I wish I had written this post just after our first week in Slovenia. It’d be a bit more of “first impressions” post. As it is (spoiler), my opinion of Slovenia gets better every week (we’re into our 4th week here now).
I read over my notes so I’ll try to describe things as I felt then, as we rode from Ormož, on the Croatia border, west, south, and west through eastern Slovenia; without too much exaggeration, I hope.
The scenery was fairly flat, rolling farmland, “pretty but not incredible”.
alternatively titled: from the Sava to the Drava?
From my hotel with Jeff in Dubrovnik to a campsite near Zagreb took 14 hours — 11 hours of that were on the bus. Croatia isn’t such a small country. I went from the Balkans to Central Europe. The biggest change, however, was leaving Jeff behind in Dubrovnik. I met Ferda the next evening at the Zagreb airport. Here she is at Biciklopopravljaona in Zagreb.
Zagreb is on the large Hungarian plain which includes most (all?) of Hungary, Serbia’s Vojvodina, Romania’s Transylvania (“another country“, I said, leaving the Carpathians into Transylvania), northern Croatia, and extends into Slovenia as well. Culturally these areas are influenced by the Austro-Hungarians rather than the Ottomans. It’s obvious in the architecture.
Continue readingJeff and I spent five weeks in seven countries for our Balkans adventure. In one word: fantastic. Like I said after my first Balkans trip, I want to come back. We split up in Dubrovnik, but first we quickly crossed southern Bosnia and Hercegovina (Republika Srpska), spending one night in Trebinje.
There’s a small kind of cute old town,
Continue readingCorfu, Gjirokastër, Ohrid, Prizren — in each country Jeff and I had been to before Montenegro we had an exciting cultural destination as well as good scenery. Montenegro ended up being all about the mountains. We crossed the border at Kulla Pass and descended into Rožaje.
Just like in Greece, Albania, and North Macedonia, Jeff and I only spent about a week in Kosovo. Some of these countries are pretty small, but we were also cutting corners as our route connected UNESCO sites in each country (Corfu, Gjirokastër, Ohrid; respectively, in the countries I just mentioned). Here in Kosovo it was the Medieval Serbian Monasteries.
I didn’t really know anything about Kosovo before visiting except for the war (over 20 years ago) and the NATO intervention (ongoing). It was an unexpected gem for tourists. We were welcomed with this view at the border village of Glloboçica:
The climb had started before the border and continued after, but I was surprised how flat it was on the other side.
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