Travel Report Balkans 2023
Participating Menbers: Valentin Künzler, Jan Denk, Milan Binder
Countries: Croatia, Bosia & Herzegowina, Montenegro, Serbia
Duration: 7 days
Equipment: Tents, Hammocks, Packrafts
Start: Munich 26 may 2023 Belgrade End: 02 june 2023
Tripgoal: Crossig the Durmitor Nationalpark with our packrafts
Author: Milan Binder
Biggest issue: Not drowning in cold water with currents
Number of: (random fact)
cars hitchhiked: 3
couches surfed:
number of night without a matress:
number of days slept outside: 5
number of oatmeal breakfasts: 5
number of shitty meals: 4
number of scammers: 1
number of laws broken: 6
number of consecutive days without shower: 4
heaviest/lightest backpack: heaviest Milan, lightest Jan
number of police encouters: 1
number of passport stamps: 3
number of police checkpoints: 0
number of borders crossed: 6
A short but adventurous trip began with a casual 17-hour FlixBus ride from Munich to Split. The morning after our arrival in Split, we explored the city for a few hours and then headed to Bosnia, even hitchhiking the last stretch to Mostar amidst quite intriguing police encounters. Mostar, a captivating town divided by religion and a river, was a fascinating place to explore.
From Mostar, we drove to Montenegro, where the most thrilling part of our journey began. Our goal was to head north and cross the Durmitor National Park on our little pack rafts. Podgorica, the capital, was a remarkable location to check out and sleep in abandoned buildings. After a short trip to the coast and just 2 hours of beach time, we made it to the north via the stunning Montenegrin Railway, which offers some of the most breathtaking scenery in Europe. Our initial plan was to take a cargo train, but due to unknown schedules and time pressure, we opted for a passenger train instead and reached Mojkovac by evening. This turned out to be a blessing because the Durmitor river led us into the national park from there.
After a few days in the national park, we faced the disappointing realization that we couldn’t make it through on the river because the water level was too high, and the current was too strong. Even a former kayak champion advised against it. We tried it anyway, a bit outside of the park with civilization in reachable distance, but it turned out not to be a great idea as two of us quickly fell into the water. It was indeed too perilous and probably still too early in the year for such an attempt. We stayed for some time in the area because it was incredibly beautiful and camped close to Mojkovac with an extraordinary camp setup.
In the end, we discovered that there is a sleeper train from Montenegro to Serbia, so we took it. It turned out to be one of the most challenging nights on a train because no conductor was willing to sell us tickets; they either were disgusted with us or they didn’t know if the train would even make it. So, we ended up getting kicked from one wagon to another until we just waited in between, and finally around 2 AM, we were allowed to stay and purchase tickets to Belgrade.
The next morning, we finally arrived in Belgrade and allowed ourselves to shower in a cheap Airbnb for the first time in 5 days. We checked out Belgrade and got kicked off by security guards out of park benches for no reason, I guess we were quite worn out by that time, haha. The next morning, Jan and Vali flew back to Germany, and Milan flew to Rome. It was a quite short but really intense trip with a lot of great impressions and especially the realization that the beauty of Montenegro has still not been discovered by the mass tourism industry.