The ending of any vacation is always a sad affair. Sure, it's nice to return home after a long time on the road, but a little piece of me always dies when leaving a place that has brought me so much joy and adventure.

The Balkans turned out to be far better than I had expected. Although much of the region is still very synonymous with war and tragedy, the people are moving on, becoming part of a greater Europe from which they strayed during a painful bout with communism and an even more painful one with post-communism.

For the most part, tourists have stayed far away from the Balkans. The civil wars, riots, and ethnic cleansing that plagued the region during the 1990s were simply not good PR for the local tourism industry. Visitors are just now starting to trickle back to Croatia, but places like Kosovo, Bosnia, Montenegro, and Albania still evoke fear amongst outsiders and therefore continue to remain off the beaten path.

I'm happy to have been part of a short-lived era where so many UNESCO World Heritage Sites, scenic coastlines, rugged mountains, and warm, friendly people are simply being overlooked by the rest of the world. This won't last for long. Economies will improve, infrastructures will be built up, and wars will eventually be forgotten. Tourists will then invade en masse and alter the region in so many good and so many bad ways. But, for the moment, the Balkans remain unadulterated and true to themselves.

I hope in writing this 24-part series that I've been able to inspire others to follow suit, to take a chance and venture forth into lands where bullet holes and charred buildings outnumber McDonalds and Starbucks; where vacant beaches and soulful mountains are devoid of fancy resorts; where medieval walled cities prohibit cars from driving within; where cheese and bread are made by local farmers that very morning, and finally, where time itself seems mired in a peaceful eddy of Old World charm.

(Yesterday's Post: Final Stop, Gallbrunn, Austria)

The final stop of my very long Balkan Tour was the small town of Gallbrunn, Austria which is nowhere near the Balkans.

I had come here to visit my girlfriend's hometown and stayed to enjoy the charm of a small farming community about half an hour east of Vienna. Gallbrunn is the typical, small village populated with one church, one grocery store, and two pubs/restaurants. A small road cuts through the center and is lined on either side by traditional farmers' houses. Each has a large gateway to accommodate farm equipment and livestock. On either side of the gate are two wings of a home, one of which traditionally houses the parents, while the other houses the family of the eldest child. Such living arrangements have passed down through the generations and continue today.

Sometimes when you travel by the seat of your pants, things work out wonderfully. Other times, they don't.

I usually have a pretty good idea of the places I plan to visit on any given journey. But as my Balkan Odyssey was winding down, my girlfriend and I found ourselves in Split, Croatia wondering how we were going to get to Vienna where she had to do some business and I had to catch my flight home. I had some rough itineraries in my head, but as is often the case while traveling, we were woefully short of time.

So, we decided to fly part way to save some time and then take the train onwards, stopping somewhere along the route.

It seemed like a good plan, and a convenient one. We woke at 9:30, walked to the Croatian Airlines bus stop just down the street from our hotel, rode the bus to the airport, grabbed our 12:05 flight ($83 each), landed in Zagreb at 1 p.m., took the Croatian Airlines bus to the center of town, and grabbed a taxi to the train station where we immediately met two Irish girls who had left Split on the early morning train and had beaten us there. Damn!

Since we were heading north towards Austria, and my guidebooks only covered the Balkan countries, I asked to borrow their Lonely Planet Europe. After a quick perusal of the cities that lay between Zagreb and Vienna we settled on Koszeg, a small Hungarian town of 12,000 that promised to have a very nice, medieval town center (above photo).

I'm sorry to say but Split, Croatia was my second-least favorite town I visited on this trip (just edging out Shkodra, Albania).

Split is not a horrible place by any means, but it did take a while to warm up to. My girlfriend and I had arrived after a long bus trip from Mostar and were a bit taken back by all the hustle and bustle. Split is a large port town with enormous ferries pulling in and out at all hours. The bus station and train station are right next to the port making transfers easy but congestion a real nightmare.

We escaped as quickly as we could to a fine little hotel about a quarter mile from old town called Villa Ana (Vrh Lucac 16, Tel. 021/482-715) and then rushed off to what turned out to be the best Italian food we had all trip at Restaurant Šperun (Šperun 3, Tel. 021/346-999).

The main attraction in Split is yet another old town completely enclosed by thick stone walls. After visiting Dubrovnik and Kotor, I suppose I got a bit spoiled because Split's old town was a little disappointing. I can't exactly explain why, other than the fact that we visited shortly after seeing two of the best walled cities on this planet. Had we gone to Split first, I'm sure I would have like it a lot more. It just seemed a bit too modern and Disney-like and tourist-friendly.

I've learned over the course of my travels that those "trouble spots" which make the news often stay lodged in the public consciousness far longer than such spots actually remain troubled.

With this in mind, I was a little concerned about talking my girlfriend into detouring our travel plans to include a visit to Bosnia. So, I broached the topic by showing her some photos of Mostar similar to the one above and touting its beauty and history. It wasn't until a couple of days later, after she decided it might be a cool place to visit, that I let her know it was actually in Bosnia & Herzegovina.

Getting there proved quite easy. We grabbed the 3 p.m. Dubrovnik bus from Kotor, Montenegro and headed north along the fjord towards the Croatian border. The main bus line which connects the major coastal cities of Montenegro with Dubrovnik is a surprisingly comfortable, cheap, and convenient way to travel the region. We were a little concerned, however, because our connecting bus in Dubrovnik was schedule to leave at 5:15, just ten minutes after we were supposed to arrive. Unfortunately, we were 15 minutes late. As my girlfriend went running through the terminal to see if the bus was still there and I grabbed our stuff out of the baggage hold, I noticed our driver remove the Dubrovnik placard from the front of the bus and replace it with one that said Kotor. What luck; we were already on the bus!

So we jumped back on board and continued heading north along the beautiful Croatian coastline. Eventually we forked off and the bus headed inland through miles of fields and farmlands and across the Bosnia & Herzegovina border.

It was getting towards evening when the bus finally pulled into the dismal looking Mostar bus station. Since my girlfriend was still a little concerned about the whole Bosnia thing, and I felt a bit bad about dragging her here, I decided to check us into the nicest hotel in town, the four-star Hotel Bevanda.

It was all shiny and clean, but more than half a mile from the historic center. We ordered some food from the restaurant since we hadn't eaten all day and this is when I realized why I so often hate fancy hotels. Although the food was good, the hotel was soulless and without character; we could have been sitting in any hotel on this planet. We were insulated from the surrounding city and there was almost no way to tell where, in fact, we were.

After dinner we walked to the center and came across another hotel, one which had been highly recommended in Lonely Planet. Motel Kriva Cuprija was what a hotel should be like. It was built of stone, like the surrounding old town, and sat astride a narrow rushing river. The owner was a young, energetic local who had spent time in Germany working in the hotel industry (but apparently hadn't learned that "motel" doesn't have a very good connotation in English). His place was immaculate, centrally located, and charming--although the rooms were a little small. Fortunately there was a cancellation and we were able to move in the next morning.

After spending a few days in Dubrovnik, my girlfriend and I grabbed a 10:30 bus from the main station and headed south. Our destination was the city of Kotor, situated on Europe's southernmost fjord in neighboring Montenegro.

Tickets were just $10 each and the bus was very comfortable. I had taken this same route a few days earlier while traveling from Montenegro to Croatia, so I knew what to expect.

Just a few miles after passing the border, the road drops down to sea level where it meets an inlet of water coming in from the ocean. This is the beginning of the fjord. For the next two hours the road skirts the water's edge as it circumnavigates this enormous body of water. Large mountains rise up steeply on either side, creating the quintessential fjord-like image despite the contrary dry shrubs and warm weather one doesn't normally associate with fjords.

Kotor lies at the very furthest end of the fjord. Like Dubrovnik, it too is completely enclosed within thick stone walls and is also a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The main difference between the two towns is the size. Kotor is far smaller (less then 400 yards from the North Gate to the South Gate) and far more quaint than its neighbor to the north. Its cobblestone streets and stone houses are embraceable and even homey at times. Cars are not allowed within the city walls, nor would they even be able to fit through many of the narrow passageways. The other noticeable difference from Dubrvonik is the tourists; there are very few of them. They certainly visit, but not in the critical mass which often overwhelms Dubrovnik.

Even during communist times Dubrovnik was a hot destination for Western European vacationers and even some Americans. When communism fell, however, and war raged through the area, Croatia was shelled like everywhere else despite it having no military value whatsoever.

Naturally, this scared away tourists and continues to do so despite the war being long over. Although everyone is touting Dubrovnik as Europe's newest hot spot, it still hasn't reached its pre-war tourist numbers.

There's good reason why Dubrovnik was so often visited even though it was locked behind the Iron Curtain: it is an absolutely perfect walled city situated on an absolutely perfect expanse of water. Just check out the above screen capture from Google Earth.

In today's modern age, getting from Point A to Point B is often very easy. Of course, there are exceptions; such as when Point A is Ulcinj, Montenegro and Point B is the Dubrovnik airport where your girlfriend is flying into.

I sort of got the hint before embarking on my solo journey of Albania that if I wasn't at the Dubrovnik airport to meet my girlfriend when she flew in, the rest of my trip would be solo as well.

So, here was the challenge: I had to travel the entire length of Montenegro, cross the border into Croatia, and be standing at the arrival gate by 3 p.m.

There is a very convenient bus that travels this entire route but it left Ulcinj at 12:45 p.m. and arrived at Dubrovnik too late to get me to the airport on time. The lady at the ticket counter suggested I take the 7 a.m. bus that traveled a town called Igalo near the border. I figured I could easily find transport onwards from there.

So, I woke at 5:30 a.m., caught a taxi to the bus station and jumped in a minivan. The coastal journey north towards Croatia is a very nice drive with plenty of scenic ocean vistas and wonderful homes and chateaus tucked in the hillsides. My girlfriend and I were planning on coming back to Montenegro after spending a few days in Dubrovnik, so the journey gave me a chance to scout out possible locations to visit.

Igalo, my minivan's final stop, had appeared to be a small town right on the border when I consulted my map at the Ulcinj bus station. This was not true. The minivan dropped me off in front of a beachside hotel in Igalo which turned out to be about ten kilometers from the border. To make matters worse, there was no transport whatsoever to continue my journey.

Although technically still part of Serbia until the end of the year, quaint little Montenegro has a personality all its own. That would explain why the people of this region voted just a few months ago to secede from Serbia & Montenegro to become their own country.

Sandwiched between Croatia and Albania, Montenegro is easy to get to from popular Dubrovnik (more on that in a later post). I was coming from the south, however, and did so by paying 20 euros for an hour taxi ride from Shkodra, Albania to the coastal town of Ulcinj (cheaper minivans run the same route a couple of times a day).

My first impression of Ulcinj was rather disappointing. The taxi driver refused to take me into Old Town and dropped me off on Bulevar Maršala Tita, a busy thoroughfare lined with ugly little shops not so far from the bus station.

I grabbed my luggage, headed up the street and turned left at Ulitsa Skenderbeu. This street headed downhill to the bay and Old Town. It was less than half a mile, but the more I walked the nicer the street became. Restaurants began popping up, cafes were filled with people sipping drinks, travel agencies beckoned with exciting excursions, locals stopped me to ask if I needed accommodations, and tourist shops were hawking all manner of kitsch made from seas shells and rocks. After seeing so few tourists in Albania, it was strange to walk down a street whose storefronts were all dedicated to serving them.

My destination was a hotel in Old Town poised on a hilltop overlooking a perfect half-moon bay. That's it, the furthest building on the far left of the photograph. Dvori Balšica (fax 421 457 leart@cg.yu) cost an incredible 55 euros for a bedroom, spacious living room, kitchenette, bathroom and phenomenal ocean views.

Balkan Odyssey will continue but before moving on to Montenegro, I though I'd just wrap up the Albania segment with a few thoughts.

First off, I highly recommend this country. A few years ago it was almost impossible to travel here as a result of the craziness and crime which resulted after 50 years of isolation came undone with the collapse of communism. Things have settled down tremendously since then. I felt safe the whole time I was in the country (although caution must always be exercised no matter where you go) and was treated wonderfully by those I met. Not a whole lot of people speak English, but it is still relatively easy to get by.

I opted for public transport instead of renting a car and was pleased with the ease of doing so. The only hassle was occasionally waiting for the minivans to fill up so that they could leave. Of course the worst thing about not having a car is the inability to stop and check things out that look interesting off the side of the road. I still regret not having had the chance to photograph my favorite sign, "Puke 15 Kilometers" because we drove by it too fast in a minivan.

Travel hindsight is always 20/20 and if I could do the trip again, the perfect trip would be as follows:

Fly into Corfu, Greece and take the ferry over to Albania. I missed most of the south and the treasures it contains, such as the picturesque Albania Riviera on the Ionian Sea, and numerous old ancient ruins. Part of the reason I didn't go south was due to lots of unseasonable rain which would have certainly put a damper on the beach towns. In addition, to get to the south and back from Tirana is very time consuming; the ferry from Corfu drops you in the deep south so all that you need to do is head north with no backtracking whatsoever.

I would certainly hit Gjirokastra, which is also in the south. Everyone I met who visited this ancient town, the birthplace of Enver Hoxha and Ismail Kadare, loved it.

The next stop would be Berat, followed by Tirana.

From Tirana I would head directly to Shkodra to catch a four-wheel drive to Thethi. A few nights in this small mountain village would be followed by a hike over the mountains to Valbona. Then across the border to Prizren in Kosovo. After Prizren I'd head to Kukës. This is where I run into a problem. My last bit of travel would include the ferry across Lake Komani. I'm sure a couple of minivans would make the journey from Kukës, probably on some pretty rough dirt toads. Or, there might be a ferry/boat service running the length of Lake Fierza.

So, that's Albania. I guarantee there are many great sections of this mostly undiscovered land that I failed to discover on my journeys. This is great news for adventurous travelers, however, as it will still be a long time before Albania makes it off the beaten path--although I have heard recent rumors about a Club Med possibly being built in the Albanian Riviera...

Yesterday's Post: Bunker, Bunkers, Bunkers!
Tomorrow's Post: Ulcinj, Montenegro

It's impossible to speak about traveling through Albania without mentioning the bunkers.

The bunkers are the product of the demented, twisted mind of dictator Enver Hoxha who ruled the country from 1945 to 1981. During this time he broke off relations with the Soviet Union, China and every other socialist country on this planet, not to mention the sworn enemies of communism, the western world.

The xenophobic leader completely sealed off Albania from the outside world, a world the paranoid dictator was certain would invade one day; he just didn't know if it would be the communists or the capitalists.

Sometime there are disappointing travel days and this was one of them.

My goal was to get from Prizren, Kosovo, to Shkodra, Albania. To do so, I woke early and went to the Prizren bus station where I was hoping to grab a minivan across the border to Kukës. It was told, however, that minivans did not run that route, just shared taxis. I'm not sure if this was true, but since I couldn't find a minivan that was actually heading into Albania, I ended up grabbing a taxi (20 euros) with another traveler and headed west.

I transferred to a minivan in Kukës, Albania, a rather drab town on the shores of Lake Fierza-a reservoir created by the communists to power the Light of the Party Hydro-Electric plant. The communists sure loved their dopey industrial names.

The journey took almost four hours as we passed through numerous miles of sparsely populated mountains, some of which were simply covered in waist-high shrubbery while other sections were blanketed in amazing pine forests. About half way through the journey as we were approaching the town of Puka, I hit my highlight for the day. Apparently the town name is conjugated on road signs because we came across one which read, "Puke 15 Kilometers." Shortly thereafter, and I kid you not, some ten year old kid in the minivan lived up to the town's namesake and lost his lunch out the window of the minivan. For some strange reason, I was the only one who found this funny.

A few hours later, I was deposited on the side of the main highway to Tirana where I flagged down my last minivan for the day and headed northwest. By mid-afternoon I had reached my final destination.

Shkodra turned out to be my least favorite Albanian town. Although it is situated near Lake Shkodra, the picturesque expectations I had in my head were quickly erased by urban sprawl and decrepit buildings. The city has almost no charm or character and is cheapened by the malaise that affects so many border towns. Montenegro is still about 12 miles away, but Shkodra is usually the first stop for those crossing the border. Sadly, this is all that many tourists see of Albania. Visitors to Montenegro often make the quick jaunt over the border to check out Albania and my guess is that most come away rather disappointed. The above photograph looks across Lake Shkodra and into Montenegro. The city of Shkodra is just to the right of the shot.

After spending a few days in the mountains of northern Albania, it came time to leave the village of Valbona.

The best way to do so is to hike up the valley and over a mountain pass to the village of Thethi. This 7-hour hike is supposed to be amazing and should be done with a guide, as it is not clearly marked. Such trips can be arranged through Alfred at the bar/cabin in Valbona, or with the fine folks at Outdoor Albania in advance.

Unfortunately for myself, it started raining and I wasn't able to even attempt the trek. I didn't want to backtrack through Lake Komani again, no matter how beautiful it was, so I had to improvise. This is where it pays to have a guidebook that covers a larger area than where you initially planned to travel. I learned from my Lonely Planet Western Balkans that the closest place of interest was easy to get to by car was just across the border in Kosovo.

Kosovo?!?!

The name alone implies the same war-heavy weight and connotations of horror that places like Vietnam still do. But, according to the guidebook and a brief discussion with some Valbona locals, Kosovo is safe these days--providing one doesn't stray too far from marked paths where active land mines still lay.

So, I was up early in Valbona to catch the 6 a.m. minivan back to Bajram Curri. The otherwise pleasant drive was punctuated by a baby lamb, tied up and tossed in the back of the van that bleated in horror throughout the trip. This was a one-way journey for Little Bo Bleat; she was on her way to market in Bajram Curri.

In Bajram Curri I discovered that the next minivan to Gjakova, Kosovo wasn't leaving for about five hours so I hired a cab for the two-hour journey ($30) and headed east. Kosovo is technically in Serbia but the border is manned by UN troops. This was my first ever UN border crossing and other than barbed wire and those white UN vehicles you always see in photographs of really bad places, it was otherwise quite peaceful.

The best news for my travel weary bones, however, was that the highway crossing through the border had recently been paved and was the smoothest ride I had in all of Albania. Not too far beyond the border, I was dropped off at the Gjakova bus station where I caught a bus for two euros for the hour long trip to my final destination: Prizren.

Prizren turned out to be a pleasant surprise and one of the highlights of my trip. It's a wonderfully quaint town with cobblestone streets, ancient two-story homes, pedestrian walkways, mosques, and a sea of red-tiled homes.

Not many people get to northern Albania. I suppose it is off the beaten path in a country that itself is off the beaten path.

During communism, northern Albania marched to its own drum. It was somewhat cut off from the rest of the country by mountains and a rugged landscape, and entirely cut off from neighboring Kosovo and Montenegro by a tightly sealed border. The mountains, however, were supposed to be beautiful and I was therefore determined to visit.

This would not have been the case in the mid-1990s when the borders opened and the region became a very dangerous hotbed of smuggling and blood feuds. While the smuggling dangers have mostly disappeared today, the blood feuds have not. This ancient law of the land encourages the family of a murdered person to kill a relative of the murderer. It is a tit-for-tat, slippery slope of vigilantism that has carried through the generations. It's why the rest of Albania calls the northerners crazy. The good news is that blood feuds never involve foreigners; unless, of course, you happened to kill someone.

Before I left the states, I was able to dig up only a little information about it, but I did learn that the ferry ride across Albania's Lake Komani promised to be one of the most spectacular boat trips in the world.

Surprisingly, the remote lake, located high in the northern Albanian mountains, proved rather easy to get to. Every morning, minivans leave from just south of the Unknown Partisan statue in Tirana at the ungodly hour of 5:45 in the morning. Their destination is Bajram Curri, but they must take the ferry across Lake Komani in order to get there.

Early one morning, just as the sun was rising, I found myself climbing into one of these minivans. As the rest of Tirana was slowly waking up, we motored out of the city, through some rather rundown suburbs and into the countryside where only fields and bunkers greeted my eyes for the first couple of hours.

We eventually started to gain some altitude as the dirt road climbed into the mountains. Villages were scarce at this point, but occasionally I'd spy houses tucked into the fold of the hills, or random kids walking the family cows. The views improved, however, when we summited one hill and came upon a very long lake which we then spent the next hour driving high above on a narrow dirt road. There were no guard rails and plenty of steep cliffs to keep the journey exciting.

Prior to 1992, it was illegal to own a car in Albania. There were, of course, a few automobiles running around but these were either driven by high communist officials or municipal employees doing their job. No one actually owned the wheels they were driving.

In March 1992, a new democratic government was elected and the universal right to own a car was one of the many benefits which quickly emerged with the fall of communism. Or so you'd think. The problem was that after 52 years of outlawing car ownership, Albania had no traffic laws, no traffic lights, very few paved roads, and no system to issue drivers licenses. The country also had very corrupt border officials. Cars stolen in Western Europe were smuggled en mass across the border to feed the ravenous appetite Albanians suddenly displayed for a set of wheels. The result was chaos, if not predictable. It was as if 20,000 16-year olds were all given a pair of keys without any instruction whatsoever. From March to September of 1992, Tirana alone had 208 traffic fatalities, quickly bumping it up to the highest per capita in all of Europe.

Albania ranks pretty high on the Mercedes per capita list as well. The entire country is crawling with the German car--more so than anywhere I've ever seen in Germany. Of course, that may simply be due to the fact that an estimated 80-90% of the cars on the road in Albania were stolen. Most, probably from Germany.

It took many years to develop a traffic infrastructure and for drivers to begin to settle down. They're not there yet. My travels in Albania were peppered with mad drivers who swerved all over the roads, pounded through potholes and otherwise made me slightly nervous. Every time I passed a junkyard--and there were dozens of them just off the road crammed with every imaginable type of destroyed automobile--I felt the ominous presence of foreshadowing. If this were a movie, the ending would have involved a fiery crash and a shot of a junkyard as the credits roll.

I was one of the lucky ones, however. I had debated renting a car, but wisely chose to travel by public transport instead--leaving my life in the hands of those more experienced in the art of defensive Albanian driving. I'd still look out the window at recently totaled autos that were just pushed off the road and abandoned and get worried, but everything worked out fine in the end; there was no rolling of credits whatsoever.

Despite such worries, getting around Albania is surprisingly simple. Every city has an area reserved for minivans, or furgons. The furgon is the lifeblood of Albania, crisscrossing the country in every which direction. The destination is always written on a large placard sitting on the front window. If you can't find a card with the place you're looking for, just ask around. Everyone was always very happy to help me out in such situations.

The problem, however, is that the minivans usually don't depart until they are full. If you're the first to sit down, it might take a few hours before the driver has enough passengers to make the trip worthwhile. Occasionally, there are actual departure times as well. If such departures were too many hours away and I wasn't traveling very far, I could usually find a taxi to take me. I could travel 1-2 hours for 15-20 euros. The minivans, on the other hand, ran about $1 per hour of travel.

The minivans are surprisingly comfortable. They're certainly not luxurious, but they were efficient, cheap, and a great opportunity to meet the locals. On longer trips, the minivan will usually pull over and stop for a meal at a local café. Passengers tend to sit together at the same table so this is a great time to meet the other people in your van--the ones who shot the look-at-the-foreigner glances in your direction when you first climbed on board.

One of my more memorable experiences was sitting with five people in a café in the middle of nowhere on the way to Northern Albania, chowing down on warm soup, bread and cheese and trying to communicate with my new friends. I had gone from the odd foreigner sitting quietly in the back of the van to the center of an animated discussion which ended in some type of marriage proposal, I think, from a middle-aged woman in her fifties.

Did I already mention that traveling in Albania is fraught with danger?

Yesterday's Post: Berat, city of a Thousand Eyes
Tomorrow's Post: Lake Komani, Albania

Fortunately for mankind, someone many years ago had the foresight to designate the ancient town of Berat a "museum city." It was this designation which helped spare the town from city planners who ran amuck during communism tearing down churches and mosques.

Berat, located just three hours south of Tirana, has been inhabited for more than 4,000 years. Time has been kind to the town, showering it with beautiful ottoman houses, stone buildings, red tiled roofs, churches, mosques, cobblestone roads, and some very iconic, ever-so-expressive, windows. The amazing windows are what gives Berat is nickname: The City of a Thousand Eyes.

During communism, the buildings of Tirana, Albania, like all eastern European cities, were smothered in depressing gray monotones. Painting these buildings more cheerful colors after communism fell, however, would have been expensive and cash-strapped governments throughout the eastern bloc simply had more pressing issues on which to spend the little money they had in their coffers. Tirana proved to be an exception, thanks to Mayor Edi Rama. Mayor Rama was a professional artist who lived in Paris during the early 1990s plying his trade before returning to his native country to run for mayor. One of the first things he did upon being elected was to make repainting the city a top priority. And not just repainting it in basic, foundation colors, but in wild, uber-colorful mosaics and patterns as seen here.