Better late than never! After quite a few requests, here’s the second part of my backpacking adventure through the Balkans from back in July. If you missed the first part, you can check it out here.
After leaving Croatia, I traveled to the central Balkan countries: Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia.
Mostar
Since there were no trains from Split to Mostar, I took the bus instead.
In Mostar, I stayed at another Hostel called Taso’s House. It was a small hostel but the host made us discover the whole Herzegovina region and explained us a lot of things about his country, the complex political situation there and how it was to grow up in Mostar during the war.
I only stayed there for two nights, and I regret not staying a bit longer or visiting the genocide museum, which I’d heard great things about.
Sarajevo
The next stop on my trip was Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina. I booked a train ticket online, and this is what I got. It was slightly tricky to import into KDE Itinerary, but the train ride itself was very enjoyable. Interestingly, although the train has both first- and second-class coaches, all tickets are sold as second class, and passengers are free to sit in the first-class coaches — which I did. 😉
Sarajevo itself was beautiful, and I took the cable car up into the mountains to visit the old Winter Olympics park. I even ended up appearing on the city’s television YouTube channel as a sort of side quest, along with three Australians.
Belgrade
Afterward, I went to Serbia — more precisely, to the capital, Belgrade. I took a night bus, which turned out to be a bit stressful. I almost missed it because I didn’t have one euro in cash to pay a surprising platform fee to enter the bus station. Then, at the border around 2 a.m., I was the only one who had to go through a full luggage check.
In Belgrade itself, I didn’t do much. I spent a lot of time at the hostel talking with other travelers and petting the hostel cat. I was a bit shocked by the amount of military propaganda I saw everywhere in the city.
Niš
On my way to Bulgaria, I made a short stop in Niš, in southern Serbia. It’s one of the largest cities in the country and has a strong Turkish influence.
Sofia
My next stop was Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria. Since there are no longer any passenger trains running between Niš and Sofia, I took an old bus from Niš across the Serbian and Bulgarian countryside, but the ride was confortable.
I only stayed one day in Sofia and scrolled the city with some people I meet in my hostel.
I visited the ‘Red Flat’, which was a time capsule of how a flat looked during the end of the comunism time. This was quite a retro experience. I also ended up visiting more orthodox churches.
Istanbul
The last stop on my trip was Istanbul. I took the night train there, which turned out to be a bad experience — we ended up waiting four hours at the border, and the whole process was quite inefficient.
Istanbul itself was amazing. I had originally planned to stay only three days before heading back to Bucharest, but I found a cheap flight (€50 with luggage) back to Berlin, so I ended up staying a total of six days. I stayed at a hostel called Second Home Hostel, which turned out to be a really fun place. The staff were extremely friendly, I met a lot of amazing people there, and we went out partying almost every night.
I also meet Jon Worth who was working on his #CrossBorderRail project and was at the same time in Istanbul.
And now back to the reality but I am already looking forward to my next backpacking trip.
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