Our $50/day budget was a complete breeze in Bulgaria...truly a budget backpacker’s dream. We entered this penny-pinching utopia for the second time in late July. Last time...November...bitterly cold and snowing. This time... brilliantly sunny and warm. The language and swooping Cyrillic letters, once completely daunting, was significantly easier to read, the train system even more manageable to navigate and the…
There’s actually a country wedged between Bulgaria, Greece, Albania, Kosovo and Serbia. Who knows it? Ah, it’s it the title. Sort of. The name of the country is a bit confusing, but we’ll glean over that little detail a bit later. (North) Macedonia is unfortunately often overlooked and although we didn’t overlook it, we’ll be the first to say we…
In a place that has had its fair share of conflict in the last 20 years, we really didn’t know what to expect. For starters, depending on who you ask, Kosovo is either the youngest country in Europe or not a country at all. It declared independence from Serbia in just 2008 and has only received partial recognition from the…
We breathed a sigh of relief when we got to Serbia. No tour buses, no fanny packs, no tourist scams. Instead we found creative hipster vibes and nightlife in Belgrade, colorful Austro-Hungarian architecture in the northern Vojvodina province on the banks of the Danube, and a simply quaint city in the birthplace of Constantine the Great. Indeed, landlocked Serbia is…
Before we arrived, a few things came to mind when we thought of Sarajevo, etched in our brains from early history lessons and events. Mostly, involving war...the one during the Clinton years, a siege we knew pretty much nothing about, and the beginning of World War I kicking off thanks to the assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand. (An obligatory turning point…
Entering parts of Bosnia & Herzegovina (we’ll call it B&H for short) is like being transported to a land far, far away from Europe...more Turkish, more Middle Eastern, and more exotic. It is one of the most fascinating, hidden wonder-filled, yet complex countries we’ve been to in Eastern Europe. In fact, to be honest, it’s a little overwhelming to even…
After the summertime chaos of Montenegro’s coast we were more than ready for some serenity so we set out for the country’s namesake...the mountains, black mountains, to be precise. They’re mostly green though thanks to the verdant sheet of trees carpeting the landscape. We entered the mountains via a bus from Bosnia & Herzegovina, but of course we took the…
Fortunately years ago, we both did Croatia before it got all crazy crowded, crazy expensive and crazy Games of Throney. However, we were nearby so we couldn’t miss a day throwing ourselves into “the Pearl of the Adriatic” which undoubtedly is a jewel of a city and has one of the best preserved medieval old towns in the world. The…
