The Las Vegas of the Balkans: Skopje

Skopje is probably the strangest city I have ever visited. Let's begin by saying that the capital of Macedonia is mostly new, because the city was almost completely destroyed in an earthquake in 1963 and also because most of its monuments were built in the last 6 years.

 

As a matter of fact, in 2010 many new statues, monuments and museum buildings were built thanks to a big project called "Skopje 2014". Most of them share a pompous neoclassical style that seems to mock Macedonia's neighbour, Greece. There are so many statues of famous Macedonians that local people laugh and say that every Macedonian by now has a statue somewhere in Skopje.

Statues in Skopje

The project was intended as a way to revitalize the city centre and make it more monumental, but it failed to gain consensus from the local population. Some of the new monuments (like the triumphal arch, a bad-taste imitation of the Roman ones) got hit by paint balls in protest against the corrupted government. The monuments and museum buildings intend to build an identity for a country that has almost never been independent in its history and whose name and symbols are not recognized by Greece.

 

Skopje's art bridge and the archaeological museum by night

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The most famous and controversial monument is a 22-metre statue of a warrior on a horse sitting on top of a marble column and surrounded by fountain jets that are lit up at night. Most visitors recognize him to be Alexander the Great, a historical figure claimed by Greece as its own and that Macedonia uses freely (even the airport is called after him). This politics, sustained by the political party in power, is known as "antiquization" and it claims that ancient Macedonians were not in fact Greeks. According to  this theory, modern-day Macedonians, even though Slavic in language and culture, descend from the ancient Macedonians who once had an empire that reached India.



The huge statue of the Warrior in Skopje

 

 

As a result, the modern part of Skopje is kitsch, a sort of Las Vegas reconstruction of ancient Greece gone wrong. There are so many statues that it becomes hard to pay attention to any of them. In spite of this, or maybe because of this, Skopje is a unique and interesting city to visit. Contributing to this amusement-park atmosphere are the Chinese-built red double-deckers that you can see everywhere, an exact copy of the London ones.

 

In Italy macedonia is another name for fruit salad, a mix of very different elements, as Macedonia is, a meeting point of different cultures and religions. While walking on the southern bank of the Vardar river and passing by these huge new monuments, I was in an unmistakably Balkan city, even though the façades of Socialist buildings have been cleverly covered to give them a new look. 

 

This is  the area of the city where you can find trendy cafés and shops, but also Mother Teresa's memorial house, built in the place where she was baptised. Born in Skopje in 1910 of Catholic Albanian parents, Mother Teresa of Calcutta embeds the cultural mix of this city. The memorial house is free to visit and a new church in a curious neo Byzantine style is being built here.

 

Memorial house of Mother Teresa

 

To add to this mix, everywhere in the city you can see Roma families, with children playing in the streets. As a matter of fact, Skopje hosts one of the largest Roma settlements in the Balkans. I realized how much more of a mix it must have been in the past with Macedonian, Albanian and Roma people living side by side with Turkish, Greek, Armenian and Jewish people, of whom little is left in present-day Skopje aside from plaques and small museums.

Statue of Mother Teresa

 

On the northern bank of the river lies Çarshia, the old bazaar, which is known by locals as the Albanian neighbourhood (here Albanian is almost synonym with Ottoman). 20% of the population of Skopje (and 25% of all Macedonia) is of Albanian heritage and all official plaques are in both Macedonian and Albanian. I wandered for a couple of hours through reconstructed caravanserai, old mosques and Turkish baths, some of them reconverted as art galleries or museums. The Çifte Hamam, for example, now holds the national gallery, with plenty of contemporary paintings and installations from Macedonian artists.

 

Çifte Hamam

 

The Kurşumli Han is one of the few remaining caravanserai (the roadside inns of Ottaman times) in Skopje and it now hosts the modest Museum of Macedonia. A world apart from the opulent new museums, this area is more traditional, even though little is left of old Skopje and all the shops sell modern goods. While you walk though its paved streets, you can always spot the minaret of a mosque.

 

Old Baazar, Skopje

 

 

The two worlds - the Slavic and the Albanian - run virtually parallel one to the other and sadly there is not much interchange between the two. To divide these two parts of the city there is the 15th-century Stone Bridge, one of the few things left from the time of the Ottoman empire.



View of Skopje and the Stone Bridge

 

 

 

On the footsteps of emperors - visiting Split

For a history enthusiast like me visiting Split in Croatia was a real delight and a dream that came true. The city grows around and within what used to be Diocletian's Palace, built around 300 AD as a private residence for the emperor's retirement. He chose this place because it was close to his home town of Salona. The palace was abandoned after the decline of the Roman Empire, but in the 7th century people took refuge here to hide from the Slavic invaders. They started to build houses and business shops inside the palace complex, which had been both a fortified citadel and an imperial palace. When I first arrived in Split I was asking myself where the palace was exactly, and then I realized that it is everywhere: inside private houses, on the courtyards of restaurants, or inside a museum!




Inside the palace

One façade of the palace looks onto the sea, while the others are fortified, with a gate for each side. Some of the decorations have disappeared, like the statues that stood inside the niches, but the Croatian men dressed as centurions will remind you that you are in a place of considerable historical significance. Tufts of grass or flowers grow among the stones, giving an air of fascinating decadence to the whole place.

One of the ancient gates

Walking along the walls, I was soon able to find, next to the Porta Aurea (Golden Gate), the statue of Grgur Ninski, the 10th-century Croatian archbishop who introduced the Croatian language for religious services. It is a pretty big statue and it has become one of the symbols of Split. It brings good luck to rub the statue's toe, which as a result is smooth and shiny.

The toe of Grgur Ninski's statue

 

Emperor Diocletian is famous for having harshly persecuted Christians but, quite ironically, after his death the mausoleum built to host his remains was turned into a church. It maintains the original 4th-century Roman structure, and it has a 2,500-old black sphinx at the entrance. Other parts of the church were obviously added  later, like the bell tower. A mish-mash of styles is rather astonishing, if not interesting. 

The mausoleum looks out onto the Peristyle, a monumental columned porch that formed the access to the emperor's apartments in Roman times and is now the main square of the town. In the evenings you can sit on the stairs, on red cushions provided by one of the bars, and listen to music performances while admiring the ruins or observing the architectural details. I was completely mesmerized by this square and I was trying to imagine how it looked like in Roman times.

The main square in Split

 

Split is such a fascinating place, full of surprises around the corners of its glistening paved streets. You pass under porticoes, next to columns, and observe windows with colourful shutters built into the structure of the palace.

Buildings from different periods intersect the Roman ruins, forming a chaos that is nonetheless rather charming. Restaurants and bars put their tables on the paved streets, next to the palace walls, offering their food: seafood and pasta are everywhere, but you can also find soups and Bosnian cevapcici if you search well. While getting lost in the narrow streets of the old town, you can peer through an iron gate and discover a secret garden with ancient marble columns and thousand-year-old stones that formed part of the temples and buildings inside the palace.

 

Peering through a gate and discovering a secret garden in Split

My favourite sight in Split was Jupiter's Temple, once part of the complex of the palace and now a baptistery. There's a headless Egyptian black sphinx guarding the entrance, but the real star is the door. I photographed it so many times at different hours of the day, because I love the carvings and the marble with which it is built. It made me feel like Indian Jones, especially because it is located at the end of a small street that departs from the Peristyle, elevated from the main street level. Interestingly, the statue inside the small temple is not of Jupiter but of Saint John the Baptist.

Door to the temple of Jupiter

In spite of being a city built around ancient ruins, Split is rather modern, with fancy shops and sophisticated restaurants that could compete with any town in Italy. It was quite a shock to come here directly from Sarajevo, which is in many ways a simpler kind of place, with less international brands on display and devoid of that annoying obsession for everything hipster.

 

A restaurant in Split

 

I will give you an example of the kind of shock that travelling from Bosnia to Croatia will give you. On my way back to the coast of Croatia from Bosnia, which is almost a landlocked country, we passed through some mountains, and then entered a valley. There, the first thing I could see after villages and villages characterized by a small mosque with a tall slender minaret, was a church with a pointy bell tower. This reminded me of the religious divisions in the area, and how different ethnicities live side by side in this part of the world.

 

A religious image inside a window in Split

 

Outside of the city walls, the city is equally beautiful. Walking along the Riva - the seafront with a Venetian name - is really pleasant. From here you have a view of the outer walls of Diocletian's palace, but you can also enjoy the nice breeze coming from the sea. I remember that there were some stalls selling fritule, which is a sweet of Venetian origin, except that we only eat them around Carnival time, in the winter, and here there are for sell even in the summer. I also took a long walk on the hill that surrounds the town, and ate a really good dinner at Konoba Fife, right at the end of the Riva. You can have fresh mussels or seafood risotto here for a very reasonable price.

 

The Riva

 

For my second day in Split I know I wanted to relax, so I headed for the beach. There is one just outside of the town centre, but as most beaches in Croatia it is rocky, not sandy. It's called Bačvice beach: it is crowded, but not unpleasant. The water is crystal clear and there are some nice bars along the shore for refreshments and maybe a good tuna salad.

 

Bacvice beach in Split

There isn't much to do in Split, aside from walking around. Split is like an open-air museum, where occasionally you'll enter a two-thousand-year old structure. I found it interesting fascinating that the purpose of certain buildings is not certain: it sheds an aura of mystery to the old town. I know that I could have kept walking around for days, learning new things and enjoying the atmosphere of a town that's truly unique.

The town centre of Split

 

 

Painfully Discovering Sarajevo

As you may know,  I backpacked part of the Balkans last June. One of the places I was most excited to visit was Sarajevo. I was really curious to see how the different cultures of East and West met and perhaps collided, the Turkish influence in the middle of Europe and the multiculturalism of a place that has had a troubled yet undoubtedly-fascinating history.

Pidgeon square in Sarajevo

Sarajevo is not an obvious tourist destination. People were puzzled when I mentioned that I would be spending quite a few hours on a public bus just to see it. Most people have no idea of what Sarajevo looks like, and neither did I. Pictures made it unreal, impossible to visualize, and even more so for the many images of war that I saw as a child on Italian news programmes. The terrible war that ravaged in the 1990s is always on your mind when you visit such a place, and casts a dark aura on a city that may otherwise be splendidly recovering from the shock.

 

I must confess that my first impressions of Sarajevo were not the best. I arrived at dusk at the central bus station, which is located outside of the city centre, in a poorly illuminated area of the city with only commercial buildings around. The place looked a bit scary, to me at least, so I asked some other backpackers if they knew their way, and with difficulty we found the tram station. We were lucky and a tram driver immediately asked us, with a shout, to board the tram. We barely had the time to put our backpack down on our seats on the cranky old tram that an inspector came on the bus and threatened to make us pay a fine for the ticket that we didn't have. After a long explanation,  half-seriously and half-jokingly he let us go. Not the greatest start, you might recognize, but after a walk in the town centre I changed my mind and started to get the vibe of the city.

The old bazaar area

The following morning, with shops open for business, I went back and started to elaborate on what I was seeing. Baščaršija, the old Ottoman neighbourhood, made me feel as if I were in an older version of Istanbul, one that now has vanished. The bazaar with its wooden shops, the brass utensils, the tulip-shaped tea glasses, the cushioned seats of restaurant and cafés, everything reminded me of Turkey. I found the area even soaked of that nostalgic aura so typical of Istanbul. I would say that this is the main - and almost the only - touristic area of the city, yet I enjoyed it very much. I peered inside craft shops with dusty cushions and observed Bosnians having ćevapčići at eleven in the morning. This cherished Bosnian dish of short sausages served wit pita-like bread, chopped onions and sour cream is what you should have if you have time for only one Bosnian meal.




A café in Baščaršija

One of the most evocative places in Baščaršija is the main square, affectionately called Pigeon Square, with its Sebilj, an Ottoman-style fountain dating from the 18th century. Minarets in the distance and bazaar streets starting in all directions, it is a busy place, buzzing with life.



Pidgeon square

My favourite place in the old Ottoman neighbourhood  is nevertheless Gazi-Husrev-beg mosque, and in particular its peaceful courtyard and the stunning ablution fountain. Built in the 16th-century, it is perhaps the most important Ottoman building in the country. It suffered significant damage during the siege of Sarajevo, because the Serbian forces notoriously targeted religious and cultural buildings for symbolic reasons. It has been splendidly rebuilt and it is now buzzing with worshippers and tourists alike. I sat there for at least one hour, reading a book under the shade of a tree or taking notes on what I was seeing.



The fountain of Gazi Husrev-beg

Outside of Baščaršija, Sarajevo is a regular European city, with shops and cafés, churches and parks. I passed by Catholic and the Orthodox Cathedrals, as well as synagogues and mosques, as proof of the multiculturalism that pervades the city. Even though religious hatred has been one of the sparks of the Balkan wars of the 1990s, nowadays the different religions seem to coexist once again. Among the most striking monuments there is the Eternal Flame, a memorial to the victims of the Second World War in the form of a flame that is always burning.

Sarejevo Cathedral and shopping area

Sarajevo is surrounded by hills, so much that everywhere you can see streets going uphill. During the siege that lasted a record 3 years and 10 months, the snipers were positioned there and on the infamous sniper alley. Hand-painted signs would warn passers-by: "Watch out - Sniper!".

Street going uphill in Sarajevo

At the hostel where I was staying they kept telling us to hike to the Yellow Fortress. I was having a tour of the town with a Bosnian young man whom I befriended together with some people from the hostel, but he wasn't sure of what we meant by yellow fortress. We climbed to a viewpoint that might have been it. From there you can see all of the city and the white stones of a war-time cemetery. Thoughts of how trapped and scared one must have felt during the long siege came to my mind. These white stones are such a presence on the Bosnian territory that when you stoop seeing them you may guess that you're getting close to the border - at least the ethnic one - with Croatia or Serbia.



A cemetery in Sarajevo

I didn't even go to the tunnel museum, preferring to wander the city. I even visited a traditional Ottoman house, as well as a Srebrenica massacre exhibition that I found really interesting and touching. Sarajevo is a city that is trying not to forget the atrocities of the 1990s, but to move on while preserving the memory. It has a young population, with some cool bars and restaurants. Perhaps it is not as rich or as hip as Croatia, but it is catching up with the rest of Europe.

The Irish pub

As I came out of the Srebrenica exhibition, I saw an Ottoman military band - a mehter - playing in traditional costumes in front of the Catholic Cathedral. As a matter of fact, it was part of a music festival celebrating friendship between Bosnia and Turkey. It was interesting to see people waving Turkish flags, since the Ottomans were once the invaders. In the exhibition I saw a war-time video that explained - to me at least  - the otherwise-inexplicable hatred towards Bosnian Muslims. Bosnia is, together with Albania, the only part of the Ottoman empire where a large number of people converted to Islam and stayed in the country after the fall of the empire. In the footage, a Serbian general said that he considered Bosniaks traitors for giving in to the invaders, religiously and culturally.

Sarajevo it is the kind of city that is more interesting or fascinating than truly beautiful. There are places that you can definitely call beautiful of course, but in general it is an austere city, especially outside of Baščaršija. For example I was surprised that the famous Latin Bridge, where archduke Franz Ferdinand was killed, looked so dull.

The Latin Bridge

Sarajevo is not as aesthetically pleasing as Dubrovnik, that's for sure. It is gritty and unattractive in some parts, but it does have the charm of a place that is still a bit uncharted, touristically speaking. I didn't expect it to blow me away from an aesthetical point of view, and it didn't for the most part, but it is definitely an intriguing city.

View of Sarajevo from the Yellow Fortress

Blood and Honey in Mostar

One of the reasons why I wanted to visit Bosnia so badly was to see Mostar, the town famous for the 16th-century Ottoman bridge bombed in 1993 during the war with Croatia and then faithfully reconstructed with techniques dating from that period. In my mind the town was like travelling back in time to the period when the Ottoman empire had spread its wings over this region of Europe. I wasn't disappointed, because indeed Mostar has one foot in that past and one in the present. Nevertheless it was a difficult place to visit, emotionally speaking. I cannot even bear to think that war can become so furious as to destroy centuries-old architecture, let alone in the heart of Europe.



A view of the Old Bridge

During my bus trip from Dubrovnik, I paid attention to the landscape. At first, we followed the coastline of Croatia. The landscape is dotted with spectacular uninhabited islands covered with woods. Blue and green are the dominant colours here. Not for a moment you are reminded that twenty years ago a bloody war infuriated all over the region. 

Bosnia, on the other hand, is probably where the war has left the most visible marks and where reconstruction has been slower. As the bus entered into Bosnian territory, I started to notice that more and more houses were abandoned or in ruins, with smashed windows and bullet-riddled walls. Some of them were reduced to a skeleton. While I was walking in the new part of Mostar, newly arrived in Bosnia, I saw them standing side by side with brand new buildings. I think this is intentional, a reminder for new generations of what should never happen again.


Contrasts in the new part of Mostar

Bosnia, and Mostar in particular, is like a little Istanbul, that is to say a place where East and West meet. The Ottoman influence is so palpable in the historical part of the town that at moments you forget that you're in the Balkans, right in the middle of Europe, and think for a moment to have been teleported to a remote Anatolian village. Tulip-shaped glasses of tea sit on the low tables next to Ottoman-style sugar pots, and by looking around you can certainly find the top of one of the many minarets of the town. It was already getting dark when I took my first walk in the historical town centre, which is very atmospheric when most of the tourists have left and souvenirs stalls are closed for the day.

In Turkish bal means honey and kan blood. It is just an interesting coincidence - the etymology of the word "Balkans" is another - but it summarizes the turbulent history of the region in just two words. Even today, the scars of the wars of the 1990s are visible all over the town, if you venture beyond the painfully reconstructed old town: bullet riddled buildings, but also cemeteries with the same date - 1993 - over and over on the white tombstones, and the city divided into a Croatian and a Muslim Bosniak part. I was also surprised to see souvenirs made of bullets. War is a touristic  attraction all over Bosnia. It is weird and sad, but it plays with our minds and our morbid curiosity about horrendous facts. More than once I noticed how tourists rushed to ask Bosnians what they were doing during the war, and I found myself secretly asking myself the same question without daring to ask.

 

Souvenirs made with bullets

I also visited one of the mosques close to the old town. For a small entry fee I was shown around by the friendly care-taker. Unfortunately, little of the old mosque had remained, because the building was heavily bombed. However, I climbed the minaret (barefooted because you are not allowed to wear shoes inside a mosque) and I admired the view over the town and the neighbouring countryside. So many minarets! The structure of the mosque definitely reminded me of Istanbul. Even the old cemetery on the other side of the road was Ottoman in style, with the characteristic tombstones with Arabic inscriptions. To stop by one of the mosques, at the ablution fountain or by the shady outer arcades is very pleasant. The atmosphere is relaxed and nobody will bother you.



Ablution fountain in front of a mosque

The bridge itself is slippery with a slope that is not so gentle as you might expect. Young men in their swimming costumes prepare for the dive into the Neretva river, but they only jump when and if they get enough money from the tourists. I saw someone jump, but not from the highest point of the bridge. The historical town is certainly charming, but it feels a bit cramped with too many souvenirs stalls. 

Souvenirs stalls in Mostar

Yet, it is pleasant to walk through the narrow cobbled streets and admire the stone houses, the smaller waterways and the mills.  There isn't much to do apart from browsing the stalls, have a coffee and observe the mix of influences or the panorama. There are a couple of museums, but I think Mostar is more about the atmosphere and the peaceful environments. Bosnia is really a green country, with lots of hills and mountains.

View of the old bridge

View of the Neretva river

Food in Mostar was the best I had in the Balkans. Croatian food was fine, but I found that it lacked a little bit of inventiveness. While I was walking in the streets of the old town, I noticed a restaurant called Šadrvan. It was touristic, with the waitresses in traditional dresses and the pictures of the dishes in display, but it was full and there was an enchanting Ottoman-style fountain in the middle of a small courtyard. Of all the restaurants with nice terraces on the river and a view of the Stari Most, the old bridge, I ended up choosing this one and coming back the following day.

The entrance of the Šadrvan restaurant

I ordered something called Hadzijski cevap, which turned out to be a delicious plate of marinated beef with peppers and rice. It was perhaps the best meal of the whole trip. The following day I had sogan-dolma, onions and other vegetables stuffed with minced meat and boiled in a broth. Apparently it is a speciality of Mostar, and I couldn't miss it. The prices were moderate and the service great.

At the end of  the meal I was offered a Bosnian coffee (bosanska kahva), which is very similar to Turkish coffee. To be shown how to prepare it and stir it really did the trick for me, because I liked more than a regular Turkish coffee.

Hadzijski cevap

Overall, I liked Mostar. I think it's an interesting town and it definitely has its own vibe. Even though it's touristic, with lots and lots of day-trippers coming from Croatia just for a few hours, I wouldn't consider it just another touristy town. It's worth exploring and enjoying its timeless charm.

Reminder of the war

Backpacking the Western Balkans - First Reflections

Those of you who follow me on Facebook and Instagram know by now that I spent the last two weeks backpacking the Western Balkans. As two weeks isn't obviously enough to see all there is in the area, I limited myself to the coast of Croatia (with an excursion to Plitvice Lakes in the interior of the country), and then went also to Montenegro and Bosnia. I consider this to be the first part of a longer trip that would also lead me to Serbia, Macedonia and Albania.

Whenever I told my friends and colleagues that I was travelling for two weeks through these three countries, they would always tell me that they heard Croatia is very beautiful, but they would forget that I mentioned two more countries. Croatia gets all the praise with its beautiful beaches and many islands to explore, its historic towns and natural parks. Montenegro, on the other hand, is a small country that only recently separated from Serbia and most people don't know a thing about it, while sadly Bosnia and Herzegovina is remembered only for the bloody war of the 1990s.

A church of overlooking the Bay of Kotor, Montenegro

The reason why I wanted to visit the Balkans is that this part of Europe is extremely diverse in terms of landscapes and faiths, with a complicated and interesting history, and a mosaic of influences that is fascinating, to say the least. Being from a small town near Venice, I wanted to see with my own eyes in which ways the Venetian domination in the coastal towns of Croatia and Montenegro has shaped the architecture and the culture of these towns, then I wanted to go inland and see how the Turkish influence plays a big role in that area. Venice and the Ottoman empire, so far away in the map, were always fighting for one or the other corner of the Mediterranean, and it is a part of the history of the Republic of Venice that I find intriguing.

The lions of Saint Mark in the city walls of Kotor, Montenegro

My trip started with a flight to Dubrovnik, on the southernmost tip of Dalmatia. The "Pearl of the Adriatic", as it is nicknamed, is a great place to start a trip through the Western Balkans, because apart from being one of the most beautiful walled towns in Europe, it offers great connections to Montenegro to the south and to Bosnia to the east. From here, traveling up the coast of Croatia is also easy and convenient, offering great possibilities to stop at Split, Hvar and Zadar.

A view of Dubrovnik from the city walls

The Venetian influence is indeed palpable in the coast. I chuckled when I saw that the restaurant I was eating at in  Zadar was called "Kalelarga", a common street designation in Venice, or upon seeing all that cuttlefish risotto in the menu at the restaurant. The culinary options were particularly interesting: pasta and pizza are not particularly Venetian, but other more traditional Dalmatian dishes, like brodet, a fish soup, or fritule (doughnuts) have obvious Venetian origins.

Fritule for sale in Split

Bosnia was another story: indeed I felt like I was in Turkey again, Ottoman-style mosques replacing Catholic churches, cevap - a local variation of kebab - replacing grilled squid at the restaurant. While in other parts of the world, for example in Greece, the Ottoman culture was perceived as an imposition and it is now considered mostly foreign to the country, in Bosnia it is worn with pride, as an important part of one's heritage. I've seen a café named "Istanbul", a festival of Turkish-Bosnian music and friendship, and several Turkish flags. 



The fountain of Gazi Husrev-beg mosque in Sarajevo

When I went back to the coast - a long bus ride from Sarajevo to Split - the reverse cultural shock was incredible and total. The coast of Croatia is much more Italian than I imagined in the style of shops you can find, in the way people dress, and the way towns are developed. It is also economically richer, and more sophisticated if you want, while Bosnia still seems to struggle economically. Reconstruction and recovery after the war hasn't been as quick here.  During the bus ride I observed the landscape a lot: humble villages dotted with the minarets of mosques for many miles, but suddenly, after a mountain pass and entering into a valley, the first thing I could see was a church and a Christian cemetery, while I was still within the territory of Bosnia.   

A Catholic image in Split, Croatia

While in Croatia and in Montenegro the reminders of the conflicts of the 1990s are few, and the two countries seem to prosper after a dark period, in Bosnia you are constantly reminded of the war, even though people don't like to talk about it. There are still many abandoned bombed buildings riddled with bullet holes, in the countryside as in the main cities, while cemeteries with the characteristic white gravestones dot the landscape. The riddle of why these horrors could happen in Europe in the 1990s has been only partially clarified for me during this trip.

A bombed building next to a new modern one in Mostar,in Bosnia 

It is extremely easy to travel in this area of the world: buses are reliable and frequent, often connecting cities and towns across multiple borders, plus people speak good English, and are always kind and available to give directions and advice. Moreover, it is safe and it doesn't provide particular challenges for women travelling alone. As a matter of fact, I didn't hear a single rude or sexist remark in my whole trip. Bosnia and Montenegro are fairly cheap, while Croatia is only moderately so, apart from towns like Dubrovnik or Hvar that can be very expensive. There are plenty of good-quality hostels, actually some of the best I have been to. Yet, the majority of the travellers I have seen travel in tour groups, clinging to their guide and rarely taking public transport. The great majority of the tourists that visit Croatia don't venture into the other countries of former Yugoslavia, thinking it is dangerous and unsafe, but to be honest I felt as safe in Montenegro and Bosnia as I did in Croatia.

The main square of Hvar, in Croatia

Have you been to the Western Balkans? What were your general impressions?