Thoughts on the Balkans

As we come to the end of the Balkans, I thought I might make some random thoughts on them collectively.

They were good to travel. Cheap, but not nasty. Plenty to see, at least for us, with a nice mix of history, culture and countryside. However, if you stick to the capitals and biggest cities the differences between them are greatly reduced – which is a problem with those Danube river cruises, for example. Most of the cities needed two full days minimum, and often longer, just on the city part.

English has totally taken over as the language of international culture – art exhibitions will be advertised in English alongside the home language even to the locals. Most places had explanations in English, though not universally. In Ljubljana castle the explanation video was in English and you had to get a device to hear it in Slovenian!

However outside tourist spots, language was often an issue. Less so if you know some German (French wasn't a starter). We generally toughed it out, learning how to say "two tickets please" isn't that hard, but you'll lose much of the cost savings if you end up taking taxis rather learn how to negotiate trams and buses if that worries you.

Other than the Dalmatian coast, it's most not very busy. In particular you don't get full of coach loads of tourists just seeing a sight because it's on the list of sights to see, with little interest in the history or meaning of what they are seeing. There are coach tours everywhere, including deepest Bulgaria, but the ones there don't have the milling around while being sorted out, and then ignoring the actual sights, crowds that bug me. (A particular dislike, which has grown in this tour, is for people to stand blocking a busy pathway while they take a selfie. The sight won't be seen properly in the result, because the middle of the photo is taken up by the vapid person. In extreme cases the process can take 10 minutes while they get the perfect shot of themselves. Meanwhile people who actually want to see the sight in question have to wait.)

Some other thoughts

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While people say that there is considerable nostalgia for the Communist period, there is no sign of it visibly. All the pro-Soviet, Russian or cult of personality stuff is gone totally, even if it had to be dynamited out. The less excessive (politically) have merely had any labels removed, so that these enormous statues and monuments remain, but shorn of any apparent meaning.

The ex-Yugoslavs have a few remnants of Tito, but then they were never really Soviet anyway.

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People looked very much like people back home, especially in the bigger cities, with only minor differences in dress style. The middle classes seem to be doing well.

However the poor are very definitely much poorer, judging by clothing, cars etc. Houses and apartments, are still quite small and some of the older stuff rather sub-standard, although the newer ones look nice. The further south the more apparent the lack of money – Bulgaria and to a lesser extent Romania have pockets where money is clearly not plentiful.

However, while money was often obviously a bit short, the cities were mostly clean, once you got past the omnipresent graffiti.  It always felt safe, and people were usually very helpful.

In the countryside the villages were tidy and clean, even if the houses were very little.

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Most graffiti is in English, of a sort, when it isn't merely art or tagging. Much of it is football oriented. (The ex-Yugoslav republics did have some political stuff, some of it rather crude about other groups.)

The deal is, apparently, that when someone puts up "Partizan Army" to indicate that they rather like Belgrade Partizan you cross it out, rather than writing the equivalent of "sucks" afterwards. So you see quite a lot of crossed out graffiti. 

Also, they tend to put up their supporters groups, rather than the club itself, so you see a lot of  "Bad Blue Boys" and "BBB" when you enter Zagreb. Which requires knowing that they are an ultras group for Dinamo Zagreb. 

I think someone likes Hajduk Split! (Spalato is the old Roman name for Split)

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The exception was in Bulgaria and Romania that some of the gypsy areas are really quite squalid. The locals don't particularly like them, associating them with crime and laziness. The governments want them to become "normal" citizens, but they resist. Not many still live in caravans, but they don't particularly settle and live on the margins.

Begging was a big issue until we got to Slovenia and Hungary. Mostly but not exclusively gypsies, and it was often quite brazen – literally walking up to you in the street to ask.

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I'm still getting weird language rubbish on my devices. My computer in Belgrade was deciding that it would load the Google home page in Hungarian, despite having left there, and then was immediately translating it to English (sometimes not very well).

Both of us are getting advertisements in Romanian on our phones. That is because we have Romanians SIM cards – Bulgarian plans were too awkward and the EU forces providers to have decent roaming options. They are usually hard to decipher, but not always:

I particularly like how the ad is in Romanian, but the "Learn More" stays in English. 

Lovely Slovenia

It's raining today, reasonably heavily, so I thought I would catch up on what we've been up to.

Intriguingly, this is the first day that rain has interrupted us at all in three months and is a welcome break from the heat. Too many sunny days in a row have actually made things difficult, because it's so tiring in the relentless sun. What rain we have had up till now has been brief and largely at night and has barely affected our plans.

We've been staying in the two larger cities of Slovenia – Maribor first and then Ljubljana. Both are quite little and there's no way that we could spend four days in each, so we hired a car for half the time to see the rest of the country.

It's ridiculously pretty. The countryside is farmed unless it is very steep, but in a colourful mix of crops and meadows rather than monoculture. The farms seem to be quite small, and have an amazing number of barns and associated buildings scattered around .

There's pretty churches in most villages, castles and palaces are scattered over the place, and the towns have well-preserved old centres.

The couple of "big name" tourist spots are over-full (Bled Castle in particular, but not like Dubrovnik) but because outside of those sights on the package tours, visitors generally come to hike and cycle, so you aren't fighting off crowds. However because some tourists do make it to even the remoter locations, there's almost always instructions and explanations in English, which has been a boon.

Ptuj city centre. Amusingly pronounced "ptooey". Not really, actually "ptwee" listen here

The town centres are German in style now, having left behind the Italian influence on the Dalmatian coast. They are uniformly lovely, but if you've been to Austria it looks very similar. On the outskirts you can sometimes see older dwellings that are clearly more local in origin.

The towns historically were inhabited largely by German speakers, although the surrounding peasantry were overwhelmingly Slovenian. Hitler intended to make much of it part of his greater Germany on that basis, but the effect of that was to prejudice the locals against the German speakers. After WWII meant they either emigrated or started to speak Slovenian (which is a version of Serbo-Croat).

So all in all it's a great place to visit for a couple of weeks.

One downside has been that the locals love drinking coffees, ice-creams and eating cakes at all hours of the day, so there are cafes everywhere, but they don't do light lunches. In the heat we haven't really been that interested in heavy restaurant meals, so lunch has been a bit of a mission at times. A few bakeries do filled rolls, but generally we have had to buy something from supermarkets when we would have preferred a cafe lunch.

Driving to see it all has been a mixed experience. The motorways are fantastic and very quick. The main roads are OK, except that they almost never have anywhere to pull over and enjoy the view or take photographs. If you stick to the main routes between the bigger towns it's fine driving.

But the minor roads are a different story, and the roads get minor despite looking on a map like they should be decent sized. They are invariably narrow but nevertheless busy. We've faced unsealed sections, mountainous hairpins where I have been down to first gear, and blind corners on roads too narrow for two cars. The locals are good drivers, but drive very confidently because they are used to the conditions, and don't like being held up. I'm used to some pretty rough places, from unsealed windy NZ roads and zigzagging up mountains in Switzerland, but this has been unpleasant rather too often for my taste.

Still, if we hadn't hired a car we would have been stuck with the main towns, and the really interesting and different parts have been out in the countryside. 

Our Stay in Westeros

(Westeros is the setting for Game of Thrones for those, like us, who don't follow the series.)

Dubrovnik old town was crawling with advertising for its links to the filming of Game of Thrones and The Last Jedi. The mayor allowed them to film for free, on the basis that the advertising alone would pay for it (although they couldn't do it in season, of course, so they were probably freezing in some of the Star Wars scenes). That seems to have paid off, with tourists choosing the city on the basis of the filming there.

After Dubrovnik we moved up the coast to Split. The old town of Split grew around the palace Diocletian built, and it is really quite sweet to see the Medieval and Renaissance buildings built into ancient Roman walls and temples turned to churches or civic buildings with minimal changes.

A stretch of waterfront, built into the front of the Roman Imperial Palace.

The old town was quite crowded in the major attractions and as we went through some of the grander places you could hear people talking about which scenes had been filmed there. We had been over-optimistic. It turns out that much of Game of Thrones was filmed in the Split area.

But for all the excitement, the City History Museum, which was really quite a good one, was decidedly short on people.

This couple have written excitedly about many of the places at www.boredpanda.com and not a mention of why anyone might have built the real places. Given the incredible real history of the real place, it seems odd for me to focus solely on imaginary history.

Klis castle (and cell phone tower). That cliff is near vertical much of the way up.

We went to the fortress of Klis, which is just on the outskirts of Split, where its history was well explained in the little museum on the site. It was the Ottoman border for several hundred years and had been the base of the Ushkoks, who have a bit of a Robin Hood aura in Croatian folklore. Once it fell to the Turks it was a terrifying threat to the locals, being within sight of the still Christian coast. Yet all the other visitors seemed to be interested only in its links to the TV series.

So terrifying was the Turkish threat that the locals built an amazing variety of little fortified hamlets, castles, forts and bridges. Quite a few of these remain, especially along the "Kastel" coast to Trogir. We were staying in one of those villages, Kastel Gomilica, which has a fortified island, still lived in (you can stay on the island, although we didn't).

 Gomilica "Castle"

Alison and I had a nice wander along the coast one of the days looking at all the bits of interest in each of the villages – which have now merged, because the area is nicer than Split town itself and both the locals move there and tourists stay in the many small apartments and B'n'Bs.

The water is as blue and clear as it has been down the whole coast – the photo above is a good indication of what it looks like out to sea. Although the land doesn't plunge into the sea from cliffs like it does on much of the coast, there are still a line of cliffs a couple of kilometres back behind the houses. The overall effect is very picturesque.

And so now to Zagreb. We've spent just over two weeks on the Dalmatian coast (including the Montenegrin section) and while we can see what brings in the more fleeting tourists, we are going to be happy to leave it behind. It is beautiful, but travel is so awkward and too much of it is too busy at this time of year. 

Staying in Air BnBs

We've been using Air BnB for almost the whole trip so far, or effective equivalents. I thought I'd discuss how this has gone for us in the Balkans.

The answer is, pretty well really.

They allow us to stay reasonably close to the centres of towns for not too much money. Sometimes hotels would be as cheap, but would not have close to the facilities we want. Note that we have only been selecting "self-contained" places, rather than those where you share a room in a house.

They have often been small, although only a couple have been "studio" types. Partly that's because smaller ones are cheaper and there's only the two of us so we don't care too much about size. Partly it is because in the ex-Soviet places they have tended to be ex-Soviet era apartments, so about 45 to 55 square metres (55 sq m was a four-person family apartment). Even then they are bigger than any hotel rooms we could afford.

Most of the apartment building ones are either an upper floor or basement, because they are the ones people don't like (or move out of when they lose mobility). Not all of them in the more eastern places had lifts, or at least had lifts all the way, so carting bags up and down stairs has been normal. One reason we shed weight early in the trip.

Standard lobby in Bulgaria. The red door is to the (tiny) elevator. 

The rooms are much nicer.

All have had cooking facilities, except the first one in Cyprus. Often quite rudimentary facilities though, such as only two cookers, but nonetheless enough for us to prepare a dinner. Rarely an oven. That saves money compared to eating out, but also since we are traveling for so long, it is better for our digestions not to eat too much restaurant food. If we are going to buy a restaurant or cafe food, it will generally be lunch.

Luckily Alison brought a small but effective selection of cooking implements, which has proved very useful. Places have usually have most of the things you need but often have gaps –  so one place will have no strainer for pasta, the next no decent stirring spoon, and some only pathetic little blunt knives. Having a decent knife, stirring spoon, corkscrew, tongs and peeler has proved quite useful.

Everywhere has had a fridge, albeit sometimes quite little ones. That means we can have fresh milk for our coffees, if nothing else (I've been very surprised, that everywhere has actually had fresh milk). Also we can buy more than one day's worth of salad dressing, salami, cheese, butter and such.

Cooking oil has been the big issue, because it is awkward to travel with and some places have had none.

The beds have mostly been fine. Firm, in that European way, which we like. Generally queen or wider, although we have had to relearn how to sleep in doubles again. The only disaster was the one in Bar, Montenegro which squeaked tremendously every time we moved – really really loudly – which was really very annoying.

Most have had washing machines. Given the length of our trip, that has proved very important. Some of the machines have been a trifle difficult to use, as we try to guess how to use them from their instructions in a different language, but far better than trying to wrangle laundromats or paying the exorbitant prices hotels charge. (In Mexico we resorted to hand washing rather than paying hotel prices.)

Showers have been a bit of an issue. Some of the plumbing in the Balkans is ropy, and getting the showers to a pleasant temperature has proved possible sometimes only after quite a lot of effort.

Everywhere has been clean, including all the towels and bedclothes. Properly clean.

The hosts have all been excellent. Most of have spoken enough English to get by with. Some have proved a trifle over eager to help really (to the point where I often hope that they don't have much English). A few places were a bit hard to find, since street names aren't as reliable here as you might hope.

So overall, we have found them good, and we are pleased we have taken this route rather than hotels.

They don't have that sweet reliability of hotels, but unlike hotels we can cook, have a fridge, can wash our clothes etc. That's far more important than yet another perfect hotel room with perfect beige bed and fluffy towels.

Also, we have a bit more insight into how people in the countries actually live. The international blandness of hotels might be a way to avoid culture shock for some people, but we enjoy seeing the slightly different ways people do things.

Oddball Issues for the Balkans

Furnishings have been good, except curtains. Apparently curtains that keep light out aren't a bit thing in the Balkans. Many of the recent places have had shutters, but almost nowhere has had genuinely dark curtains. Bulgaria was particularly poor in regards to curtains, which were more or less non-existent.

Romanians and Hungarians apparently have not really worked out how shower curtains work – or even in some cases that they are a good idea.

Then again the Romanian places had no plugs for the sinks, and no plastic basins. Washing up is a significant issue when you can't hold water in a sink. We asked one of the Romanian owners about it and he said that it was normal in Romania – you wash them all with hot water then rinse them afterwards with running water. All for want of a $1 plug!

Every single place has had one of these sponge with scratchy backings for the dishes. They are so useless! I have not seen a brush type dish cleaner yet. 

Dubrovnik, Pearl of the Adriatic

So we've moved up the Dalmatian coast to Croatia. First point of call, the old city of Dubrovnik (formerly Ragusa) which used to be a rich and powerful place, but lost its mojo when the Mediterranean trade was replaced by the Pacific and Atlantic ones, and when it became owned by Austro-Hungary – not a noted naval power.

So it has what makes a town special for me. A rich past, so big and interesting things got built, and nothing much happening in nineteenth and twentieth centuries to spoil that.

The city has its complete city walls, of about two kilometres. Even better, they are largely original. It would have been my favourite place on earth when I was 12 if it hadn't been in Yugoslavia and out of effective sight.

Sadly, it is so wonderful that much that makes it wonderful has been spoiled.

It's not just the enormous hordes of tourists directly, because we are also tourists, but the follow-on effects.

The prices are incredibly more than we have been seeing recently. In Cetinje, Montenegro in the main street with all the tourists we could get a 500 ml beer for $4. In Dubrovnik it ranges from $9 to $12. To climb the walls to the castle over Kotor with all the other tourists cost $14, but it was $35 to do the walls of Dubrovnik (we think they might be deliberately pricing the walls very high to try to cut down on the numbers – it certainly stopped us doing them). We aren't even staying in Dubrovnik because Alison blanched at the prices, although the small village we are in is much nicer, as it is quieter and there's walks along the sea.

Too many tourists drive out the local restaurants, so that you can find any number of pizza and "Italian" or seafood places, but nothing you couldn't find anywhere else. They even tend to drive out the interesting foods in the supermarkets.

The worst thing, for me, is that the other local sights have been completely ignored – little but interesting things that smaller places would make a big deal of and are a bit different.

We thought we might like to see the amusingly named Walls of Ston (not a typo, the place is called Ston), where the Ragusans built a wall across a peninsular to protect their salt panning operations. However there's no information on it, and getting there was a total mission – despite being just up the coast.

We also thought we might like to see the Ombla River. It's 30 metres long, before it hits the sea. Yup, 30 metres. So, by some reckonings the fourth shortest in the world. But apparently such a sight is of no interest at all (probably since no-one will make any money from it). It's only just out of Dubrovnik too.

The whole coast line is lovely. If there are any walks or cycle trails along it, they keep them well hidden.

It seems odd to me that a site that is suffering from excessive numbers should make almost no attempt to deflect them away.

So Dubrovnik, which should have been a high point, has been a bit of a disappointment to me. Let us hope that Split is better. I'm not hopeful, since it has been a desirable spot since Diocletian thought he would retire there.

Edit

On the way to the bus station to take the bus to Split, our taxi driver explained that it gets much more crowded. Apparently up to six cruise ships can be docking in July and August, so close on 30,000 people, plus every hotel is full. The thought of 50,000 all trying to fit into the old town is horrifying.

So if you do want to visit Dubrovnik, do so in May or October.

It's also a lot cooler then. I know this year has been unseasonably hot, but people were melting in the heat as we walked round, and it's not yet the hottest part of the year. Spring and Autumn aren't exactly cold, though I suppose if you come for the swimming and sunbathing rather than the sights it isn't really warm enough for that. 

Planes, trains, buses and automobiles

Alison and I decided early on that we would try to travel by train as much as possible. We haven't relented from that, and I thought I would share our reasons why.

Trains are generally the cheapest form of transportation in the Balkans.

Most of the countries have networks that link the major cities, with the Montenegro/Croatian coast being the exception due to its exceptionally awkward geography, so when we shifted base cities we did so by train. We also used them for day trips

On the plus side for trains: 1) train stations are easy to find and there's only one, 2) they tend to be close to the centres of towns, so schlepping our bags there is much less hassle, 3) train stations are more pleasant to wait at than bus stations or airports, 4) trains are a reliable smooth ride, 5) you can have quite a civilised meal on them, 6) they have toilets, 7) the views tend to be better, and it's possible to take photos from them if they have opening windows, on both sides, and 8) you can shift carriages if your neighbours are particularly irritating.

On the downside, trains are often slow. This is made worse if you have to wait for a connection, and we quite often need to do that.

We found that the trains kept to scheduled departures and rarely arrived very late.

Cute Hungarian short distance train. I like trains.

Buses are not generally much more expensive, except Montenegro. We use them for day trips to distant towns if the trains don't go there or run too irregularly.

On the plus side for buses 1) there are far more extensive networks, so that it has so far not been necessary to change mid-route, and 2) they go to a lot of the smaller towns and villages that don't have railway stations.

On the downside: 1) often cities have multiple companies with different stations, and it can be quite hard to work out which company and which station to go to (in a couple of cases, basically impossible), 2) bus stations are often quite a long way from where we have been staying, 3) are often really quite skeevy places to wait at, 4) the quality of bus varies wildly, with some of them being really quite nasty rides, although others are air-conditioned and comfortable 5) eating on them is often frowned on, 6) they don't have toilets, which can be irritating on a six hour trip, 7) you can almost never take decent pictures from them due to window reflections, and even if you can it is only one side, (see photo below) and 8) when you are stuck beside three obnoxious teenage boys on the way to the beach in Sutomore, as much as you would like to move away from them, you can't.

So they take the good side to view the sea, and then pull the curtains!

Buses have tended to be on time too.

Their timetables are more difficult to find than trains, change more often, and many are unclear about where they stop along the route.

Planes are a last resort for me. Generally much more expensive obviously, although not always for longer distances. And what with getting and from to the airports not necessarily all that much quicker.

The killer though is that they aren't very scenic. Half the point of travelling this slowly is to see the places in between the big name towns.

Automobiles haven't featured much. We have hired ones briefly in Jordan, Romania and Serbia.

While I drive faster than the average bus or train, in the end cars tended not to give as much more time as you might expect. Firstly, you have to spend an hour or more finding a rental place close enough to where you are staying and booking them. On the day of the rental we had to wait for opening time, then inspect them and sign the paperwork, meaning a reasonably late start. Then we had to get the car back in working hours, and in a big city that means quite a lot of time allowed for crossing it in traffic. If you keep them overnight, you need to find somewhere to park (which in many European cities isn't a trivial task).

On the days we took them, the hire cars did allow us to get to places that public transport were awkward for. But we found that we were, if anything, more pressed for time there than in places where we could reach by bus or train.

Sometimes things were really awkward. We declined to hire a car in Cyprus because everyone basically insisted on three days as a minimum, which we weren't interested in. We have no idea how much they cost in Brasov, because no-one was in the offices when we visited (four times!).

For us, changing cities and countries on a regular basis, and wanting to be staying downtown, it generally isn't worth the bother to hire cars. A 30 minute wait at the bus station may seem a hassle, but it is actually much less time than walking across town to the agency and organising a vehicle. And if we want to return late, then we can just catch a later train, rather than have to fret about return times.

If you are visiting one place for a while, then hiring a car becomes effective. You pick it up at the airport and return it there. That means you can stay a bit further out of town too, which can be cheaper. (But before you do that, remember that driving in these countries can be pretty rough. The road surfaces in Romania and Jordan were terrible, and Serbia was marginal. Everywhere the locals overtake with glee at the first opportunity, happily doing so into the face of oncoming traffic on a narrow road, because there are no passing lanes. If you want to drive slowly, expect to be overtaken by everyone all day, including heavy trucks and buses. Driving in the Balkans and Arab countries is not for the faint-hearted!)

And, of course, hiring a car for a week seems reasonable, but over six months that would really start to add up!

So, it's trains for us, wherever possible.

Balkan Safety

We're in Montenegro at the moment, having seem most of the coastline now, and a bit of inland.

Montenegro, it turns out, rivals Switzerland for lack of flat land. It doesn't have mountains the size of the Alps, but it makes up for it by not having the nice farming land down the valleys that the Swiss have. And the Montenegrin hills aren't rolling, they are pretty much all steep.

There is one large plain around Lake Skoder, which is mostly swamp and half in Albania anyway. It seems there is some flat land round Nikšić, but we didn't go there, because it is seriously out of the way.

So we have been treated to some fairly hair-raising rides, by bus and train, to get around. The bus rides have been particularly troublesome as the drivers exhibit safety standards that aren't quite what we are used to.

The driver today on the drive to Cetinje made a couple of phone call while we were driving along the edge of quite a substantial cliff.

Photos taken seconds apart, of driver on phone and quite a large drop

One of our previous drivers literally held his phone in his left hand the entire trip. A driver yesterday was weaving all over the road as he drank from his water bottle. Alison has gone off sitting at the front of buses, because watching the drivers not concentrating on mountain roads is so alarming.

Oddly, the roads themselves are quite good, with decent surfaces and relatively wide. Much better than the roads in Serbia, Romania or Bulgaria, which were narrow and full of patches and holes.

Of course it is the very nature of the land which draws the tourists. The dramatic way the land plummets directly into the sea along the coast is quite something. Little islands and headlands poke out from the bays, often with medieval castles, walled towns or cute churches on them'

The beaches aren't much good, being largely rocky, but the water is crystal clear and reasonably warm. There is zero tide and surf, of course, being in the Med.

We started in Bar, which is fairly unremarkable place, full of hotels and apartments, but with an interesting old town back from the sea. We then moved to Kotor which is definitely nicer. Every day here a large passenger vessel has sailed in, so the cruise lines seem to think it worth a visit.

Kotor old town itself has most of its medieval walls remaining, and the castle above the town is something to behold, being perched unbelievably high above the town. You can climb the 1,350 stairs to the top, much of which is effectively cliff, if you like a challenge. Of course there are no safety rails even when the path is straight off a ledge. Much of the path is even marked as dangerous (due to falling rocks, I suspect). We chose to only go 2/3 of the way, because even from there you get a magnificent views of the town and harbour.

The bay the town lies on is a sheltered fjord off another sheltered harbour, and was an important Venetian possession.

In the outer bay is Porto Montenegro, a hangout of the types who like to sail large yachts, many of which are enormous. Nearby are Perast and Sveti Stefan, which you have very likely seen in tourist brochures or similar, even if you didn't recognise them at the time. It's becoming quite popular, for good reason, and is probably heaving with tourists in the height of the season.

Being the way it is, the best way to see the Kotor area is by sea. There's lot of ferries and cruises to choose from, but we took a three hour boat trip that went out into the Adriatic Sea itself – passing by the coastal defences along the way. I took a selfie in a cave we stopped in.

You will notice we have on our Balkan life-jackets in the picture. These are standard issue Balkan life-jackets, judging by the other boats.

To be fair it was an absolute mill pond – absolutely zero swell and zero chop – so we weren't in any danger of being swamped. I asked the skipper if it was always like that, and he said that they could get up to 3 metres of swell easily. I looked around for the life-jackets for those days, without much luck.

Montenegro has been well worth the quite sizeable detour it took to get us here. The level of English here has been very good, which helps. Costs are higher than most of the Balkans, but still cheaper than the equivalent places in western Europe. But it is hilly. Very hilly,