Roadtripping, as good as it gets – The Balkans edition

Well, this route has been on my mind for more than three years – that is actually before I got my e28. Doing this trip with the car I love just makes it that more awesome and when I finally had the chance to make it with the right person on the passenger seat I didn’t hesitate for a second.

The main idea:

Starting from my home town – Sofia, Bulgaria, early in the morning.
Using one of the faster routes, through Serbia, Kosovo and Albania and driving as much highway as possible to get to the bay of Kotor, Montenegro – a drive that was supposed to be about 10 hours.

After two days there – head up to Sarajevo through the most turns and twists a road can ever have.

Next stop – the island of Hvar – with the help of a short ferry line – 30min/18 eur. from Drvenik

After two more days there – the ferry to Split – 1.5hr/58 eur, then up to Zadar by the coastline.

Last stop – Island of Krk – one night, have some rest and head back home through Zagreb and Beograd in one hop.

 

The tip of the iceberg in the form of a couple of photos:

Loads of rockets in Prishtina!

Yep, thats Bill Clinton in the capital.  

Stay, high voltage. I wouldn’t recomend driving in Prishtina without the obligatory insurance /15 eur for 10 days or so/. The traffic was the most chaotic I ever encountered and was the trickiest part of the 3k km drive.

Highway in Albania was mostly across the mountains and was quite spectacular. Also free.

Although Google doesn’t suggest crossing the border between Kosovo and Serbia is possible, we did it with no problem and had no hurdles across these countries whatsoever.

Arriving at Muo /in the Kotor bay/ we were greeted warmly by our hosts with freshly made real lemonade and local rakia to relieve the tension.

But first, let me take a selfie 😀

Well, sometimes it can be a bit romantic.
Some people prefer to travel by boat. Old town Kotor.

Loads of 30+ year old cars driven there, so your e28 wouldn’t stand out at all.

Kotor has loads of these too.

  

This exciting bicycle race took us to a hold for about 2 hours tho.

Sometimes a glass of wine can improve your focus on the important things in life.

Like having a dirty windscreen and а vivacious flower to compensate.

 

 Tiny lemon?  

After two days – bye bye Kotor and hello Sarajevo.
Funny thing – we forgot our documents hanging on a tree at the bay, realising that at the Bosnian border we rushed back only to find them on the exact same spot, inspite of all the people around. Whew! That made a hundred more kilometers of winding roads, I was fine with that untill we got in to Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Oh, and by the way we picked up two hitchikers from the swedish sun tanning national team, they really didn’t know where they were going, and when we said Sarajevo it took them less than a minute to say ‘why the hell not’. And they knew more bulgarian folklore songs than me…

Headed for the Bosnian border, quick snap time:

Soon after entering Bosnia:

So after a delay of about 4 hours, caused by a bicicle race and us being a bit ADHD we got in to the heart of Bosnia, and let me tell you – I’ve never seen so much turns, twists, tight corners and winding roads in my life, the terain was again exclusively mountains and as much as it was straining and perilous, this was a wicked drive ~35o km of it.

Our warm hearted hosts had this neat garden on the crowded hilltop, where you park and set any vehicle worries aside.

 

Sarajevo, what a colourfull city, full of life and stories. Never have I seen such a ‘mish-mash’.

That was definetly the most delicious bread I have ever tried.

  

Our swedish hitchikers … figuring out what’s next probably…

It is really hard to capture the essence of this city with words or a camera, its just useless.

 

 

 

Next stop was the island of Hvar. The route to it had one of the most breath taking sights, some parts between Sarajevo and Mostar really caused major goose bumps.

A quick ferry line from Drvenik

 

Took us to this …      

Hvar was really awesome, please excuse my lack of vivid words, but it was indeed top league! Magnificent local wine, all the goods you can do with lavender, aincent towns, cute art shops and exquisit food. Thanks for the warm memories.

Somewhere in the vicinity of Zadar, sunset and chill happend.

 

Unfortunately, due ot technical issues the photo coverage kinda ends here 😀
All went well up to the end – the machine handled excelently, people were always warm and helpfull, border crossings trouble free (if you say you are on a holiday maybe) and the sigts breathtaking.  Inspite of having no AC the july weather was no problem.
I am really happy that I managed to pull that off with my e28, thank you bavarian engineers!