Armenia had so many enormous and elaborate dwellings in rock faces and underground, then as we moved West, most cities were surrounded by fortresses. It really seems to be yet another indicator of the turmoil in these regions. We left Istanbul Turkey and headed straight into Bulgaria... once again, Rusty was at home with his Russian language. Our first stop in Bulgaria was the beautiful town of Plovdiv, a historic city with striking Roman ruins.

From Plovdiv, we quickly hitched our way across Bulgaria, and ended up in Skopje, Macedonia. It wasn't very photogenic, so the only eventful event on this leg of our journey was hitching a ride with the Prime Minister's race car driving body guard... we made good time in his car to say the least. From Skopje, we went to lake Ohrid, which is shared between Macedonia and Albania. The town we stayed in was on the Macedonian side, and had a great historic old town and beautiful lake vistas from the old hill fortresses.

After Ohrid Macedonia we felt that we needed to make some distance, so we took a straight path across Albania. The one notable thing we saw was UFO University in the capital city Tirane. We couldn't help taking a picture and submitting a quick application to their Alientology/UFOlogy program.


From Tirane, we continued our path across Albania, arriving in Budva, Montenegro late in the evening, where we slept. Budva was a scenic coastal town with a very moderate climate, which even allowed them to grow bananas. We never knew tropical fruits could grow in the Balkans! After filling up on some of Budva's delicious tropical fruits and pizza, we took a detour to see the old town and craggy, mountain-side fortress of Kotor, Montenegro.

From Kotor, we continued on to Dubrovnik, considered by many to be the crown jewel city of the Balkans. The UN's UNESCO program has pumped lots of money into this city to rebuild it following the Balkans Civil War of the 1990's and it has paid off. Dubrovnik is an old fortress trading town which sits on a sharp relief which plunges into the Mediterranean sea. It was strikingly beautiful, and the locals know it; prices were higher than other places in the Balkans!

The old Balkan conglomerate nation known as Yugoslavia was a mix of Catholic and Muslims. Religious tension between these groups was one of the many things which eventually contributed to the Balkans Civil War and break-up of Yugoslavia into the current Balkan states. While in Dubrovnik, we were fortunate to see a Catholic celebration, complete with singing and marching priests.

We next cut across Croatia and a short coastal piece of Serbia to get to Mostar Bosnia. The bridge in the background was rebuilt after being destroyed during the recent civil wars. Even though it drops about 80 feet into a river, the local youth jump off of it to show off for the tourists. Rusty insists on stating that he was brave enough to jump as well, but he claims that he just didn't want to worry Kelsi too much.

From Mostar Bosnia we took a world famous train journey to the capital of Bosnia, Sarajevo. The train line had miles and miles of tunnels, and the scenery was gorgeous.

After Sarajevo Bosnia, we took a bus straight to Pula Croatia. Pula had a pretty nice old town, but the best attraction was an old Roman Coloseum. It's definitely on par with Rome, and the locals even hold summer time concerts there, which we enjoyed listening to.

Pula was our final stop in the Balkans, and from Pula we took a bus back to Rijeke Croatia and then cut across Slovenia to Trieste Italy... ready for another Southern European adventure!