Western Balkans Berat, Albania — the cover star nobody saw coming Eight countries that hated being lumped together
Your guide to the eight Western Balkans: which country is for you, when to go, and how to get between them.
Western Balkans Berat, Albania — the cover star nobody saw coming Your guide to the eight Western Balkans: which country is for you, when to go, and how to get between them.
// at a glance
The Western Balkans are eight: Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, Kosovo, North Macedonia and Albania. They share a peninsula and not much else — two are in the EU, the rest are still in the waiting room — yet they travel together beautifully. The essentials:
| Country | Capital | Population | Currency | EU / Schengen | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Slovenia | Ljubljana | 2.1 M | euro | Yes | Alps, lakes, caves |
| Croatia | Zagreb | 3.9 M | euro | Yes | Islands, sailing, Venetian towns |
| Bosnia & Herzegovina | Sarajevo | 3.2 M | mark | No | Ottoman-Habsburg towns, history, wild rivers |
| Serbia | Belgrade | 6.6 M | dinar | No | Nightlife, rivers, kafanas |
| Montenegro | Podgorica | 0.6 M | euro | No | The bay, canyons, beaches |
| Kosovo | Pristina | 1.6 M | euro | No | Mountain treks, monasteries, off the radar |
| North Macedonia | Skopje | 1.8 M | denar | No | Lake Ohrid, Byzantine churches, mountains |
| Albania | Tirana | 2.8 M | lek | No | Riviera, Ottoman towns, mountains |
May–June and September. In July–August, stay near water or up high — coast, rivers, lakes, mountains — and the city, if roasting is your thing.
Among the cheapest in Europe; the Croatian coast in August is the exception.
One of the safest regions on the continent.
Four speak almost the same one; Slovene and Macedonian sit apart; Albanian is its own planet. English is everywhere in the cities.
Buses for almost everything, trains for almost nothing, a car for freedom.
// the long version
There’s something quietly hilarious about talking about “the Balkans” as if they were a single thing. Eight countries that spent much of the twentieth century insisting — occasionally with artillery — that they not, under any circumstances, be lumped in with the neighbours. And yet here they are, on the same page, sharing a map with a cordiality that on the ground would have cost them a treaty or two.
And then there’s Albania, which doesn’t even share a language with the neighbourhood — Albanian is a branch of the Indo-European tree that’s on speaking terms with no one — and which spent half a century walled off, falling out with its allies in strict order of arrival: first Yugoslavia, then the Soviet Union and, so as not to leave anyone out, China. The country that picked a fight with the entire communist bloc now shows up on this list like someone crashing a wedding they swear they were invited to. What’s left of all that paranoia is the bunkers: Enver Hoxha concreted the landscape with more pillboxes per square kilometre than anywhere else on earth — nobody agrees on how many, the count drifting somewhere between a hundred and seventy thousand and three-quarters of a million. The invasion never came; the bunkers, on the other hand, are still there, repurposed into beach bars, storage sheds and the occasional doghouse. What on earth is Albania doing here? Precisely what it does best: not fitting in, and being unforgettable all the same.
The truth is, the region has the generosity of a place that doesn’t need to sell itself: more history per square kilometre than any brochure could handle without a nervous breakdown. Each one plays its part without bothering to coordinate with the one next door. Bosnia changes empire from one street to the next without warning. Croatia knows it’s the pretty one in class and charges admission accordingly. Serbia can’t fathom why you’re talking so quietly and has already poured you another rakija. Montenegro, tiny, spends euros nobody in Frankfurt ever authorised. Slovenia is so tidy and alpine it occasionally forgets this is the Balkans at all. North Macedonia had to add a surname, in writing, before they’d let it into the room. And Kosovo, the newest on the list, is breaking in a brand-new country with the edges of its map still up for debate.
Eight different ways of not resembling the country next door. Which is why, for every cliché you pack in your suitcase, there’s a local ready to take it apart with a coffee that tastes of blessed tar and a one-liner there’s no arguing with.
// find your country
Five questions. A minute. We won’t pretend to know your soul — but we know the region, and we’ll point you at the country most likely to ruin you for the rest of Europe.
“Just tell me which one to go to first.”
Half our reader emails open with that line. Fair enough. The honest answer is “it depends what you want from a holiday” — which is insufferable, so we built this instead. There’s no wrong answer; there is a country that’s probably wrong for you, but we’ll be polite about it.
// or meet all eight
Pick one to dive in, or filter by what you’re actually after. Hover any card for the bit that never makes the brochure.
Beneath Herzegovina, Vjetrenica hides more life than any cave on Earth: 200-odd species, 40 first described right there, and a blind little creature locals call the “human fish.” Bosnia held the world record underground and never mentioned it.
Meet Bosnia →The necktie was invented here: 17th-century Croatian mercenaries wore them, the French copied them — cravate comes from croate. Half the world’s wardrobe owes them, and they’ve never said a word about it.
Meet Croatia →Nearly a third of the world’s frozen raspberries come from Serbia — the planet’s biggest exporter. That berry smoothie you had in Berlin was probably born in a field near Arilje.
Meet Serbia →The Tara Canyon is the deepest in Europe and the second deepest on Earth, behind only the Grand Canyon: 1,300 metres of rock wall. The river that carved it is clean enough to drink mid-raft. If you dare.
Meet Montenegro →Here they nod for “no” and shake their head for “yes” — the opposite of everything you’ve ever done. Expect to spend day one agreeing to things you meant to refuse. Welcome to Albania.
Meet Albania →It’s the only country in the world with the word “love” tucked inside its name: s-LOVE-nia. Slovenes mention this within three minutes of meeting you. They’ve earned it.
Meet Slovenia →Out on a volcanic peak sits Kokino: a 3,800-year-old megalithic observatory with stone thrones for tracking the sun and moon. NASA listed it beside Stonehenge — the fourth oldest on Earth. Macedonia was reading the sky before almost anyone.
Meet North Macedonia →Pristina has a Bill Clinton Boulevard, with a three-and-a-half-metre Bill Clinton waving from it, and a women’s boutique called “Hillary” round the corner. Kosovo says thank you with zero subtlety.
Meet Kosovo →// rabbit holes
There’s a pile of things about the Balkans that won’t fit on any itinerary and yet explain the place better than any monument — facts you won’t believe, obsessions nobody admits to, points of pride that have run for decades. You don’t need any of it to pack a bag. But once you start pulling the thread it’s too late: there goes the morning, and if you’re lucky the afternoon too.
Cutting off your nose to spite your face, promoted to a national virtue. A single word for the magnificent stubbornness of doing something purely because you were told not to. Fair warning: it explains more of the Balkans than it has any right to.
Fall insoon // the tall taleForget what you know about the Dutch: measure height by region and it’s the Dinarics that shoot up — Montenegro, Bosnia, Dalmatia. The same mountains that run through half the region turn out some of the tallest people on the planet, and nobody quite agrees why.
Fall insoon // the clean record96% of Bosnians swear they wash their hands after the loo: the highest rate on the continent, miles ahead of the Dutch on 50%. How far you trust a survey is your business — but behind the number sits a story that very much isn’t made up.
Fall insoon // the custody battleYou think of one as American, the other as “of Calcutta” — and it turns out the Balkans will fight you over both. Tesla was born a Serb in what’s now Croatia; Mother Teresa, an Albanian in what’s now North Macedonia. Around here, famous children aren’t shared. They’re claimed.
Fall insoon// the practical bit
Lovely, all of it — isn’t it? Now comes the part with timetables, borders and four different currencies: the least romantic bit, and exactly where it pays most to have someone local on your side. That’s what these two are for. One gets you from one country to the next; the other sorts out everything else.
How you actually get from one country to the next won’t show up on any flight search: ghost buses, ferries that only exist in summer, borders you cross twice, and trains more theoretical than real. The route finder tells you how to get from A to B for real — and how long it takes when the border’s in a good mood.
Find your route // the manualEight countries, four currencies, two kinds of border, and a heap of things nobody tells you until you’re already there. The handbook is the boring part made bearable: when to go, what to pack, how not to pay the tourist price, and which bit of paperwork you need to cross which border.
Open the handbook// resources
No filler: this is what you’ll end up booking for a trip out here, and where we book it ourselves. Some links are affiliate ones — they don’t cost you a penny more, and the day they did, we’d be the first to pull them. We name each thing because we’d use it, not because it pays better.
From family-run guesthouses to a flat with a view over a river you can’t pronounce. Find a place · Bookingaffiliate
Half the Balkans sits outside EU roaming; an eSIM installs at home and hooks onto the network the moment you land. Get an eSIM · Airaloaffiliate
Planning to cross borders? Ask about the surcharge before you sign — we explain it in the Handbook. Compare cars · Discover Carsaffiliate
Much of the region is outside the EU, and the European health card won’t cover you here; cover that does is worth having. Compare coveraffiliate
For the day you’d rather not think about logistics. Browse tours · GetYourGuideaffiliate
// quick questions
Yes — very. The wars ended nearly three decades ago, and today it’s one of the safest corners of Europe for travellers: low violent crime, little in the way of street theft. The one real caveat: a few very specific rural areas in Bosnia and Croatia still have minefields — marked and fenced, miles from any tourist route. Stick to marked paths in those areas and you’ll never see one.
For most Western passports, no: all eight countries allow short tourist stays without one. The only new thing is the EU’s border setup — the Entry/Exit System (EES) is already running, and the ETIAS authorisation arrives in late 2026 — and it only affects entering Croatia or Slovenia, the two Schengen members. For the current state of play, see the Handbook.
It’s some of the best value in Europe. Slovenia and Croatia are creeping towards EU prices, but Albania, North Macedonia, Kosovo and Bosnia stay properly cheap: a good coffee for under a euro, and dinners you’d pay triple for back west.
Yes — and it’s exactly what we’d suggest: they’re small and packed close together, and the borders cross by car or bus without much drama. How long each hop takes and how to string them together is what the route finder is for.
In the cities and among younger people, far more than you’d expect; in small villages it drops off, but a map, a smile and a few local words will get you a long way. Mind you, ‘thank you’ changes from mouth to mouth: hvala across much of the region (Slovenia included), blagodaram in North Macedonia, and faleminderit in Albania and Kosovo.
// one last thing
We opened this page warning you that these are eight countries that hate being lumped together. And yes, we’ve lumped them anyway — the site’s called Visiting the Balkans, we had to call it something — but by now it won’t wash: you know Sarajevo isn’t Ljubljana, that a coffee in Belgrade is nothing like one in Tirana, and that ‘the Balkans’ is just a handy word for not having to say eight names.
We write this from Spain, Switzerland and, of course, the Balkans — people from the region and people who go back every chance they get. It isn’t the outsider’s view from the brochure: it’s what we’d tell you over a drink. For travellers, not tourists. When you make up your mind — and you will — we’ll be right here.
Spain · Switzerland · the Balkans