C Travel Adventures: 2011

“narrow houses with tall and shapely slanting tiled roofs sit gracefully, like cats on their haunches, among the green gardens of a garden-like valley”

Many-Coloured Mosque, Travnik

Our penultimate stop of the entire trip, which has come around far too quickly, was the town of Travnik. The town is conveniently located between Jajce and Sarajevo (we had already been through it on the way to Jajce) and seemed like a good place to stop for a night to break up the journey. The city is important to Bosnians as being the capital city of the country when it was a part of the Ottoman Empire and is another example of classical Bosnian ‘east meets west’. On a hill above the town is a large fortress which was actually designed to keep the Ottomans out, but which surrendered without a fight when defeat seemed inevitable. As a result, the historical parts of the town are remarkably well kept, despite some damage during the 1990s conflict. I was tempted to use for my introduction the description of the town that was given in the city map that we picked up, as the English had been comically mis-translated. It contained gems describing Travnik as: 'the town of cheese’ where 'streets are murmuring’, 'water is either blue or nine-fold’ and 'every dog is a shepherd one a bit’. I assume that these are all based on Bosnian sayings that don’t quite survive the translation.

Travnik Castle

The journey from Jajce took about an hour and a half, though having left relatively late we arrived at about half past three in the afternoon. The town is relatively compact however, so we dropped our bags off at our hotel - the Motel Aba (while it calls itself a Motel, it had some surprising mod-cons like a jacuzzi bath) and set out exploring. We started in the Ottoman quarter where one of the more famous Bosnian mosques can be found, the appropriately named 'Many-Coloured Mosque’ which has a distinctive painted exterior that has unfortunately become rather faded over time. The pedestrianised old town would have been a nice place to do some shopping, given more time, but we passed it by to head up to the castle before it shut. I don’t actually remember being in any part of Bosnia that wasn’t overshadowed by mountains, and the castle is at the highest point within a steep valley, with views along it in both directions. After paying a small entrance fee we wandered along the walls and admired the view, stopping for a little while in a museum based in the central keep. Bosnia does seem to be famous for its castles and the four that we have seen have all been extremely impressive - there are still another five that Lonely Planet recommend visiting, but we just don’t have the time to get to them.

Plava Voda, Travnik

One of Bosnia’s most famous writers, Nobel Prize winner Ivo Andric, was born in Travnik and based several of his more important works there. Having read none of his books, the numerous references to him were lost on me, but it does seem to be a place of pilgrimage for his fans. The last remaining site after the castle was the 'Plava Voda’ area, a natural spring in the hills which turns into a small area of rapids when it meets the town itself. A lot of restaurants have sprung up beside it and it made a picturesque place to have our evening meal of traditional Turkish kebabs when we came back later in the evening. The town was busy, which I think is as a result of it being a popular day trip from Sarajevo for tourists and locals alike.

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Pliva Lakes, near Jajce

The town of Jajce only really had enough sites to keep us entertained for one day, but the good value and comfort of the hostel we were staying in convinced us to stay on for another day. To the north of the town are two connected lakes, called the Pliva Lakes, that are supposedly some of the cleanest in Europe. According to the Pliva Lakes website, the stillness of the water is because the lakes are filled with ‘heavy water’, where each molecule of water contains an extra hydrogen atom. This seemed to be a bit of an odd claim as from what I vaguely remember hearing about heavy water, it is extremely rare, but we thought we would check it out anyway.

Pliva Watermills, near Jajce

The Pliva lakes are a part of the Pliva river, which is the river that flows off the waterfall at Jajce, so we walked alongside it from the town centre to the lakes themselves, along the edge of a main road with no footpath. It didn’t take us long to get to the lakes, but a lack of signposts meant that we struggled to actually get down from the main road to the waterfront. Lonely Planet recommended having lunch at the “Restoran Panorama” but unfortunately when we arrived we found that it was empty, so we carried on north in search of somewhere to get some much needed food. The lakes are very pretty, but in a pleasant rather than a dramatic way - it was a long way from Lake Ohrid for example. After grabbing a bite to each at a campsite restaurant we found the (totally un-signposted) watermills that are a popular tourist site in the region - a tour party was there which had come all the way from the Czech Republic. The tiny watermills are picturesquely placed amongst a section of rapids which divides the two parts of the river and, having become disused, are beginning to merge into the foliage and rushing waters around them. As with the lake itself, the watermills were pleasant to explore for half an hour or so, but probably wouldn’t be worth visiting unless you had a spare day in Jajce.

The walk back was a lot more pleasant as we found a way along quiet backroads rather than the main highway. We went back to the Temple of Mithras on the outside chance that it would be opened but unfortunately it remained closed - maybe when we come back the town will have got its UNESCO status and there will be a few more tourists around to have the sites open for. In the evening we cooked our last meal in Jajce and reflected that the town was probably the most unique and unspoiled place that we had been on the entire trip and that we would probably try to come back to see the waterfall in full flow.

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“the town is extravagantly beautiful. It stands on an oval hill that is like an egg stuck on a plateau above the river, and its houses and gardens mount over the rounded slope to a gigantic fortress”

The catacombs

With Sarajevo as our last city and with Mostar already visited we had seen all that most people come to see in Bosnia however we has four days spare and decided to use these to see the next best attractions. One of these was the town of Jajce which is north west of Sarajevo on the way to Zagreb. Jajce was capital of the medieval kingdom of Bosnia and has a big castle at its centre. It is also at the confluence of two major rivers and is located amidst steep valleys and canyons. On the day we had arrived from Mostar we had settled into our hostel (Jajce youth hostel) and cooked ourselves some dinner in the well stocked hostel kitchen. The next day we started bright and early and started by climbing up to the fortress. On the way, having passed through the Bear Tower we visited the Catacombs of a rich medieval Bosnian family. These are pretty atmospheric with their vaulted ceiling and internal church complete with an alter bearing one of the few remnants of the old Bosnian church. The tombs are now empty but it is pretty clear where they were and give the Catacombs a real spooky feel which makes the fact that Tito used it as a hid-out in WW2 quite impressive. Coming back out into the light we carried on up past the hollowed out shell of a church which still has a pretty impressive 15th century campanile tower.

St Luke’s Tower

Inside the castle

In our Lonely Planet which was published in 2007 it says that the tourist sights in the town are so rarely visited that they are kept locked and that visitors have to find the key holders in order to get in. Four years later Jajce is pressing for UNESCO status and the sights we visited did actually have some people on the doors (though we can’t have seen more than about 5 other tourists in the entire day). It cost us 2 mark to get into the fortress and while there was nothing there in terms of a museum, there was an impressive view from the city walls. Having scrambled about a bit at the castle, we made our way back down the walls to the old town past traditional Ottoman houses (which are actually reconstructions of those destroyed during the war). There’s not an awful lot to see in Jajce town itself in terms of shops or cafes so we walked straight through to the waterfalls which are the towns main attraction.

The waterfall (as we saw it)

The waterfall as it should have looked

The two rivers meet at Jajce at a considerable level difference and as a result the point that they meet is actually a waterfall rather than a standard confluence. The town rises up dramatically from these falls making it picture perfect if you can get your angles right. Or so we thought. Unfortunately the god of scaffolding was not smiling on us and it turned out that they were actually renovating the waterfalls, leaving a damp mossy crag with a crane in front of it in their place. After a year of sampling scaffolding at pretty much every major monument I have come across this year, this one really did seem to be a kick in the teeth but the two of us did our best to simulate what makes the town so interesting. I have to say I was pretty gutted but we carried on to the last sight regardless. The last place that we visited in Jajce was an ancient temple of Mithras, a secret religion that was practised in the Roman times. Ellie had studied this in Classics and it seemed pretty funny to stumble across it in the middle of Bosnia. Unfortunately, the tourist authorities couldn’t stretch themselves to pay for an attendant here and it was locked with no visible way of getting in. The temple is located in surroundings that are so ordinary that they are quite amazing as it is literally just a terraced street where number ten happens to be an ancient temple. We took what photos we could through cracks in its wooden covering. This was about it for sights in Jajce but it was by no means an inconsiderable number of places that we were able to visit, considering that none of the other travellers in Bosnia we spoke to had even heard of it. I wonder whether this will all change if the town gets UNESCO status. We had decided to spend an extra night at our hostel as it was literally completely empty, had excellent facilities and would be a good base for exploring surrounding countryside which we plan to do tomorrow.

Inside the Temple of Mithras (kind of)

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As fascinating as Mostar is, we were keen to explore the surrounding countryside a bit as the city is perfectly located for day trips. Miran, our hostel owner, actually ran his own trip for the relatively cheap sum of €25. We left at 10 and headed south out of the town. While we were still in the town we were able to have a small guided tour from miran who gave us a very personal insight into the war damage - showing us where they divided HIS city, where they destroyed OUR bridge and most poignant of all where they killed his uncle. He took us past where the croatian tank which blew up the bridge had stood and that they tried to stop it but had only been equipped with rifles.

The hillside at Počitelj

Our first stop (after getting some burek for breakfast - which is like a turkish pasty) was the town of Počitelj which was a strategic hungarian garrison before the ottomans captured it in 1471 and expanded the castle to its current size. It became a famous artist colony but was pretty much flattened in the 1990’s. Much has now been repaired and the terraced houses leading up to the imposing fortress were a great place to stop for a photo. We climbed up to the citadel (which was quite a scramble) for excellent views down the Neretva valley. We looked inside the grand Hadzi Alijna mosque which had been half destroyed and while it had now been repaired it was very obvious what was old and what was new as the new section had not been decorated. Aside from the fact that it was so scenic, there wasn’t much else to keep us in Pocitelj and Lonely Planet says there isn’t even any accommodation available there.

Počitelj and the Neretva Valley

Kravice Waterfalls

Next on the tour were the Kravice waterfalls, an arc of falls that seem to come straight out of the dense forest above them. The falls (some of which are as high as 25m) were extremely impressive and we spent 3 hours swimming and jumping in their pools. As an interesting side note, Hercegovina is famous for its snakes and as we were climbing out of the water we saw a little one that must have been about a foot long. After my Singapore experience I think I coped admirably in the face of such terror. By now we had sunbathed our way through the hottest part of the day and made our way to the town of Međugorje, a place which is a major talking point and which Miran was keen to give us his opinion on.

The statue of the Virgin Mary

Before 1981, Međugorje had been a poor village in the mountains of Hercegovina. On the 24th June however, six local teenagers were walking in the hills when they claim to have been spoken to by the Virgin Mary, preaching a message that all religions are accepted. The Catholic church has refused to accept the visions as real, but the village has now turned into a thriving tourist town, full of pilgrims from all over the world. Miran, who despite being a Muslim says that his religion is nothing to do with his skepticism, points to the fact that the six teenagers are now some of the most wealthy people in former Yugoslavia and that their formerly poor town is now thriving. A big cathedral has been set up on the site along with a statue at the point where the apparition supposedly happened. When we arrived in the late afternoon the town was heaving with pilgrims, mostly from Italy. Walking around the grounds of the cathedral, we came across what looked like a massive row of toilets but which actually turned out to be confession booths in pretty much every European language you can imagine - I have never come across something like this I don’t think, even at the Vatican. Around the back of the church is an arena where mass can be taken on a grand scale, with a capacity of what must be thousands. Sitting outside the church doing some people watching, it was clear that this place means a lot to locals as there was a lot of hugging and crying going on, which was quite touching.

Confession booths in Međugorje

The cliffs above Blagaj

There was one last location left before we headed back to Mostar and this was the local village of Blagaj (the ‘aj’ combination in Bosnian creates a sound like the 'ie’ in pie). The village is situated at the bottom of some extremely steep cliffs and is based around the source of the Buna river, which comes out of a cave at the bottom. The water leaves the cave at a temperature of 8 degrees and is one of the purest rivers in Europe, with the spring itself one of the largest in Europe. Despite annual attempts by French divers to find it (attempts which cost one diver his life this year), the source of the spring has never been discovered. Next to the spring is a house which used to be a dervish monastery. Part of the complex was destroyed in the war, but has been rebuilt with money from the Turkish government. It is a very picturesque spot and was a good place to end what had been an excellent tour from Miran. On the way back we passed a castle, way up on the cliffs which used to be the residence of the king of Hercegovina. Miran explained to us that the whole country was called Bosnia, until a noble moved to this castle and wanted to create an area famous for wine production. Herceg is the Bosnian word for 'King’ and 'vina’ means wine, so the area that this noble bought was literally named 'King of Wine’. The area is still famous for its wine in the Balkans, but now has to compete with other upcoming areas such as eastern Macedonia and the slopes of Montenegro. That night after dinner, Miran sat down with me while I was writing the blog and showed me some videos of Mostar from the war. We got talking about life under Tito and he gave a pretty interesting account of his opinion that life was better under him than it is now, and that the job security and free healthcare and education associated with the communist regime was worth the lack of political freedom.

The dervish house, Blagaj

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“over the grey-green river swoop hundreds of swallows, and on the bank mosques and white houses stand amongst glades of trees and bushes. There was not an old tin or rag of paper to be seen. It was likely to be due to the Moslem’s love of nature, especially of running water, which would prevent him from desecrating the scene”

The empty gorge, 1993

Catching the morning bus out of Dubrovnik we made our way to our last country of the trip - Bosnia Hercegovina. On my family holiday to the Balkans last year we had done a day trip from Split in Croatia to the town of Mostar, which most people remember for its famous bridge, destroyed by Croat forces in the Balkan conflict. The town had impressed me enough to come back, not just to Mostar but to Bosnia as a whole and we will be spending longer here than any of the other countries on the trip. Bosnia Hercegovina is probably now more famous for its hard to pronounce name everytime Eurovision comes around, however it is one of the most complicated and fascinating countries in Europe.

Stari Most, 2011

The name itself shows that it is made up of two parts - Bosnia and Hercegovina but this is only the start of it. While in modern Bosnian history the differences between these two parts is slight, the more important division is between the Serbian Republic in the east and the Federation of Croats and Muslims in the west. These two parts represent the split negotiated for the 1995 Dayton Agreement, which attempted to provide a settlement to end the war. Originally these were like two separate countries, both ruled from Sarajevo, but now apart from separate postal systems and different designs of bank notes, they are generally united. We would be remaining in the Federation of Croats and Muslims, but would be visiting Bosnia AND Hercegovina. To go much further in describing the history of Bosnia Hercegovina would be at the risk of not knowing what I was talking about, because while I have done my best to get up to speed, I still don’t feel confident enough to go into details. All I can tell you is that the Bosnian tourist authorities (which are in a pretty embyonic state) describe their country as the ‘heart-shaped country’ and you can’t hope to understand it without knowing how it has been broken time and again throughout its history.

Mostar is the capital of the Hercegovina region, which doesn’t mean much politically nowadays but meant that it was a major trade post within the Ottoman Empire. The name literally means 'the bridge keeper’ and it is built around the Stari Most bridge, commissioned by the Sultan when his traders complained about being too scared to cross the wobbly wodden one that preceded it. A considerable Muslim Quarter sprang up on the east bank while Christians traditionally inhabited the west bank, but relations between the two tended to be friendly. This all changed in the 1993 conflict when Croat forces who had originally been allies of the Muslims, blew the bridge in an attempt to cut off ties with their Muslim neighbours. Images from Mostar showing the crumbling bridge were projected around the world and are one of the main reasons that people visit. Its wrong to believe that it is all about the war however, as the town and surrounding countryside is amazingly beautiful in its own right.

Ljublanska Banking Tower, Bosnia

Hotel Neretva

We arrived in Mostar at about 1pm and were met at the bus station by a representative from our hostel - Hostel Miran. Upon arrival at the hostel itself we were given a massive piece of baklava and this was to be a good start to one of the best hostel stays I have ever had - but more on that to come. Our first port of call was the bridge which is a main point of orientation. We decided to go straight to the west bank where the former frontline used to be. This is where you get hit by both how devastating and also how recent the conflict was. On our way to the frontline, which ran along the main road through the town, we passed plenty of bombed out buildings before coming to what I think are the starkest reminders of the war. The first of these is a graveyard located on a terraced street where houses must have once stood. On closer inspection this is no ordinary graveyard, as all of the hundreds of headstones are inscribed with a year of death of 1992, many of which have the same day on. If this isn’t poignant enough, the years of birth on the headstones include 1970, 1975, 1981 and even 1987. A bit of deduction shows that this is a cemetary full of children. Further on from this is a building that I dismissed as a multi storey car park but a bit of research showed that it was once the Ljublanska Banking tower and has just never been rebuilt. We didn’t go inside (the threat of landmines and unexploded bombs means that most ruins are sealed off) but a google search shows that the interior is full of bits of officeware and even memos and letters dated from the early 90s. There just isn’t the money here to clear it up and there is a belief amongst some that buildings like the bank should stand as anti war monuments. I don’t know quite where I stand on that issue. At one of the other bridges (the stone bridge isn’t the only way to cross the river) is the ruined Hotel Neretva which has never been repaired, but which has had a shiny new building put next to it, providing a symbol of now and then.

1987-1992

The old town, Mostar

Having had our fill of war, we headed back into the Čaršija district to look around the bazaars and to take photos of the bridge from every possible angle. We went to the banks below the bridge to try out the water (at ten degrees it was cold enough to make your feet numb) and were lucky enough to see one of the famous bridge divers jumping off. These men are pretty hard as the air temperature is in the high 30s and the sudden change in temperature (as well as the fact you have jumped the equivalent of about six storeys) can induce a heart attack. Luckily we saw him surface and after joining in with the round of applause headed back to the hostel. In the evening we went into town, which was very busy as yesterday had been the last day of Ramadan. The family that we were staying with (most hostels in the Balkans are essentially homestays - there are none of the sprawling backpacker complexes of western Europe or SE Asia) were Bosniaks - Bosnian Muslims. When we got back in the evening we arranged a tour for the next day with Miran, the owner, who was quite an amazing man. The war had cut short his training to be a lawyer and after it had finished (he didn’t say if he had fought as such) he had to open up his house as a hostel to support his family. He is a lovely guy and it is pretty heartbreaking to see that his family now have to sleep in one room while the rest are given over to travellers. We would get to know him even better tomorrow, but more on that later.

Stari Most at night.

I am extremely conscious of the fact that most of my pictures on this blog are of the war or the iconic bridge, despite the fact that I said that Mostar isn’t all about war. Tomorrow we will get into the countryside a bit and put the war to one side but I have made this a war based blog however because Mostar is the greatest anti-war symbol I have ever come across - more than even the battlefields of Flanders and Normandy for example. The reason for this is that you can still taste the war here in a way I have never felt before and it all happened in my life time, with anybody who is older than a teenager in Mostar with some experience or another. The fact the war was so recent helps you to put yourself in the same situation - times haven’t changed that much in the last 20 years or so and nor have the people, who aren’t any different to you and I. Watching the kids running about in the street, or the old ladies sitting outside their houses chatting, or the old men playing chess in the mosque, you can imagine that going back 20 years, these were the people who were running for cover from mortars or being buried as their family homes crumbled around them. The holes from shrapnel in the walls of any building, renovated or not, that was built before the war means that it doesn’t take much imagination to imagine the bullets flying while I, at the age of 2 was just starting my happy, stable and above all lucky life in the UK.

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“we laid eyes on Dubrovnik, which is complete beyond the habit of real cities, complete as a city on a coin”

As well as being one of the most attractive cities in the world, Dubrovnik (formerly known as the more graceful ‘Ragusa’) is also a major transport hub for the Adriatic Coast. It was one of the few places that offered buses to Mostar in Bosnia as opposed to buses direct to Sarajevo and having been last year I knew it would be worth coming back to. A the most expensive part of relatively expensive Croatia (by former Yugoslavian standards - it is still cheaper than Italy), the budget would only stretch to one night, but this seemed enough to cover the basics.

View from the bus over Dubrovnik

The bus from Budva left at 7.30am and took about four hours, an hour of which was spent at the border. I think that the fact that passports are checked and stamped at the border, where elsewhere you are essentially waved through, is a remnant of the former frontlines. We travelled up the famous 'Adriatic highway’ and the approach to Dubrovnik from high on the cliffs is one of the best views of the city, for those who don’t mind their photos being taken through the grubby bus windows. Accommodation in the old part of Dubrovnik is extremely expensive, with Lonely Planet suggesting that the more exclusive hotels would cost upwards of 500 pounds a night. Unwilling to part with three weeks’ worth of budget in a day, we settled for a guesthouse about half an hours’ walk from the old town, in the cliffs above the new town. By the time that we had arrived, checked in and got down to the old town it was about 1pm.

View from Dubrovnik walls

If Kotor and Budva are classed as walled towns, then the sheer scale of Dubrovnik should classify it as a walled city. The walls around it are over 2km long and are as high as 25m in some places. Unfortunately the price was pretty high too at 8 pounds each, which we forked out after an equally expensive lunch. Our trip around the walls was stopped before it had even started by an English couple who were getting married on one of the towers, using the narrow wall as an aisle. We could see all the guests sitting and waiting and actually saw most of the ceremony. It was a pretty amazing place to get married, but as it cut off the wall for tourists it resulted in a huge backlog of annoyed tourists and they had to rush everything a bit. With the walls open again we made our way slowly but surely up to the main tower where the views over the town and Adriatic are stunning. The heat is extremely intense though as there is nowhere to hide from the sun.

Rektor’s Palace, Dubrovnik

As with Kotor, the views are only half the story and we spent the rest of our afternoon getting lost in the maze of streets and squares, coming across the occasional square or fountain. The city is packed with tourists, particularly tour groups and Australian backpackers, but luckily there is enough room to find at least a couple of secluded spots. Dubrovnik was originally a Venetian port, but declared independence as a city state in the 14th century and remained a self governing republic until Napoleon arrived in 1806. The city’s motto is 'Libertas’ and the centre of government, the Rektor’s Palace is one of the most dramatic buildings. Last time we came we went into a photo exhibition that detailed the shelling of Dubrovnik by Yugoslav forces during the war, with the main assaults taking place around the days that I was born. There are several buildings that remain destroyed, but luckily weighty investment has resulted in major renovation work and those who don’t know about the shelling probably don’t even notice the difference. We looked in a few churches on the way out (now we are in Croatia we tend to be seeing Catholic rather than Orthadox churches) and then made our way back to the appartment. We had an early night as tomorrow morning we would be travelling to our last country - Bosnia Hercegovina.

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“a labyrinth of alleys and handkerchief-wide squares leads from beauty to beauty”

I visited Montenegro with my family last year but we were based in the town of Herceg Novi on the northern most point of the Adriatic Coast. As a result we didn’t actually visit Budva or Ulcinj, but we did visit the town of Kotor which was so impressive that I decided to go back with Ellie. We reached the town on one of the regular half hour buses from Budva, arriving at about 11am. We immediately set out for the citadel which sits in the cliff above the town with views over the Bay of Kotor. The fortress is 1300m above the town itself and is accessed by 1200 steps. As a result it is an extremely hot and sweaty journey but one which has the reward of what must be one of the best views in all of Europe at the top. The Bay of Kotor is often referred to as “Europe’s southern most fjord” but the UNESCO listed bay is actually a flooded river valley. For the geographers amongst you. Nonetheless the scene is a combination of a Scandinavian style fjord with a Mediterranean climate and a Venetian built town. It had taken us about an hour to get up so we made the most of the views and the shade at the castle before doing it all in reverse to get back down again.

St Tryphons cathedral, Kotor

A trip to Kotor would be worth it for the view from the citadel alone, but on top of the fantastic views are the sights of the old town itself. The walk down from the fortifications brought us out near St Tryphons cathedral, named after a saint who is revered by both the Orthadox and Catholic faiths. At another chuch, St Lukes, two altars were built so that it could be shared by both faiths with each faith taking it in turns to celebrate mass. Along with the churches there is an array of tiny squares, some only large enough for a single cafe. We stopped at one for a drink, only for me to remember that it was the exact place I had stopped last year, which was a strange coincidence considering that most residents of Kotor seem to have set up cafes. After a bit of pizza from a stall we walked back out of the main entrance, the Venetian sea gate, and got a bus back to Budva. We wanted one last swim and then to watch the Man United vs Arsenal game which, as supporters of both clubs respectively, we both had an interest in. After watching united score 8, I can say I was definitely the happier of the two of us as we went out for dinner that evening.

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“below us we could see Budva, a walled town on a round peninsula, a little white tortoise against the blue sea”

It was a two hour journey north from Ulcinj to the major tourist town of Budva, north up the coast on the cheap and reliable Montenegrin bus service. As Budva is renowned for its beaches I have to admit that we didn’t do anything on the first day apart from swimming and eating on our first day, from our base at the Hippo Hostel on the edge of town.

Sveti Stefan, Montenegro

The next day we started by getting a bus on a short 20 minute journey back down the coast to the exclusive resort of Sveti Stefan. The resort was one of the classiest in Europe during the Yugoslavian days with clients including Doris Day and Queen Elizabeth II, but seemed to be in a bit of a transition period when our Lonely Planet was published 3 years ago. As a result we didn’t know how much we would be able to see. The tiny island itself, connected to the mainland by a small narrow spit of land is amongst the most photographed places in the Balkans. Unfortunately when we arrived, as dramatic as it was, it was clear that it was the island itself, rather than any specific buildings on it that, that was the hotel and access was for clients only. To prove to you just how exclusive the whole place was, access to two of its beaches was available however it came at the price of 20 or 50 euros. Having planned to spend our entire morning there we found that, as mere mortals, there was only enough for half an hour of photo taking before we turned round and headed back to Budva.

Budva Old Town

We hadn’t done any sightseeing in Budva itself so we spent our afternoon there with longer than we had expected. The town is dominated by its large beach, covered with Russian and Ukranian sunbathers, but there is also a pretty walled old town that was built by the Venetians in their distinctively attractive style. We paid to enter the citadel which essentially just allowed us onto the highest section of walls, from which we were able to get some great photos of the town and the bay. A beach lies beside the castle walls and it is possible to swim here to get a sea view of the town. We spent the rest of our afternoon here before turning back to the hostel, having a meal at a typical Balkan grillhouse on the way back.

The sea against Budva walls

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We got up in Shkoder for our last ample Albanian breakfast at the Hotel Colosseo. Today we would be travelling from northern Albania to southern Montenegro. We had heard that furgons departed for Montenegro occasionally, however as we had not come across any we would be taking a taxi who was willing to complete the fifty-odd kilometre journey (including a stop at the border) for 25 euros. The journey to the border was mainly on country roads and as we were near the edge of the country we saw far more Hoxha bunkers than we had seen elsewhere. The border crossing was fairly painless and we were soon on our way to Ulcinj where we arrived at 1pm.

Ulcinj Bay

Ulcinj was, until the end of WW1, an Albanian city before the Montenegrins invaded and as a result the population is around 70% ethnic Albanian. The seaside town is popular with Albanians themselves as well as Europeans who would like to sample a bit of Albanian culture without taking a plunge into the country itself. It was also an infamous pirate grotto in times gone by. Unfortunately the taxi driver didn’t know his way around and as a result of a mix up with the driver whereby he interpreted my pronunciation of “plaza” as “plage”, he left the town and drove us several kilometres down the coast to a nearby beach. It was here that we were dropped by our Albanian taxi driver and had to swap him for a local who knew where our hostel (Stevo’s Guesthouse) was. This was all a bit of a waste of time and money, but we got there eventually.

Having checked in and got orientated we walked south down to the beach that we had ironically been dropped at earlier but hadn’t wanted to sit on with our rucksacks. The walk was longer than we expected and instead of passing the two headlands that I had pictured in my head, we ended up going around seven or eight - so needless to say we were very up for a swim when we got to the beach. The beach itself was relatively pleasant, however it was quite windy and the water was so shallow that it was a bit of a hike out to sea to get your knees wet - we felt pretty refreshed afterwards though. The walk back didn’t seem so bad because we were out of the heat of the day. After going out for a meal in the evening we explored Ulcinj itself. While it is not as famous or dramatic as towns further up the coast, the pretty little beach is still popular and crowded (hence our walk down the coast) and the old town on the cliffs is very picturesque, especially at night. We had only visited Ulcinj as a stop over on our way north from Albania, but as stop overs go it was very pleasant.

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Downtown Shkoder

Visiting the town of Shkoder was very much an after thought in the great scheme of the trip. Having visited Serbia, Montenegro and Croatia already on my travels, it was going to be a challenge to get from Albania or Macedonia, to Bosnia. The original plan was to get back from Albania to Skopje before getting an overnight bus through Serbia to Sarajevo. As it worked out however, we found that it is possible to get from northern Albania to southern Montenegro by taxi, meaning that I will be revisiting a lot of places I have already seen for the next week, but as I think Montenegro is one of the best places I have been, this isn’t really a hardship. It also should mean no more overnight buses. Shkoder is the main gateway from Albania to Montenegro as it is located by Lake Skada, a lake that is mainly Montenegrin but is named after Shkoder. To get from Berat to Shkoder we decided to test the furgon system out by getting a furgon from Berat to Tirana and (deciding we didn’t want to waste another night in Tirana) we aimed to get a connecting furgon to Shkoder. I think that it is proof of how good the furgon system is that the first furgon was kind enough to take us to the point where the second one left - and what was actually quite a complicated journey only took just over four hours. By the time we got to Shkoder though, where we are staying at the Hotel Collosseo, there was only enough time for a little explore of the pretty town centre before getting some dinner. The hotel is a four star place (though costs about 25 pounds each per night) as nowhere else was responding to the emails I sent out to make a booking. I’m sure that we will survive - though the advertised swimming pool hasn’t actually been completed yet and having the same thing happen in Vladivostok it is getting pretty annoying.

View from the castle

The next morning we got a taxi to the Rozafa Fortress above the town. The castle, originally built by the Illyrians but added to by Venetians and Ottomans, is named after a woman called Rozafa who is set to have been buried alive in the walls as an offering to the gods to make sure the castle would stand. Apparently she requested to have two holes drilled above her so that she could still breastfeed her children (this whole legend is one of the oddest I have ever come across). Shkodra stands at a real tactical spot, overlooking several major rivers and with the coast and Lake Skada nearby. The views from the castle were really good and the castle itself was in pretty good condition. Walking around it was an adventure in itself as it was fairly deserted and there were none of the ‘closed to the public’ areas you would find at English castles, which meant that we could explore any mysterious staircase that we felt like. The large amount of open wells and crumbling arches meant that we didn’t get TOO adventurous.

The Ottoman Bridge, Shkoder

It must have been one of the hottest days we have had so far and by the time it had got to midday it was unbearable in the heat, so we went and sat in our room and watched some of the pretty good action films that are on Albanian TV. When it had cooled down a bit we went back out and hailed another taxi (it turned out to be the same guy) and made our way to an old Ottoman bridge on the edge of town. Our driver can’t have exceeded about 15mph on the way, because he didn’t want us to be uncomfortable on the potholed roads. He drove a Mercedes and this brand of car is quite a talking point for travellers. There are more Mercs per person in Albania than in Germany itself - according to the Independent, three out of five cars in the country are Mercedes, but as many as 80% of these are thought to be stolen from the richer European countries. They are definitely everywhere and the amount of British number plates far exceeds the amount of British people that we have met. Anyway, back to the bridge, when we arrived we found that as scenic as it was, the water that flows under it has either dried up in the heat or has been diverted, leaving it as a bridge over a dry and rubbish filled valley. It has been the story of our Albanian experience really - a fair bit of potential as a tourist location, but (and it isn’t much of a surprise) in desperate need of some TLC.

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The public transport system in Albania may lack timetables, but what it loses in reliability it makes up in flexibility with the furgon system. Furgon is the Albanian word for van or minibus and is the main way that locals get around - essentially any vehicle, ranging in size from people carrier to bus, will stop and take people to the place that they are advertising in the front window. It is essentially a massive share taxi scheme and it works extremely well, as long as you can find out where the furgons to a certain city tend to hang out. To do this we got a taxi from the hostel to a random street corner where a lot of cars with ‘Berat’ in the window were. It cost us 500 leke each (about three pounds) for a two hour journey and was quick and surprisingly comfortable, despite the insane driving of Albanian motorists.

View from the hotel

We arrived in Berat at about 3pm. The town was designated as a 'museum town’ by the communist regime and is therefore one of a very rare breed in Albania that were maintained rather than flattened over the last half century. The old town is built into a hillside and was developed mainly by the Ottomans with a huge fort on the hill top. Before I came on this trip I would have no idea how to describe 'Ottoman architecture’, though Berat is definitely a prime example of the simple but extremely attractive and window dominated building style. The town has gained the nickname 'city of a thousand windows’. We stayed at the 'Castle Park Hotel’, located about 1.5km out of town in the hillside, surrounded by a forest. While Ellie was certain that staying at a castle in an Albanian forest would be a bit dodgy, it turned out to be really nice and was full of Italians who use Albania for a cheap holiday. The view over the new town is stunning, even if the new town itself is pretty ugly, as the area is extremely mountainous. We still had a nightbus hangover so took it easy at the hotel restaurant for our first day.

Rubbish at the castle

Starting fairly early to avoid the heat (I think I am right in saying that Berat is the furthest south we will be going in the European part of the trip), we walked down into town along a winding mountain road. We thought it would be wise to go up to the castle first to avoid the heat, but it took us so long to get up that it was about midday when we got in. The town is one of two Albanian UNESCO World Heritage Sites, but judging by the castle the money has gone towards saving it, rather than promoting it as a tourist attraction. There is a neighborhood inside the castle where locals live on cobbled streets in pleasant Ottoman style houses, driving battered old Mercedes. Unfortunately this community isn’t very considerate when it comes to rubbish disposal and it seems that they literally tip their bins over the castle walls - I have never seen such a badly cared for heritage site and it is a real shame. For the sake of balance I will show you both the good and the bad of the fortress - the views over the surrounding area is stunning, though the ongoing forest fire problem in the country was quite obvious, with lots of smoke coming from wooded areas on the valley sides. Having spent about two hours in the castle, and with mixed feelings about it, we headed back into the medieval and Ottoman parts of the town.

View from the castle

Berat - the city of a thousand windows

While there are a few museums in the town, we decided to just wander around the old parts, past mosques, old squares and pretty houses. Unfortunately we had quite a backlog of bookings and reservations to make for the next stage of the trip, so we had to spend a few hours in an internet cafe and by the time we had finished it was time to walk up to the hotel again. Berat was definitely worth visiting and with more time would be a great base for outdoor activities, but the town needs a lot of work to maintain its architectural assets.

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