Ideas for a 2 month Balkan trip- need destinations off the beaten path

These are places you didn't list that I visited and enjoyed last year. I wouldn't claim that many of them are off the beaten path, but there weren't an awful lot of other Americans around in most of these places.

Croatia
Zadar (previously visited Dubrovnik, Split, Rab, Hvar--all very worthwhile)
Plitvice Lakes, especially after peak season. Hard to recommend in mid-summer unless you can get there really early; it was unbelievably crowded in late August.
On the Istrian Peninsula: Rovinj (touristy coastal town but worth it if you can find a hostel), Porec (also coastal and touristy but with a different architectural look), Vrsar (coastal but old town on hill, few tourists in evidence on Tuesday, Aug. 25), Motovun (historic interior town, gets some tourists), Groznjan (ditto).

Bulgaria
Nesebar and Sozopol (historic, pretty coastal towns, but density of European tourists is very high, as per Kotor; no similarity of appearance, however). I used Burgas as a base for the coast but didn't find it especially attractive.

Montenegro
Ulcinj: old town feels Turkish. A bit out-of-the-way, old town was dead on October 1, but a very nice stroll
Cetinje: old capital, not overwhelmed by tourists because it's not on the coast.
Herceg Novi: very old walled district, not a lot of tourists when I was there, but it was raining and October.
Budva: somewhat reminiscent of Kotor (which I liked slightly better). Touristy.
Lake Skadar: but probably best if you can spare the money for a short boat ride on the lake.

Serbia
The bus ride to Podgorica from Nis in southern Serbia was very dramatic. Nis itself is nice enough, but it felt rather prosperous. Might not be the easiest place to find inexpensive rooms.
Novi Sad, which I saw as a day-trip from Belgrade, has a very nice old city. It would be an attractive overnight stop.

You didn't mention Slovenia, but I liked it a lot, too: Ljubljana, Lake Bled, Lake Bohinj, Vintgar Gorge. The gorge is a paid-admission site, and it gets a lot of visitors. Also paid destinations: Skocjan Caves and the more developed Postojna Caves.

Edited to add additional material.

Most of Ukraine is off the beaten path. Especially western Ukraine which has Carpathian mountains is very picturesque and very much off the beaten path. If you are more into cities try Lviv (sometimes spelled Lvov), Odessa, Kiev.

Hi Sophie! (And hello community! Long fan and listener, but this is my first post!)

Your route so far sounds like what my husband and I are hoping to do, but with more lingering in places. We're starting in Georgia and trying to figure out whether to rush through Turkey by train or hop a flight from there to somewhere in the Balkans.

I'd love to know places along your route where you suggest sticking around longer for maybe 2 weeks at a time. We'll likely be AirBnBing instead of hostels, and no couchsurfing. The plan is to plant ourselves for a bit wherever we go so we can be out & about by day (hiking, biking, photography, and getting to know the locals) and do computer work at night. Cheap passenger trains will likely be our main mode of transport.

Any regions you felt less secure in? And did you do any trains around Turkey?

Hi,

If you want to see the historical sites/places I would suggest going back to Serbia to see Novi Sad, the biggest Habsburg fortress on the Danube, know also the Gibraltar on the Danube. Retrace the steps of Prinz Eugen (Eugene) in the campaign against the Turks starting in Zenta , ending at Karlowitz (both in Serbia.) In Vienna there is a largest statue/monument to that event.

If you thinking about Slovenia, go to Ljubljana (the old Laibach). Definitely the city to visit in the western Ukraine is Lviv, the former historical Habsburg city of Lemberg, a province capital and the former 4th largest city in the Empire). Then it was part of Poland, Lwow, until after 1945 it's part of the Ukraine.

For those of you thinking about Ukraine, you might view this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RibAQHeDia8 The entire documentary was still on Netflix last time I looked.

Regarding Ukraine, it is a very large country and will take time to travel. The train from the Hungarian or Romanian border to Lviv is about 5 - 6 hours. And Kiev is another 5 hour train on an Intercity route or 7 - 8 hours (or longer) on a regular route. Depending on where you will be in Romania, you may want to head to Odessa instead and then up to Kiev and then back over to Lviv. Going to Odessa would also allow you to pass through Moldova along the way, which is very much off the beaten path. Even with the long transit times, the trains are quite cheap, even for higher classes.

I enjoyed Lviv more than Kiev, but that was purely a personal preference. Lviv is a little more European in the way it carries itself -- it just felt a little cozier to me (perhaps it was because the sun was shining in Lviv but Kiev only had rain while I was there).

Ukraine is large, but no one said you had to do it all at once. Wizz Air flies from Budapest to Kyiv for under $100. Then the Ukraine Airlines connects Lviv and Odessa; also for under $100. With as little time as I have to travel on each trip I always weigh the places in-between with the end destinations. This summer its Kyiv and Odessa and the immediate region in-between for a week (if Odessa is still part of Ukraine when I get there); another trip will be Poland (because of flight availability and proximity) and Lviv and the Ukrainian Carpathians for a week.

I hadn't included the flight options (which I agree is the best way to get around Ukraine) only because the original poster is "on an incredibly tight budget." Even a cheap $100 flight is much more than their daily average. Even though I knew that it was a Texas sized country, it still surprised me how long it took to get somewhere.