I had been looking at the Balkans Rail trip for many years, and it turned out to be an excellent experience. I’m so glad we finally went; it was memorable from start to finish.
The standout highlight for me was Plitvice Lakes National Park in Croatia, while Montenegro was my favourite country overall, but we saw so many wonderful and interesting places. In fact, several places were an extra pleasant surprise, especially as my previous knowledge of the region was largely shaped by the Balkan Wars - Sarajevo was a prime example; also, with its link to the triggering of WWI. It was encouraging to see how much these countries have rebuilt and developed.
Travelling by rail made the trip especially rewarding. It gave us a unique opportunity to compare and contrast the different countries along the route, with each destination offering its own distinct character.
We had a brilliant group of 16, the tour leader, Lasar, was excellent - very helpful and did a good job trying to organise us all, and the itinerary was interesting and varied. The schedule is quite full-on, but that also helped make the trip feel incredibly rich; by the end, it felt as though we had been away for two months rather than two weeks!
One additional person of note was the bus driver, Dalibor, who drove us from Mostar to Bar. He proved to be not only a considerate, friendly, courteous and patient driver, but helped make the border crossings as smooth and efficient as possible and provided lots of local knowledge and information on the area we were driving through.
For me, the best city tours were in Ljubljana and Zagreb. Belgrade was good, but we were tired from the sleeper train, and it was hot, so we constantly spent time moving to the shade and not really being able to listen to the tour properly. One improvement would be worth considering paying a supplement to get an early check-in (we could have a coffee in a nice café while we waited – as we did for the tour anyway) so that people could get showered and rested, then do the tour in the later afternoon when it had started cooling down a bit.
One other improvement would be for Explore! to offer a rail connection option to Ljubljana at the start of the trip (I know the return from Pristina would currently be logistically very difficult but may also be an option for the future). This would help reduce the amount of flying required and make the journey feel more aligned with the spirit of the tour. For instance, the connection could include a morning Eurostar from London to Paris, a TGV connection to Stuttgart or Zurich and an overnight sleeper train to Ljubljana, with pick-up points in London, Paris, and Stuttgart, or Zurich.
