Serbia Travel Guide

Serbia is interesting but not very well connected to other countries via ground transportation. Rome2Rio.com may be helpful as a first step toward examining transportation links. However, you must ignore the specific information it provides on fares, travel times and frequencies--all often wildly off-base. Just keep drilling down till you find the name of the train or bus company Rome2Rio is suggesting. There will usually be a link to the company's website, where you can find a schedule in most cases. It's essential in the Balkans to verify train and especially bus schedules once you are on the ground. Be wary about planning trips by bus on Sundays and holidays, when service may be much less frequent.

Border-crossing buses run infrequently, so you need to take extea care when you need to cross a border and there's no rail service.

You'll find that both trains and buses in that area are slow by Western European standards, which may somewhat limit the amount of territory you can cover in 3 weeks. I estimated my progress at about 30 mph.

I haven't seen much of Serbia, but Belgrade and Novi Sad are worthwhile destinations (and quite different). I traveled to that area from Zagreb, Croatia, and then moved on to Timisoara, Romania. Those are both attractive places as well. I also traveled across southern Serbia as I moved from Sofia, Bulgaria to Podgorica, Montenegro. I broke that trip in Nis, Serbia, which didn't seem
too fabulous, and heaven knows Podgorica has nothing much to recommend it, but the scenery between Nis and Podgorica was wonderful. Montenegro is lovely, except for Podgorica.

Finally, I know there's a bus link from Szeged, Hungary, to Subotica, Serbia, because I day-tripped to Subotica in May to see the secessionist architecture.

Really, any of the neighboring countries I've mentioned would provide lots of great destinations, plus there's Bosnia-Hercegovina; it's just a matter of making the transporration cnnnections work. Bulgaria, Romaniaa and B-H seem a bit more exotic than Montenegro, and Montenegro is a bit less westernized than Croatia or Hungary.

By the time fall rolls around it will be getting cooler and probably rainier, so I'd try to do the trip as early in the fall as possible. The timing varies from year to year, but I experienced the beginning pf the change in the third week of September 2015.

Thank you, very helpful information. I was even looking at private transfers just now because of the train issues and crossing borders. We are traveling to Hungary (and Czech Rep.) this fall, which caused me to think more about Serbia, Bulgaria and Romania as possibilities. I’ve even researched private transfers as the trains appeared very slow. Thanks!

Those of us who enjoy travel in Eastern Europe are, in general, not well served by our "lord and savior" RS. From what I understand, this issue is primarily a financial one. For every sale of a Rick Steves' "Best of Bulgaria" guide book (which, by the way, doesn't exist even though there is a RS "Best of Bulgaria" tour) there would be 500 sales (maybe more) of the RS "France" book. Makes sense. For every tourist going to Sofia or Belgrade or Bucharest there are thousands going to Paris. Eastern European tourism pales in comparison with Western and Southern Europe. Of course, that makes going there all the better.
As a devotee of the RS "style" of travel, and the dedication I have for the detail of his travel guides, substitutes are so unfulfilling that they are hardly worth the bother. I'm not bad mouthing Lonely Planet, Bradt, Rough Guides, etc - they just don't address the traveler that I am.
However, RS can be helpful, at least indirectly: look at the "Best of Bulgaria" itinerary and pare it to your liking. Serbia is your neighbor to the west, Romania to the north, and, although the RS "Best of Eastern Europe" travel guide barely touches on Romania and Bulgaria (and not a word on Serbia) - and there are 2016 "Bulgaria" and "Romania" episodes of the RS "Best of Europe" programming - available to watch (for free) right here on the site.
Cameron Hewitt is your guy in the RS organization - he has particular interest in Eastern Europe. If ever there were to be an expansion of the RS "Best of Bulgaria" tour to make it a true "Best of Eastern Europe" tour (Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia etc.) - Cameron would dance in the streets.
So would I.
There are many excellent tour guides in this region - and, more so than anywhere I have been, they bring your visit and their country to life. If you wish, I can recommend guides in Belgrade and Bucharest, and the guide RS uses in his "Best of Bulgaria" tour
(Stefan) is amazing!
I hope some part of this is helpful.

I recommend using the Serbia Bradt Travel Guide by Laurence Mitchell (Dec 17, 2017 publish date). I used another Bradt guide for Malta and thought it was great, I also have a Romania book too. Lonely Planet is a decent book too, and National Geographic is great even is a few years out-of-date. My advice: expand your horizons way beyond RS books. You can find all the countries you mentioned on Amazon. Romania has an excellent tourism website, just Google it.

You may be over-worried about the trains. Just because they are slow doesn't mean they won't work, but you need time and flexibility on your side. Trains are relatively slow and underinvested in the US too, and quite slow in Sicily... but still they do the trick if you really need them. In the worst case, you can take a flight over if there is literally no connection but most capitals are connected. Because of the (historical) bad blood between Serbia and say Bosnia, it's not surprising why getting from Serbia to some points in Bosnia may not be as straightforward as one would like. You should have no issue with Romanian trains or main cities in Bulgaria.

Definitely go to Sarajevo. It is one of my favorites in the Bulkans.

I found reading blogs to be pretty helpful in planning my Balkan trips. And plan to take the bus as it is the best way to get around.

If Romania is under consideration, I recommend going to the website of the Retro Hostel in Cluj-Napoca (a town with a very pretty historic distict) and checking out the excursions. You don't have to stay at the hostel to take their excursions, but they can be tricky since they run on demand, rather than on a fixed schedule. I took the 2-day tour of Maramures and thought it was wonderful. In 2015 the total cost was about $125, which included one breakfast, one lunch and one dinner at our B&B--great home-grown and home-raised food. I believe there were just four of us on the tour. Maramures is pretty much impossible by public transportation.

Guides/drivers are inexpensive enough in Romania that you could probably arrange a private, multi-day tour at reasonable cost. I assume the same is true of Bulgaria, Serbia and Bosnia-Hercegovina, but Romania is perhaps ideal for that sort of thing because there are pockets of interesting rural sights in both the NE and NW sections of the country, with points of interest close together so you can make a lot of stops in a single day. In Maramures we had multiple beautiful wooden churches, carved gateways, a visit to a woodcarver, the Merry Cemetery, and a former secret-police prison that has been turned jnto a museum/memorial site. Plus pretty countryside and the very good food at the B&B. A longer tour would allow you to combine Maramures with Bukovina, known for painted monasteries.

Trains are really iffy in the eastern Balkans. During my 2015 trip I met a small GAP tour group on the train to Veliko Tarnovo. Their tour was supposed to be by train. They had already had one night train turn into an overnight bus ride, and there was a second long train ride that was goimg to be a bus trip instead, due a few days later. Not the tour company's fault; the planned trains were just not running.

Thank you all! Great information. I have found that I learn a lot by listening to podcasts, reading blogs, and looking at sites like Trip Advisor. I particularly appreciate the ideas you each have on ground transportation and potential Tours and places to visit. I do have a person I know, and stay in touch with who lives in Belgrade - a high school foreign student I went to school with some 38+ years ago.

I spent a few days in Belgrade a couple of years ago. "Interesting" happy I went but .... I understand that there are a lot of more interesting places like Novi Sad for instance and I love fishing and there are some good trout streams in the east of the country that i might try some day.

But if you are looking somethng to pair with Budapest, I make three trips a year to Budapest and always look for something to pair it with. I try and fly from the states into a country that has either rail or discount air service to Budapest.

Rail is tough because other than Vienna there isnt much outside of Budapest within my train tolerance time limit - Excpet Slovakia. What a stunningly beautiful country and you can train to all the good stuff.

Using the discount airlines, much of Eastern Europe is withing 1.5 hours and about $100 one way.. To see the options go to Google Flights and Enter:

From Budapest
To Eurrope
One Way
Non Stop only

Yea, its backwards but you can build your list and then search it in the other direction for schedules and costs. Keep in mind that the discount flights dont often run ever day of the week so you have to search the whole week and be flexible.

I checked one day and found (okay, don't get excited over the $11 tickets. By the time you pay all the charges and pay for a bag, figure $50 more). Budapest is the hub for Wizzair so the world is pretty open.

Sarajevo $11
Belgrade $121
Podgorica $11 (I love Montenegro and this is the air entry point. Going back in the spring after the thaw for flyfishing)
Tirana $11
Skopje $11
Sofia $20 (a favorite city/country)
Burgas $25 (great Black Sea resort town)
Bucharest $19 (Romania was fun but just hasn’t called me back yet)
Cluj-Napoca $17 (probably where I would go if I did return to Romania – to see the end of the country most tourists miss)
Krakow $75
Kiev $45 (now we’re talking…. I love Kyiv, Odesa, Lviv)

Want to see two places? With a little creativity that works too. Fly into Dubrovnik, then to Belgrade for a few days and from Belgrade to Budapest. Maybe $200 in airfare...

Thank you - excellent ideas!