40 days in the Balkans (Please critique my itinerary)

Not sure if it’s advisable to visit Kyiv or Odessa these days.

Kenko, the OP stated that he thought the war would be over by July. So, “these days” is not relevant. BUT, if anyone wants to place a bet with me, the war will not be over by July. Having said that, if things are no worse in July than they are today or were when i went there in January (https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/trip-reports/kyiv), I would still go to Odesa and Kyiv. But don’t listen to me because you do these things on you own volition. Still be sure you buy the mandatory insurance and be sure you understand that the odds that your US or Trip Medical insurance are going to be any good are sort of low. https://visitukraine.today/?srsltid=AfmBOor_v32FXoD8lYpnxGE5RmbKl0T3Hr3rcLSDHZz-PUsq4xRlcQwL

Or, Kenko, did you mean Odessa, Texas? https://japan.mfa.gov.ua/en/news/73898-official-guidance-on-the-correct-spelling-and-usage-of-ukrainian-place-names

RickStevesFan, my opinion is based only on my interests.

Your trip misses all the good stuff in between the stops. And there is a lot of good stuff that you are missing. If you cut the trip destinations in half, but kept 40 days, I would love it. Don’t know your budget, but doing so much so fast, I would hire guides (they are cheap in that part of the world) that way you at least have someone to tell you what you are seeing as you go wizzzing past. You said the most was a 4-hour connection. I think you are off by a lot, especially if you are riding busses. But I could be wrong. I didn’t beat it to death just spot checked a few that looked “iffy”. You have a lot of transportation research to do for the busses.

Ljubljana (3 nights) havent been but sounds interesting for 2 nights
Zagreb (2 nights) a “very nice” city.
Belgrade (3 nights) Not one of my top 50 destinations. Just don’t like the vibe.
Sarajevo (3 nights) Great city, much more than 4 hours by car or bus.
Dubrovnik (2 nights) Great city, much, much more than 4 hours by car or bus.
Podgorica (2 nights) Terrible choice. Pick one of the costal towns.
Shkoder ( 2 nights) Havent been. Looks interesting
Prizren ( 2 nights) Great city, the quick answer is the bus is a very, very long trip, but I could be wrong.
Tirane (2 nights) Terrible choice with all that is good to see in Albania
Ohrid (2 nights) Another really sweet choice
Skopje (2 nights) Never been but on my list for the near future.
Sofia (3 nights) One of my favorites. Stay between the National Palace of Culture and St. Alexander Nevski Cathedral
Bucharest (3 nights) Not sure why you would fly. Lots interesting on the way. Stop for a night. Sort of an okay city. Stay in the Old Town area.
Chisinau (2 nights) Would do 3 nights Not sure why the flight. Plenty to see on the way, stop for a night
Odessa (2 nights) Getting to Odesa, when coming from Moldova do make sure the route does not cross through Transnistria even if the war is “over”. I Would do no less than 4 nights. Split it with a few nights in the center near the Opera house and two nights on the coast. Its like two destinations.
Kyiv (3 nights) Odesa to Kyiv is a lot more than 4 hours. I have an aquaintance that lives in Odesa and works a few days a week in Kyiv and she uses a BlaBla car to get back and forth. She says it faster and not much more expensive.
You terminate in Kyiv, well, I guess you are counting on air service out of Kyiv? Very optimistic. Count on a 20 hour train ride to the West. I Would do no less than 4 nights in Kyiv. Stay near Maidan so you can walk to a lot of what there is to see.

Plan B if not Ukraine would be Sofia to Istanbul. I made that drive once. Was very interesting. I used 5 or 6 days to do it. You could do it in 2 days but again, what a waste cause you miss all the good stuff.

Here is my version.
9 Nights in Croatia: Fly to Zagreb for two nights then spend 2 nights in Trogir and one 2 nights in Split before driving to Dubrovnik then 3 nights in Dubrovnik. I left out 2 nights for an island trip. I leave that to the island experts.
9 Nights in Montenegro: From Dubrovnik to Kotor for 2 nights with day trips to Perast and a boat tour. 2 nights in Budva after driving over the mountain. 2 nights at the Tara River Canyon after a stop at Ostrog Monastery. A rafting trip maybe, but at least the zip lines. 1 day in Stari Bar and 2 nights in Ulcinj
3 Nights in Serbia: Take the train from Bar to Belgrade. 3 nights in Belgrade with day trip to Novi Sad (hire a guide), and a day in Belgrade (that’s enough),
9 Nights in Bulgaria: Hire a guide to the Iron Gates and on to Vindin Bulgaria then see Sofia, Rila Monastery, Plovdiv, Veliko Tarnovo, Nessebar
9 Nights Romania: Arrive Bucharest from Nessebar (drive) and see Brasov, Sibu, Sighasora … oh heck, 9 days wont be enough but it’s a start.

That gets you to about 40 days. I know good guides and trip planners in most of those if you are interested.

Re Montenegro...Skip Podgorica and go to Kotor instead or Budva old town. Ostrog monastary is interesting.

Is this in addition to or in place of your trip to Switzerland and France?

If in addition to, this pace is going to be maybe too fast and long. So maybe in place of?

I assume this list is not in the order you would plan to visit. If it is, I feel like you could do it in a more efficient order - and maybe skip some places. I would look at going north to south and then head east and back north. But you just have so many moves that a logical progression may not exist.

Are you planning to drive or try for public transportation? That may determine the order and length. Remember that with only 2 nights, you have 1 full day in each place. I would definitely skip Podgorica unless you need it for transitioning. But on the other hand, are you on a “capitals” tour? That is as legit as any other reason to plan a trip, but you ARE missing some of the best parts of many of these countries.

A few of us have traveled in that area. I'm the third to say I think your schedule is over-optimistic. I assume you aren't renting a car, because I doubt any company would sign off on having its vehicle taken through all those countries. Your next step should be researching every transportation leg on bus company websites to figure out how long the trips will really be. I cut Sarajevo (which I really wanted to see) from my itinerary last year because it looked like an 8-hour bus ride from Belgrade. (I quite liked Belgrade, by the way, but I will agree that it is anti-EU and occasionally pretty blunt about it. Still, no one said anything to me.) There are a lot of mountains where you propose to travel, and bus trips through (or around) mountains tend to be very slow. Extremely scenic, but slow

As I traveled around Albania and North Macedonia (I didn't go to Kosovo), I ended up throwing a lot of money at taxi drivers, because bus trips a lot shorter than you are anticipating seemed problematic. The public transportation system in Albania, especially, is a mess. There are buses and there are little mini-vans also serving intercity routes. Not only is it difficult to find schedule information on the internet, it is also difficult even to find out where the bus station is located. Tirane has many bus stations (i.e., parking lots where buses gather). This adds to the challenges of a blitz trip such as you are planning to take. You will be surprised about how much of your intended sightseeing time has to be spent dealing with bus-transportation issues.

Podgorica should be replaced if you can, or the time there should be cut to one night if it's an essential connecting point.

I completely agree that you are missing many wonderful places in the countries you're touching on. It's a shame, I think, to spend so much time on buses and see so little, since you have insufficient time to cover the vast territory you're trying to include and will inevitably be spending a high percentage of you time sitting on buses. I'd suggest reducing the territory covered by at least half.

I want to warn you about a potential problem you could have if the Ukrainian leg of the trip has to be replaced: The Serbs think Kosovo is theirs. They do not like it when travelers enter Kosovo and then exit it rather than traveling on to Serbia. Your itinerary has you in Serbia before Kosovo, so you won't have a problem this year. (I have no idea whether having the record of entering and leaving Kosovo in your passport or on passport scans could cause a problem on a future trip; I've never read that it would be an issue.) But if you have to cut Ukraine end up wanting or needing to travel back to Serbia, I think there's a good change you'd be turned back at the border.

I crossed from Albania to Kosovo and back to Albania and never saw a border station, so that's one way.

I forgot to mention that several of those countries depend a lot on cash, and it can be very difficult to find an ATM that doesn't charge a high fee. If you have time to do so, I highly recommend setting up an account at a financial institution that will reimburse ATM fees if you use its ATM card. CapitalOne 360 accounts work that way, and I think Schwab accounts do as well. There are others.

Another option is to take a fair amount of cash (euros are a bit better than US dollars for this purpose) and use a well-priced currency -exchange booth to get local currency. The ILIRIA booth in Tirana charged me about 1%, which is close to what you end up paying if you find a fee-free ATM--which I think you will not be able to do in Tirana. You have to pay careful attention to posted rates, know the official rate (easily found via Google) and ask the exchange person exactly how many lev, lek, etc., you will receive for the amount you are handing over. I assume there are some excessively expensive exchange booths out there, and I wouldn't recommend doing this in western Europe. In the Balkans, it can be a smart financial move if you're stuck somewhere, surrounded by ATMs charging 3.5% - 7%. But you must ask questions before handing over your money.

You must also have a way to protect your stash of cash and keep it hidden. I used a moneybelt, and even so I wouldn't have been comfortable doing this if I had been staying in hostels. There was a limit to how much cash I was willing to take with me, even though I knew, from this forum and other internet resources, that I would be traveling in the land of expensive ATMs. I think I started out with about 500 euros, which made me nervous enough. Some of my hotels took credit cards, as did a good number of the restaurants. I don't believe any of the taxi drivers did, so that's where a lot of my cash went.

acraven has wisdom again.

Croatia, Slovenia, Montenegro use the Euro. I emphasized "use" cause Montenegro is not in the Euro Zone.

In the countries you list that I have visited since COVID, this was my impression, (but I am very conservative on the subject and dont mind going home with $15 in local currency in my pocket).

• BiH, The exchange rate is fixed at 1.95583 BAM to the EUR (okay 2 to 1) so you just have to watch for the service fee. But because its fixed, the Euro is more widely (pretty much universally) accepted. That means that the rate they charge you for the conversion in the restaurant will be the fixed number with maby a small fee. I had trouble keeping enough cash in my pocket in BiH, but I spent a lot of time out of Sarajevo (and you should too).
• Montenegro, cant recall being in a situation where I "needed" cash in regular business settings. But I hired a lot of private service providers and for that cash was needed.
• Croatia, "Western Europe" (excluding Germany LOL) on the subject.
  

So, BiH, Croatia and Montenegro you can get by on the Euro. Slovenia too. Then it starts to get wonky.

• Romania, I would carry some cash as there are a few times it comes in handy, but not a huge deal.
• Ukraine, cards worked fine for everything but I brought cash for small purchases. I think that was appreciated.
• Albania, ehhhh, no real problem with cards for the big stuff and things where tourists or local business people were around. Cash seemed to be appreciated so i carried a lot of cash.

Oh, by a lot. I mean $100 or less.

Mr E, you use a lot of private drivers in that part of Europe, don't you? Have they all been happy to accept payment by credit card? That wasn't my experience with taxis. Or buses for that matter.

I should have mentioned that in Albania, euro currency was fairly often accepted basically at par value. At the time of my trip, 100 lek was worth just about exactly 1 euro, which probably helped matters. The rate isn't fixed; I don't know what happened when the rate was 96.52 to the euro in early January. Today it's 98.07 to 1.

But having euro currency accepted isn't all that helpful in a country where, based on my experience, you can convert euro currency to Albanian currency very cheaply. The problem is carrying around a wad of currency of any stripe.

Mr E, you use a lot of private drivers in that part of Europe, don't
you? Have they all been happy to accept payment by credit card?

Private drivers being so reasonably priced is one of the beauties of the region. I can see so much and not have to worry about the road. The ones booked through an agency will take cards (generally pay the agency) but then there is the tip. From time to time a guide recommends one and those generally have to be cash. That’s was what I mean by private service providers. That and guides.

I should have mentioned that in Albania, euro currency was fairly
often accepted basically at par value.

I don’t come from a country that uses the Euro, so I really don’t have a lot and would have to convert dollars or forints to get Euro. So I try and use cards and the local currency out of ATMs and if I get clipped a bit in an ATM I brush it off. Compared to the cost of the trip a few dollars extra isn’t going to ruin my holiday.

The problem is carrying around a wad of currency of any stripe.

Exactly. If I have the equivalent of 100 dollars in my pocket it’s rare and a lot. I am not worried about theft or muggings or pickpockets, I am worried about dummy me loosing it when I pull my room key out of the pocket.

I guess my rule of thumb is, sure the odds of one thing or another may vary by where I am. But I stay flexible and go with the bumps. Some love the chalenge of "the best deal" in a monetary sense. I just look for the best deal in the enjoyment sense. So maybe I paid too high a fee, but I didnt go hunting either, I sat longer on the sidewalk finishing a beer. Worth it. But we are all different.

I haven't been to all the countries listed here, but just adding some suggestions with my favourite locations in each:

-Slovenia- Ljubljana is very nice but would also consider Lake Bled and Skocjan Caves (both of which can be done as a day trip).
-Croatia- if you have time to visit any islands, in my opinion the nicest ones are Korcula (beautiful old town) and Mljet (unspoiled natural scenery)- Dubrovnik is also amazing, and yes it's crowded- but there's a good reason so many people want to visit.
-Montenegro- I would stick to the coast- e.g. Kotor, Perast, Budva. Lake Skadar/Shkoder is nice but not sure there is enough for two days.
-Albania- would also consider visiting the coast or more southern Albania- the Roman ruins at Butrint are definitely worth a visit.
-Macedonia- agree with Ohrid and Skopje- I loved both. Ohrid is just stunning. Also recommend Mavrovo national park.
-Bulgaria- also really liked Sofia- and suggest getting into the mountains. The Rila Mountains aren't that far and you can visit Rila Monastery which I really enjoyed.
-Romania- I don't think there is enough to do in Bucharest for three days. We spent a few days in Transylvania which was beautiful, and easy to get to on the train (Brasov).

Haven't been to Bosnia, Moldova, Serbia, or Ukraine but they are all on the list (tho unfortunately Ukraine maybe not for some time). Good luck!

Albania, skip over the north and skip over this: https://youtu.be/v3nOU2YYc7c?si=NHKmF7AHZCKOnj_w