Pfingstferien in the Balkans

In May 2024 we went back to the Balkans to further check out some places, building on earlier trips through Bosnia, Croatia and Slovenia. 

Montenegro: Beach Life

Tiny and hilly, Montenegro is known mostly for its scenic Adriatic coastline and isolated mountain ranges further inland. We stayed in a high rise on the beach town of Budva for the first three days, touring Kotor, the town of Bar, and beach-hopping. Dinners on the water every night in the open-air fish restaurants along the beach.

Drive north from Tivat airport along the coast lane around the bays to walled city of Kotor.

Mountains are in the backdrop of every street of Kotor. Lots of cute cafes and old stones. 

Kotor plaza church

Alley in Kotor, a place that is also famous for its cats.

A couple plays Uno with a drink at a quiet bar.

The City Walls of Koto hem in the city on the seaside, then climb straight up the mountain just to the back of the town. A climb of 1200 stone steps takes you up through vertical fortifications and emplacements, many of which are forgotten and (above) scenically abandoned. Cody and I banged out the ascent with various stops to explore the hidden corners.

The higher you climb, the better the Bay views. In some places it looks like a mini Great Wall of China.

Roofless ruins of St John's Fortress on top.

We got up at 3:30am for the flight down here, then climbed 1200 steps in the heat of day without water. This is what our vacations are like.

The roof top pool at the apart-hotel that we rented in Budva.

Cats overrun Kotor. There are cat shops with cat-themed knick knacks run by cat ladies.

Dinnertime view from the seaside fish places in Budva.

Beach day trip to the town of Bar.

"Bar" also has its town wall. Vendors and cafes line the street leading up to it.

This chatty guy had lived in New York but came back home to make a go of it with a juice stand and a B&B. Gave us lots of tips on beaches and the best guy to call to get olive oil.

The town of Bar has an old section "Stari Bar" behind these walls. Apparently it is mostly abandoned after a battle in 1878 that drove out the Ottomans. We elected not to explore it since we shelled out €60 just to hike the Kotor town walls the day before. Next trip!

Train station in Bar where we bought our overnight tickets to Belgrade. Here they post local obituaries by stapling the notices onto trees.

Walled towns are scattered up the coast. One of the famous ones is Sveti Stefan, a former village and now luxury resort. There is a nice pull-off for the tour busses so people can get out and take their pics of it. But it is currently closed due to some dispute, so no one gets to go over there.

Sunset over Budva. At the dock visible above the fishing boats bring in the catch: (see below)

The bodies were 4+ feet long, they had to transport them around in a wheelbarrow. This was dinner, and it was delish.

Beach Day: Lucice Beach, just outside the town of Petrovac.

The Budva restaurant scene

Budva is a go-to beach spot for Serbians, who come down here in droves.

Cody is ready to leave the shore and check out some mountains!

Albania Side Trip

Since we were quite close, I pushed for a foray into Albania. We first explored an abandoned salt works outside of the southern Montenegrin town of Ulcinj, then crossed the border to drive around Lake Skadar and to see what we could find in Albania.

Salt works established in 1934, closed down in 2013. They pump seawater into artificial salt pans, which over the years has turned into one of Europes largest birding reserves. 250 species migrate through this area, which is half of the species registered in Europe. We were hoping to see Flamingoes, but they were not around today.

What we got instead was some tremendous opportunities for Lost Places exploring. 

Residual salt pile in the main storage warehouse, idle since 2013.

The nearby town of Ulcinj also has a Stari Grad (Old Town) with cobbles and walls and the whole bit. If you are on an Old Town binge, check this one out too.

The Albanian border. Capital is Tirane, which has direct flights from Basel!

"Mushroom Bunker" in a field. One of the fun things about Albania is that while it was a Warsaw Pact member in the post-war period, the dictator running it hated Kruschev and the USSR. So he (Enver Hoxha) was always worried about an attack from the West and from the Soviets. In response he had hundreds of thousands of tiny bunkers installed all over the country. The idea was that people could use these in event of an invasion. It never came, Enver died in 1985, and now Albania's fields are studded with these crazy little things.

I asked a young, English-speaking store clerk who the guys on the statue were. She called to the back of the store to an older co-worker who yelled back, "Heroes." The store clerk repeated the word in English for me then shrugged. 

We found some bunkers to play in.

And on top of..

Montenegro: Mountains!

For the next few days we drove up to the town of Pluzine, a bit of an "adventure sports mountain town" that sits on the serene Lake Piva, a man-made lake that covered up the original town of Pluzine, forcing them to move the town up the hill. We took in all the activities, spending one day rafting the Tara river along the Bosnian border, another day canyoneering down waterfalls and then on the last day did Europe's longest zipline (1600 meters, split into two sections that takes you out over the Piva River canyon). 

The road up to Pluzine is a work of wonder and a road surveyor's nightmare...

Tunnels wrapping around vertical drops and then the occasional bridge over a chasm.

Into the abyss

Farmhouse ruins

Early summer wildflower craziness

Canyoneering: 5mm neoprene wetsuits to withstand a few hours hiking and splashing in frigid mountain snowmelt waterfalls. 

The gear includes harnesses as you are rappelling down the big waterfalls.

Cass steps off the edge. It really was a new experience to hang over a steep drop with frigid water slamming into your face.

Afterwards we met the guides at Jatak, a local restaurant for mountain trout, lamb BBQ and a local whipped potato dish cooked with cheese and spices. The guide had a rakija, the local brandy.

On the way back to Pluzine we drove through the southern section of Durmitor National Park, one of the emptiest national parks I've seen in Europe for sure. Durmitor has one road through its high alpine valleys and practically no one on it.

We stopped at a pass and ran around to see what there is.

Bobotov Kuk is the highest peak in the country, at 2523M. A climb was not in the cards today though- it is a full day to do it. Next visit!

Heading west out of the park towards the town of Trsa across open alpine plateau. 

Back near Pluzine, we wound around yet more crazy road engineering marvels above the Piva Canyon, which from these angles resembles a Norwegian fjord. Really unbelievable scenery, with incredible vertical reliefs.

Last pull-out on the thin highway over the ledges before we descended to the bridge and then to Pluzine, the little smudge of orange at the upper right of photo.

The Piva Reservoir at sunset from the Pluzine boat dock.

Serbia!

Having achieved our mountain fix, we drove back down to Podgorica to turn the car in and get on the night train to Belgrade. Yes a big part of doing this trip was to "take the night train to Belgrade" just because it sounds so mysterious. What would Serbian night trains look like? Do they run on time? How are the bathrooms? Would there be a murder/sudden loss of lights /a maid screaming? We would find out.

The assuredly dilapidated Podgorica train station. We dropped the car and walked around the capital city for a few hours, but could not find any reason to come back. Come to Montenegro, but don't spend any time in Podgorica - there are a lot of other places in the country instead.

One tunnel after another. 254 actually, and 435 bridges. The route climbs up and over 1000m tall mountain ridges on the way to the Serb border. If we did it again, we'd take the trip from Belgrade back to Pod, which runs during the day, and gives you one of Europe's best train rides since you can see everything.

Serbian border.

Jasper and I had one bunk room, Cass and Cody in the other. The trains were old German DDR stock, but most of the features in the car still worked.

Colorful local trains on the outskirts of Belgrade.

Have train, take selfie.

Closed for repairs!

We arrived in Belgrade at 6:30am to a surprisingly modern train station. We quickly got some Dinars and bought some local pastries from the station cafe. We left our bags at the ArkaBarka, a floating hotel/Hostel on the Danube River across from the big Fort in downtown Belgrade, and went to rent some bikes to explore the Zemun area northwest of town.

First stop was a street market, then an old Austrian/Ottoman lookout tower and fort remnants. Finally we checked on some more recent history, namely the former Air Force Headquarters of the Yugoslav Armed Forces. This was one of the buildings bombed by NATO in 1999 as the Serbs were getting ready to invade Kosovo. It has been left as a ruin every since. 

Oh heck yes we joined the line of other int'l geeks to see the Nikolai Tesla museum. Tesla of course was one of the world's greatest badass scientists and here on the tour they demonstrate his various experiments, all involving electricity and loud noises. Super Cool! 

Belgrade has a bit of a mini-Berlin feel to it: Lots of ugly alleyways, brutalist architecture, eyesore apartment high rises from the Communist days. But then it also has super hip corners, secret hideaways, and pedestrian-only cafe streets. We had zero expectations and, unexpectedly, we found it impressive and definitely worth another visit. (Direct flight from Basel? yes)

One of the things that makes it slightly "edgy": Many here are very anti-EU and anti-NATO. This is a ten foot tall testament to that standing at one of the major intersections. While most of the people we talked to were excited to meet Americans and wanted to hear how we liked Serbia, there is this undercurrent of anti-West that flows from the government and the spray paint cans. I think the society is a bit conflicted. They generally want to join the EU but they also harbor a huge grudge for getting bombed by NATO in 1999. Understandable.

The hostel scene at the ArkaBarka houseboat where we stayed. We sat and had our breakfast while listening to random dudes sitting on sofas trading stories of the first time they drank a whole bottle of vodka, or when someone sat with them and held their head while they were throwing up after a party. Total hostel 20-somethings entertainment. The kids were non plussed.

At souvenir shops you can buy Putin T-Shirts and magnets, proof of this undercurrent of anti-EU feeling that runs through Serbian society. A few weeks ago Xi Jingping visited Belgrade, a strange choice considering the tiny market of Serbia compared with China. But Serbia is one of the only friendly places in Europe for China, so they can come here and shout about the evilness of US and NATO for bombing Serbia and win lots of friends locally. Of course Serbia would love to join the EU for the commercial opportunities but it is still too corrupt and whacked to pass the test. 

There is a huge fort on a highland overlooking the confluence of the  Sava and Danube rivers, the aptly-named "Belgrade Fortress." It has been a fort since Celtic times and has seen some 115 battles over the centuries, with the Citadel being destroyed around 40 times. Most of what is left is the effort of the Turks (who controlled Belgrade for around 350 years until 1867) and the Austro-Hungarian Empire (who pushed them out and then built more layers).

The Fortress ("Kalemegdan") offers the typical tours of underground vaults, passages and powder magazines, in addition to a vast open-air artillery park and military weapons museum. The city fully utilizes the space for festivals, sports competitions, and all sorts of events, like a Burger Food Truck gathering and Medieval Faire when we visited.

Cody on the Soviet-era anti-aircraft gun in the open air museum.

From the Fort we ambled back through the colorful Stari Grad and pedestrian-zoned alleys to seek out a Mexican Tacqueria we had noticed the night before.

Serbs at rest, doing their cafe thing.

One of the views that smack of Berlin: urban infrastructure splattered with paint in the shadow of big apartment blocks that won't be winning any design contests. But still gritty and cool in its own inexplicable way.

My gritty and cool family fitting right in!

Across from our House-Boat Hostel lies "Great War Island," a nature preserve that maintains a big local population of wild boar and various bird species. We joined a group to paddle around it for the afternoon, then walked back along a river walk joined by throngs of people out for their evening stroll. We got cotton candy and roasted corn from vendor carts. At one we chatted with a local couple who were happy to meet Americans and apparently not annoyed at us for bombing them in 1999 over Kosovo.

The road to the airport on the morning we left, reminding all that Kosovo should go back to Serbia.

As we turned off the highway to the airport we skirted a big field with rows and rows of Warsaw Pact fighter planes and helicopters. Since we were early for the flight, Cody and I ran over to check it out. Unfortunately the museum was closed. So we walked along the perimeter fence and took pictures, when presently a guy came out to talk to us.

It was the curator of the museum! What luck! He was super apologetic that it was closed, but explained that the place was taken over by the military and closed for refurbishment until 2027. His job was to catalogue everything and prepare for reopening. He said that the prize exhibits inside were two US jets, an F-16 and a Stealth F-117, that had been shot down during the 1999 Nato campaign. It was the first Stealth fighter to ever be shot down, so it is a big prize.

A "National Treasure" as the guy put it. He also dished on the mossy airliners and other obscure planes lying around. In spite of being proud of crowing about shot-down US aircraft, he was still very happy that we made the trip to see the planes and to see Serbia in general, which he wanted to know how we liked. We had to go get in our own plane, but I would have loved sticking around and talking with him at length over the collection. I said we'll be back in 2027. He shook my hand with a big smile.

Home!

So that was the Balkans trip. Fascinating area with much to inspire a return trip. Of course we also said this about Crete, Cyprus, Bulgaria, Israel, etc etc. Still so much to see.