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Am i nuts? 38 days 16 countries

Any recommendations/comments, can't miss sights/eats/beer are requested! Are there too many stops? Are there stops that are can't miss and missing from the list?

We're the type of vacationers that like to plod along to eat and drink, we prefer Mother Nature's sights (hence Plitvice Lakes!). LOL vacation life!

So I'm planning a trip for Sept/Oct 2020 and we're thinking of flying into Frankfurt or Munich. Please note that the days in the city will include travel to that city.
From inbound city to: Prague (5 days); Vienna (4 days); Bratislava (3 days); Budapest (5 days); Belgrade (3 days); Sofia ( 3days); as base to day trip to Plovdiv, Blenik; Sarajevo ( 2days); Mostar ( 2days); Dubrovnik ( 2days); Split( 2days); Plitvice ( 2days get there late afternoon & overnight); Zagreb( 2days); Ljublijana( 3days) as base to day trip to Bled, Bovec, and Divaca. And then back to Frankfurt/Munich. Other than Croatia and Slovenia, travel will be by train or bus. From what I've read so far, Croatia and Slovenia are super easy to drive.

Posted by
6788 posts

Are you nuts? Respectfully, yes, IMHO I think you are. With a pace like that, you'll need to plan some therapy afterwards to recover from your trip.

Consider: every time you pick up and move from one place to another, you burn a day. Yes, in some cases you might accomplish your move with a few hours left over (usually around/after dinner) but this is a crushing, punishing pace.

Every place you list "X" days in, subtract one day from your number. That's how much usable time you actually have there. So you get one day each in Sarajevo, Mostar, Dubrovnik, Split, Plitvice, Zagreb. Not to mention your "day trips" (you have three day trips planned from Ljublijana, and you only have 2 full days there...).

I think you have two many two-night stands. Just my opinion.

Posted by
1580 posts

alt939 - How about 8 Countries in 38 days ? Instead of 16 counties, make it 8. That's half. You would travel at a leisurely pace without being in such a rush plus you will save money on hotels and transportation.

Posted by
847 posts

I'm not following your math. I only count 10 countries.

It certainly is fast paced but not really crazy. The first four - Prague, Vienna, Bratislava and Budapest are about right. Could use an extra night perhaps but I've been to all of them and they are 'doable' in the amount of time you have. Obviously you need to subtract travel time so you effectively only have 4 days Prague, 3 Vienna, 2 Bratislava and 4 Budapest but that is a good, fast paced amount of time. I have not been to Belgrade, Sofia or Sarajevo - seems kind of rushed for that part. Two nights in Mostar is fine. Dubrovnik and Split with only one day each you will have to be very selective, won't be able to do any day trips (to very worthwhile, close by places), and your ratio of travel time to time 'there' is pretty skewed. Your Plitvice plan is fine. Zagreb and Ljublijana also rushed but probably not crazy. Any chance you can add a few days to the trip (no new places, just longer in some of the ones you already have).

Posted by
3996 posts

If your goal is mere bucket list travel, you will have succeeded by doing a trip like that.

Posted by
1219 posts

Why aren't you flying into Prague and out of Ljubljana? Also, that is a lot of moving around. Maybe consider giving up the more out of the way locations and do those on a different trip?

Posted by
27092 posts

The first few stops aren't bad, but then things begin to go downhill. As already noted, 2 days--assuming you really mean 2 nights--is really one day in town with maybe a few hours on your arrival day if the transportation isn't too gnarly. The central and eastern Balkans more or less wrote the book on gnarly transportation.

Budapest to Belgrade takes over 24 hours by train. In theory the trip can be done by bus in 6 hours; I haven't attempted to verify that. There are two interesting cities between Budapest and Sarajevo. If you trimmed the territory you're attempting to cover, these would be worth a stop: Szeged (Hungary) and Novi Sad (Serbia).

Belgrade to Sofia by train takes (according to the Deutsche Bahn) 3-1/2 days (not hours, days) and routes you through Zagreb, Budapest and Bucharest with multiple nearly-full-day layovers. Heck, that's a nice vacation by itself; just spend several days at each forced layover stop (well, maybe not in Bucharest)! Fortunately, a company called "Karat-S" runs a bus that's scheduled to take 7-1/2 hours. It runs once a day, not necessarily every day of the week. I don't know how reliable that schedule is, but it's obviously leagues ahead of the train option. There may be other bus companies running that route. I was relieved to find one, and I stopped looking at that point.

The Sofia-Sarajevo trip is again faster by bus, but you'd first have to return to Belgrade (only 5 hours in that direction??), and two connections are involved. That's risky. I don't know what the total travel time will be, but I'd expect at least 10 hours, and it could be much longer if the schedules don't jibe well.

I traveled by bus from Sofia to Podgorica, Montenegro. It took essentially two full (10-hour or so) days. I spent a night in Nis, Serbia. Trust me when I say that traveling by public transportation in that part of Europe requires an adventurous nature and flexibility. With a series of 2-night stops in front of you, flexibility is something you will not have.

Now, about your plans for Bulgaria: I am not familiar with Blenik. Is there a typo there? I've been to Plovdiv and Veliko Trnovo. I'd recommend both of those rather than Sofia. Plovdiv really deserves more time than what you'd have left over after spending 5 hours traveling from and back to Sofia.

Bulgaria is worth a lot more than 3 nights, and Romania is at least equally interesting. The first change I'd make to your itinerary is to postpone Bulgaria until a later trip. That will cut out probably 12+ hours of bus time. It's not enough, but it's a start toward making the latter part of your trip survivable.

The issue with Ljubljana has already been pointed out.

This itinerary looks very big-city-heavy to me, given that you say you prefer natural sights. I am a city person myself, but I would want to include some smaller cities rather than being so heavily focused on capitals--though I do like the places you've chosen, Bulgaria aside.

Posted by
7343 posts

In Slovenia, while you’re visiting Divaca, see the Skocjan Caves. And while you’re at it, venture to the western tip, the town of Piran.

Bulgaria has the absolutely best salads! Have some protein and beer/wine/tea with your meal, but the salad will be the centerpiece. Oh, and besides Bulgarian yogurt, don’t miss katak, even thicker!

Posted by
2261 posts

"We're the type of vacationers that like to plod along to eat and drink"

Plod: 1. to progress at a very slow steady rate.

I'm confused.

Posted by
7026 posts

I'm not following your math. I only count 10 countries

I think the OP might have been referring to 16 separate locations (cities, scenic areas), rather than countries.

In answer to the OP's question - no, you're not nuts, but you are overly ambitious and not entirely realistic.

Posted by
3044 posts

I have no idea why anyone would plan such a trip. With some exceptions (Mostar), everyone of these places should have 1 more day than is given. The time spend in transit will be 1/5 of the trip.

Driving in Croatia and Slovenia is generally easy. Roads are good, and due to geography, there aren't many choices. Parking is nuts in Zagreb, Split, Dubrovnik, so you need to have that set ahead of time. Sarajevo is one of the few places I have been where I would STRONGLY advise not driving as a non-native - look what happened to Franz Ferdinand and Sophie.

If you want to do this, cut 4 places from the list, and confine it to Slovenia, Croatia, Hungary, B-H, and Montenegro.

Note that some reports suggest that there is police harassment in B-H, where they stop rental vehicles and shake them down for bribes. I didn't have that experience in either Croatia or Slovenia.

Posted by
11174 posts

I will concur with with Nancy that calling you nuts may not be appropriate. However, by the end of the trip you outline, reconsideration of that assessment may be in order

Posted by
3044 posts

This summer, we took a 31 day trip. Athens (3), Nafplio (3), Budapest (4), Pecs (2), Zagreb (4), Beograd (2), Timisuara (4), Oradea (4), Budapest (1), Athens (1). We did roughly 1/2 the locations in almost the same number of days.

Posted by
11507 posts

No to give days o Prague unless you are planning a few day trips out .

Two days , do you mean two nights ?

Two nights is only only one full day .

This is a tour of train stations

Posted by
1556 posts

Go for it. Seems absolutely doable and is something that I would do.

Most folks out here want to travel slowly and see all the sights rather than just sample some of them. A lot of folks are also averse to packing and moving regularly. Additionally, lots of folks here also go on RS tours which I am fairly certain move at a lot faster pace

Posted by
4309 posts

Having done a 10 day tour of Tirana, Montenegro including Kotor, Dubrovnik, Split, Plitvice Lakes and Lake Bled, I can tell you that the sights will run together and you will have a difficult time remembering what you saw where(fortunately iPhone puts locations on photos). Your itinerary looks like FOMO to me. I think you will be so exhausted (mentally as well as physically) the last two weeks that it will be a blur. I would skip Split and some of the other locations in the Balkans-if you must go to all the countries, stick to one city per country and spend more days there. Avoid 2 day stops with an itinerary this long.

Posted by
11294 posts

"Additionally, lots of folks here also go on RS tours which I am fairly certain move at a lot faster pace"

Yes, but on an organized tour, someone else is taking care of all the logistics. The tour bus takes you directly from place to place, and the guide knows exactly how to get in and out of museums, restaurants, etc. You can see a lot in a short time because of this efficiency.

When you're traveling on your own, YOU have to figure all this out. And as Acraven has laid out, some of the places the OP is proposing to visit simply don't have easy connections when you're trying to figure it out on the fly - and you can't get accurate information about these connections ahead of time.

If the OP were proposing to see lots of places in a short time in Italy or Spain or France, where one can get bus and train schedules ahead of time and where transit is easy and frequent and reliable, that could work. But in Romania or Bulgaria or Bosnia-Herzegovina, it's much harder to do an "if it's Tuesday, this must be Belgium" itinerary - since there may be no bus on Tuesday that goes where you want to go!

Posted by
3517 posts

Additionally, lots of folks here also go on RS tours which I am fairly certain move at a lot faster pace

While the pace may be faster, the geographic acreage is a lot more compact. The goal with RS is to cover a lot in a short amount of time, of course. But as other poster noted, the process is a well tuned process fine tuned over 30 years of doing this. Having a private bus available at your beckoning also eliminates a lot of down time spent waiting for public transit as well.