My end destination was always Greece. And I had originally planned on flying straight there. But before I booked a ticket, I researched immigration into Greece and found very quickly that there are several cases of Greece being one of the toughest countries to gain entry into as a non-EU citizen because of lazy borders in the past. As I would come to find out, the Greeks didn’t give a shite who I was or where I was coming from; I was American, and therefore, not a problem for them.
Regardless of your reasons, many people like the idea of trekking down the West coast of some of the Balkan countries and I’m here to tell you it is relatively easy and straight forward if you don’t mind long distance busses and a bit of spontaneity. There is NO direct route by bus or by train and international train services (as of time of publication) in Greece are stopped so taking a train (slow 3rd world type trains) may get you to the border but you will still have to bus it once you get to Greece. In addition, the train route generally follows a more inland route.
Below I will outline some general tips as well as my exact route down from Zadar, Croatia to Athens Greece, hugging the Adriatic Sea most of the way down.
General Tips
As it is in most places in Europe, buying bus tickets ahead of time or even finding online timetables is relatively impossible. However, even in the peak summer season of August, I only was bumped to a later bus once and never had to wait more than a couple of hours. The key to the bus situation is to stay flexible. In general, what I did is when I arrived at a bus station, I immediately went to the ticket counter to buy my ticket for the following day. This usually worked. Some places, tickets were only purchasable on board the bus, but most of the time, you can buy them a day ahead. That will guarantee you a seat on that bus, as they don’t generally oversell them.
Hostels are much the same way. Most of the people traveling in this area are backpackers and as such, there is a plethora of hostels to choose from. In addition, in most major-ish cities along the coast, you will step off the bus and instantly be greeted by people wishing to rent their apartments to you at (generally) a fraction what you would pay for a hostel. In my opinion, booking hostels ahead of time is not essential unless you’re just more comfortable operating that way.
My Route: Zadar to Athens
Leg 1: Zadar airport to Zadar bus terminal – about 20 minutes, local bus – 25Kn or about €3 – bus was waiting outside the arrivals area at the airport and simply market City. It was very obvious this was the only bus picking up at the airport.
Leg 2: Zadar to Split (or Dubrovnik) – 2.5 hours – private coach company – 126Kn (Croatian Kuna) or about €17 – From the Zadar bus station, there are several busses leaving early in the morning that go directly to Dubrovnik. Unfortunately, I arrived too late to catch any of those, so I instead was rerouted to Split first.
Leg 3: Split to Dubrovnik – 4 hours – private coach company – 116Kn or about €15 – From the Split bus station, there are several busses leaving all day with the last one leaving about 8:45 PM. Requires that you cross into Bosnia and then back out again as Croatia is split into two along the coast.
Leg 4: Dubrovnik to Tivat (or Kotor or Hzervig Novi) – 2 hours – 88Kn or about €12 (slightly more to Kotor and slightly less to Hzervig Novi) – bus picks up at the main station and drops you off at the bus stop in Tivat just before the airport.
Leg 5: Tivat to Budva – 1/2 hour – about €3 – buy ticket on board bus which comes about every 30 minutes, schedule is on the outside of the trailer posing as the ticket office.
Leg 6: Budva to Bar – 1 hour 20 minutes – €4.50
Leg 7: Bar to Ulcinj – 1 hour – €2.50
Leg 8: Ulcinj to Shköder – 1.5 hours – €5
Leg 9: Shköder to Tirana – 2 hours – €8 – at this point, our bus driver dropped us off far away from the bus station and there were some private vans for hire (shared cabs) sitting there. I have no idea if this is normal behavior or if our bus driver was incahoots with a couple taxi drivers, but I got in one of the vans with a French couple and we picked up about 4 more Albanians on the way to Tirana. I can’t imagine this leg of the journey is done in a better way, it was cheap and quick, plus our driver let us stop and buy a watermelon at one of the stands on the way.
Leg 10: Tirana to Athens – 14 hours – €30 – Ask your van driver where the private tour companies are. Chances are he will drop you off in front of the main street where you will see 5 or 6 private tourist offices offering tours to Greece, Croatia and a number of other places. If you go into one of these offices, they will set you up with one of the private coach companies shuttling to Athens. Our bus was a very nice coach bus with televisions. We stopped twice for a break, once in Albania at a roadside café serving food and the second time at the Greek border.
Total: 29.5 hours – €100
I got most of my inspiration and original travel ideas from www.balkanology.com which I HIGHLY recommend checking out if you’re looking to travel in this area. It’s an incredibly helpful site.