Traveling the Balkans by Car

While most peo­ple know and love Greece, Croa­t­ia and Bul­gar­ia, have you ever even heard of Koso­vo or Mace­do­nia? And there are so many more coun­tries: Roma­nia, Bul­gar­ia, Alba­nia, Ser­bia, Slove­nia, Bosnia Herze­gov­ina, Mon­tene­gro, Hun­gary.

Each of them with a unique and often­times untouched land­scape, inhab­it­ed by warm-heart­ed peo­ple of var­i­ous cul­tures, reli­gions and lan­guages. With most of these coun­tries still rel­a­tive­ly unknown they allow for won­der­ful trav­el off the beat­en track.

Espe­cial­ly if you are plan­ning on dis­cov­er­ing the hid­den and poor­ly acces­si­ble (arguably the most inter­est­ing) parts of the Balka­ns, a 4x4 is the best way to get around. Throw in some camp­ing equip­ment and you are ready for your epic road trip.

To ensure a has­sle-free and adven­ture­some trip, read these tips about road con­di­tions, bor­der cross­ings, road tolls and much more.

Road Conditions

The streets of the Balka­ns have a rep­u­ta­tion and it isn’t a good one. Know­ing this, we pre­pared for the worst. After a month of vis­it­ing almost every coun­try there is on the Balka­ns, I can hon­est­ly say: there were streets that pleas­ant­ly sur­prised us and eas­i­ly kept up with West­ern stan­dards, and then there were those roads that were prac­ti­cal­ly non-exis­tent.

Within the Cities

A typ­i­cal road on the Balka­ns that we paid a toll for.

As long as you just want to stay with­in the more dense­ly pop­u­lat­ed areas, you should be fine with any reg­u­lar car. Most Balkan coun­tries have decent motor­ways. There were some rough parts every once in a while, but oth­er than that, most motor­ways allowed for fast dri­ving. The max speed is usu­al­ly 130kmh, but you always find signs after bor­der cross­ings to let you know the country’s lim­it. Most of the time the motor­ways have two lanes in each direc­tion although one lane was often­times closed due to con­struc­tion and speed reduced to 60kmh.

With­in cities you will like­ly find a good infra­struc­ture. Espe­cial­ly in coun­tries that used to belong to the Sovi­et Union you will find wide boule­vards with lots of rotaries in every big­ger town that are easy to nav­i­gate.

Outside the populated areas

As soon as you are out­side town lim­its or get off the big streets though you will see a dif­fer­ent pic­ture: streets with large pot­holes in their sur­fac­ing or no asphalt at all, debris and garbage on the roads and unse­cured slopes with high risk of falling rocks. Often­times, roads will be sim­ple grav­el tracks or mud­dy trails and they might even lead you through (semi-) dried up riv­er beds.

Also a very typ­i­cal road in the Balka­ns — lots of fun guar­an­teed!

As adven­tur­ers with the right cars and equip­ment, these were obvi­ous­ly the roads we chose and if that’s what you are look­ing for then you will love the Balka­ns. If, how­ev­er, you only mean to reach your des­ti­na­tion in a safe man­ner with a stan­dard car, then some roads will be impass­able for you.

A word of warn­ing: Do not be fooled by the locals’ way of dri­ving. They might dri­ve that grav­el track up the hill dur­ing night with a 50-year-old sta­tion wag­on that you can hear a mile before you see it. That doesn’t mean that you should, too. These peo­ple prob­a­bly dri­ve that road every week, they know all its turns, twists, holes and bumps. You don’t, how­ev­er, so stay safe and only take those roads that you and your car are DEFINITELY capa­ble of.

To know which roads are fine, you should check maps of the area and ask some­one knowl­edge­able before­hand. That can either be a local or anoth­er trav­el­er. We were often­times asked if this or that road was pass­able with a reg­u­lar car and we had to hon­est­ly tell them no many times. In these cas­es, ask for an alter­na­tive route or check if there are any ways to get there with­out your car. Many areas with tourist poten­tial offer 4x4 rides from near­by towns for decent rates so ask around if that exists for your des­ti­na­tion.

Always check your route the old fash­ioned way.

Be aware that not all routes marked on maps or GPS devices are actu­al­ly open or dri­vable. In moun­tain regions the melt­ing of the snow dur­ing spring fills the vast riverbeds that are dry dur­ing the rest of the year with mas­sive amounts of water and can flood roads, mak­ing them impass­able. Same dur­ing the win­ter, only that at that time of the year the streets are cov­ered in snow and ice, mak­ing them impass­able all the same. Always ask a knowl­edge­able local before attempt­ing to dri­ve a road dur­ing these sea­sons.

Traffic

Local dri­vers on the road often dri­ve way too fast and care­less. They tail­gate every­one that dares to dri­ve at the speed lim­it and ini­ti­ate dan­ger­ous over­tak­ing maneu­vers, espe­cial­ly in front of bends. Most dri­vers don’t seem to have ever heard of the term ‘safe­ty dis­tance’ and hap­pi­ly nudge the back­side of your car. Don’t let them push you into risky dri­ving on your part, just keep calm and steady and stay alert.

Also, par­tic­u­lar­ly Alba­ni­ans, seem to live true to the mot­to ‘Every spot is a park­ing spot’. After two weeks in the coun­try we didn’t even bat an eye at some­one park­ing in the mid­dle of a big junc­tion any­more. Espe­cial­ly pop­u­lar are busy cross­ings, sharp curves, actu­al park­ing sites in third and fourth row block­ing every­one else and pret­ty much every oth­er (in)convenient spot.

While you might have to be more con­cen­trat­ed and aware of your sur­round­ings when dri­ving in the Balka­ns because of their reck­less dri­ving habits, we still thought it was some­what charm­ing. They don’t real­ly do signs, and traf­fic doesn’t seem to fol­low any obvi­ous rules. Yet, it works per­fect­ly fine and acci­dents are less com­mon than in most west­ern coun­tries. A func­tion­ing chaos, at least to the inex­pe­ri­enced observ­er.

Most impor­tant­ly to know: opposed to many oth­er coun­tries, honk­ing is usu­al­ly not a sign of rude­ness or annoy­ance on the Balka­ns. Instead it serves as a way of com­mu­ni­cat­ing, to say thank you as much as give a thumbs up in appre­ci­a­tion of your car.

Road Tolls

Most coun­tries on the Balka­ns charge road tolls for their motor­ways. There are, how­ev­er, two dif­fer­ent types: coun­try-wide road toll and road-spe­cif­ic toll.

Alba­nia and Mon­tene­gro have tolls only for some new­er bridges and tun­nels. Koso­vo doesn’t take road tolls at all.

Hun­gary, Roma­nia, Bul­gar­ia, Slo­va­kia and Slove­nia sell Vignettes, a road tax disc that you pay for once and which is then valid for all roads in that coun­try for a spe­cif­ic amount of time (e.g. 5 days, 10 days, 1 month). How­ev­er, there might still be spe­cial motor­ways or tun­nels where you must pay an addi­tion­al road-toll so check that when you plan your route.

Be aware that you will have to get a Vignette at a des­ig­nat­ed gas sta­tion or online in advance BEFORE you cross bor­ders into these states. There will be no con­trol sta­tions on the motor­ways where you can buy them as you do with the road-spe­cif­ic tolls. Most of the time, the Vignettes will be con­trolled through video sur­veil­lance, so make sure you have a valid one stuck vis­i­bly to your wind­shield.

All oth­er coun­tries on the Balka­ns (Ser­bia, Mace­do­nia, Bosnia Herze­gov­ina, Greece, Croa­t­ia) take road-spe­cif­ic toll. That means that you will need to bring coins. LOTS of coins.

You will need a lot of coins to pay for the road tolls.

Unless you stay longer in one coun­try and will need to get local cur­ren­cy any­ways, your best option is to pay in Euros. The prices range between 0.50€ and 3€ and they often­times can’t change into Euros, so make sure you always have enough 50 cents, 1€ and 2€ coins at hand.

If you are not in a hur­ry you might want to avoid the motor­ways alto­geth­er as the tolls can quick­ly add up. On our way through Mace­do­nia we had to stop every 20 min­utes for anoth­er road-toll sta­tion, I’m not even kid­ding. I think we paid about 40€ in total just to cross that coun­try.

You can find the cur­rent reg­u­la­tions and road toll / Vignette prices on the fol­low­ing web­sites:

· The AA
· Tolls.eu
· ADAC (only avail­able in Ger­man)

Border Crossings

As the Balkan is home to 13 coun­tries, trav­el­ing to one of the south­ern ones means that you will cross through a lot of the oth­ers. Our recent trip to Alba­nia for exam­ple led us through 12 dif­fer­ent coun­tries on our way. An expe­ri­ence only Europe can offer.

Being part of the EU is meant to allow for fast and unprob­lem­at­ic cross­ing. Late­ly, how­ev­er, a prob­lem has arisen with that. Due to polit­i­cal debates con­cern­ing refugees, lots of bor­ders have been put back up or have tight­ened their con­trols. This can be par­tic­u­lar­ly prob­lem­at­ic for those trav­el­ing from the Balka­ns to West­ern Europe as that is the route most refugees take. Con­se­quent­ly, there are thor­ough inspec­tions of cars that look like they could be smug­gling refugees. While you might not be con­trolled if you don’t fit the search pat­tern you will still have to wait in line, some­times for hours on end. Be pre­pared for miles long traf­fic holdups in front of the bor­der cross­ings.

Note: I think this should be absolute­ly clear any­ways but just to make sure: DO NOT, under no cir­cum­stances, allow a hitch­hik­er, or any­one you do not know per­son­al­ly, to ride in your car dur­ing bor­der cross­ings unless you want to be arrest­ed for smug­gling of migrants.

We per­son­al­ly expe­ri­enced the longest holdups on the north­ern route through Slo­va­kia, Hun­gary, Ser­bia, Mace­do­nia and Alba­nia. While we were told that the South­ern route, espe­cial­ly the entry into Croa­t­ia, Aus­tria and Italy was the most prob­lem­at­ic, we expe­ri­enced com­par­a­tive­ly lit­tle stress there. That might be, how­ev­er, because we were tak­ing that route late in the year at the end of Sep­tem­ber, when there isn’t as much hol­i­day traf­fic on the roads. In all cas­es, be pre­pared for long wait­ing times and make sure you have your pass­port and car doc­u­ments ready at hand.

Kosovo & Serbia

Final­ly, I want to men­tion one par­tic­u­lar bor­der cross­ing that is very con­fus­ing and tricky to nav­i­gate.
The two states in ques­tion are Koso­vo and Ser­bia. As you might have heard on the news, there is a dif­fi­cult rela­tion­ship between those two nations due to Ser­bia claim­ing Koso­vo as part of their coun­try, sim­i­lar to the case of Rus­sia and the Ukraine. This only affects you, how­ev­er, if you want to do the fol­low­ing:
· trav­el to Koso­vo by plane or through any neigh­bor­ing coun­try except Ser­bia
· enter Ser­bia from Koso­vo
· try to leave Ser­bia

In that case Ser­bia will clas­si­fy you as an ille­gal pas­sen­ger. So, if you want to vis­it Koso­vo (and you should, it’s beau­ti­ful) you need to make sure that you either enter AND leave through Ser­bia or leave out Ser­bia alto­geth­er.

Safety

When we told friends and fam­i­ly about our plans to trav­el to Alba­nia, most of them had the same reac­tion: “But isn’t that dan­ger­ous?”

Espe­cial­ly in West­ern Europe, the Balka­ns have a bad rep­u­ta­tion when it comes to safe­ty. I’m not sure where these prej­u­dices come from, but I can ensure you that they are most­ly that: prej­u­dices. Against all warn­ings of car theft, rob­bery, armed assaults and gang crime, what we actu­al­ly found on the Balka­ns were some of the kind­est and most gen­er­ous peo­ple we had ever met.

A month of trav­el­ing through the big cities, the small towns and the rur­al areas and yet we didn’t encounter a sin­gle prob­lem or ever felt unsafe. Not even that one time we got lost and acci­den­tal­ly entered a hid­den mil­i­tary restrict­ed zone did we feel threat­ened by the armed sol­diers. They sim­ply told us that we were strict­ly not allowed here and con­tin­ued to point us in the right direc­tion. We were even waved good­bye by them.

Cer­tain­ly, you should still be care­ful on your trav­els, espe­cial­ly at night. But this applies to trav­el in any coun­try. It’s always pos­si­ble that some­thing hap­pens so you should use your com­mon sense and gut feel­ing to avoid unsafe sit­u­a­tions.

For the unlike­ly event that some­thing does hap­pen to you, make sure that you and your belong­ings are prop­er­ly insured.

Before your depar­ture check on the web­site of your country’s for­eign office for any trav­el warn­ings or oth­er safe­ty instruc­tions.

Have you trav­eled to the Balka­ns before? Share your expe­ri­ences in the com­ments below!