Day 23: Budva-Shkodër (94 km, 1084 m ↑)
Day 24: Shkodër-Tirana (101 km, 263 m ↑)

On Saturday, we left Budva in Montenegro again. For the first thirty kilometres, we cycled along the coast and had – typically for these coastal roads – beautiful views, but a lot of traffic. After we had passed the town of Bar, we left the Adriatic coast behind us and continued into the mountains towards Albania.

Up on the plateau, there were roadworks over a few kilometres. Once we reached a crossing, one of the workers suggested we should take a side road instead. That implied a detour of a few kilometres, but a much nicer cycling experience.

After four hours of cycling, we reached the Albanian border. Again, we passed a long queue of cars before entering the line. The officers at the border control did not even want to see our passports and just waved us through.

In the evening, we had a nice dinner in a restaurant together with a German couple who stayed in the same house as us. And afterwards, we watched Albania beat Serbia in the European World Cup qualifiers. The Albanians were ecstatic.

Today, Sunday, we continued from Shkodër to Albania’s capital, Tirana. The traffic was pretty intense today. And when we left the main road, the surface was bad. So it was not always pleasant for cycling today. But the Albanians are very nice and friendly people. In Tirana, we will stay for two nights. Now we’re getting ready for dinner.

Day 21: Neum-Dubrovnik (63 km, 930 m ↑)
Day 22: Dubrovnik-Budva (94 km, 1193 m ↑)

After the rainy and stormy rest day in Neum, the sun came back on Monday. We had three nights in Neum in total. As the tourist season was over there, there was not much to do. Therefore, coming back to a tourist town, Dubrovnik, was nice.

The ride to Dubrovnik was great. We were cycling along the coast most of the time – either directly by the coast, or on an elevated road with amazing views.

The old town in Dubrovnik is beautiful, but also very touristy and expensive. We had an apartment on the hill, also with a great view, but located a bit away from the old town.

On Tuesday, when we reached Dubrovnik, we delivered our bikes to a local bicycle repair shop. I had some issues with my back tire and got a new one. The mechanic/magician also fixed my dynamo. All together cost 50 €, which was a fair deal.

Today, Friday, we left Dubrovnik and Croatia behind us and continued to Budva. We cycled along the coast first on a road which, unfortunately, had quite some traffic. Then we left the main road and continued on a more quiet road towards the border to Montenegro. We reached the border after forty kilometres. We thought first that the border control went smoothly, but that was just the Croatian control. After another two kilometres, we reached the Montenegrin control, and there was a massive queue, which took us approximately half an hour although we passed a lot of cars before we eventually sneaked into the queue.

We also took a ferry on the way today. And we made one detour because there was construction work and a lot of traffic on the main road we were supposed to take. The detour was not long, but involved some extra climbing, but it was much nicer to cycle than the dusty road we were on initially. Due to this detour and a later start today, we first reached Budva after six o’clock when dusk had already set in.

In Budva, we strolled through the old town and visited the citadel. It’s a tourist destination, but with significantly fewer tourists than in Dubrovnik. Tomorrow, we will leave Montenegro again and reach the sixth country on this trip, Albania. We met two English cyclists outside a supermarket today who are also on their way to Istanbul. So we might meet them again in Tirana in a few days.

Day 20: Imotski-Neum (95 km, 901 m ↑)

After many days in Croatia, we have reached our fourth country on this trip now, Bosnia and Herzegovina. The original plan was to cycle to Mostar yesterday, but when we studied the weather report the night before in Imotski and saw the storm warning with strong winds and heavy rainfall for Sunday, we decided to skip Mostar, go directly to Neum on Saturday and take a rest day there on Sunday to sit out the storm. Neum is located at the small spot on the map, where Bosnia has access to the Adriatic coast. We thought, it would be a touristy town, but it seems like the tourist season is all over, and the town is pretty dead.

The ride here was very beautiful though. We got up early in the morning, and it was chilly six degrees in Imotski. Therefore, we had a longer coffee break to start the day with and left when the sun had started to warm the air.

We reached the border to Bosnia already after six kilometres, leaving not only Croatia, but also the EU for the first time. We are going to go through four more non-EU-countries on our way – Montenegro, Albania, North Macedonia, and Turkey – in addition to Greece. Yesterday, our route crossed the border three times: Croatia to Bosnia, back to Croatia, and finally back to Bosnia again.

The scenery was beautiful. In the beginning, we crossed many small towns. At some point, we went through a village with a big wedding party. Later, we went passed the Kuti lake in the river Neretva delta, which is surrounded by mountains on all sides. One of these mountain passes, we had to pass to cross the border to Bosnia for the second time. Here, we made a little mistake: On the map, it looked like there was a shorter way to Neum than the one that Komoot (the app we use to plan our routes) suggested. After climbing up that pass (I reached it a bit before Udo), I met a semi-friendly officer at the border station explaining to me that this border crossing was only allowed for locals. So, we had to turn around, cycle down again, cycle up the other way and make the detour to take the other crossing.

As mentioned before, we can rest our legs today. I have cycled more than 1600 kilometres now, which is more than half the distance we need to cover to go to Istanbul. Our planned next tour goes to Dubrovnik, which is going to be our last stop in Croatia before continuing to Montenegro.

Day 19: Split-Imotski (83 km, 1477 m ↑)

We woke up this morning and thought that the wind we’ve had the last few days should have become less by this morning, but it was still blowing very strongly when we left Split. As we learned later in a café, this wind is call bura in Serbo-Croation or bora in English, and is typical for this region. While it was difficult to cycle against the wind at times today, it was not impossible. So we just took it a bit more slowly today and reached Imotski after three coffee breaks and five and a half hours of cycling.

The landscape was pretty nice today, but the weather was chilly and the sky mostly grey. So we did appreciate the coffee breaks extra much today to warm up in between and chat with the locals in the cafés. From the grandpa in café number two we learned that slivovitz is bad for your heart, while cognac is good. In café number three, in contrast, the barista was convinced that slivovitz is good, but you should have only three per day – one after breakfast, one after lunch, and one when you’re done with work or your bike trip.

Tomorrow, we were going to go to Mostar. But studying the weather forecast, we changed our plans today. On Sunday, they expect very strong winds and rain. Therefore, we will skip Mostar and go directly to Neum tomorrow and rest on Sunday.

Day 18: Knin-Split (110 km, 1168 m ↑)

After two days in the small town of Knin, it was nice to leave towards a bigger city again. Two days ago, on Tuesday, we left Knin and cycled back to the coast towards Split. This time, we had planned our route to follow the Trans Dinarica Cycle Route for parts of the stretch to Split, which was nice because we could cycle on small roads with very little traffic. The other side of the coin, of course, was that for several kilometres, there was no road at all. After following a gravel or dirt road for some kilometres, we reached a crossroad and could either go left or right, and then the two ways would meet again after some kilometres. We decided to take each our way – I went left and took the shorter way, which was unpaved, and Udo took the longer asphalt road. The result was that we arrived almost at the same time at the meeting point.

Later that day, we had to stop again due to the professional cycle race Cro Race. They had closed the road, and we had to wait 45 minutes until the race had passed.

Split is very nice, with a beautiful old town, but also very touristy and rather expensive. We have spent two days here now. Tomorrow, we will have our last night in Croatia before we cross the border to Bosnia.

This is the same video on Instagram:

Day 17: Gospic-Knin (107 km, 802 m ↑)

Yesterday, we somehow managed to leave the Sports Café in Gospic at a decent time, and this morning, we left at nine o’clock – one hour later than we normally do. There was one bakery that was open on Sundays in Gospic. So first thing we did was to make a stop there to get some croissants, a coffee, and a strudel to go. They have strudel everywhere in Slovenia and Balkan, and it’s a good energy source for during the day. Today I had apple strudel.

Our first fifty kilometres were pretty flat today. In addition, we had tailwind, and Udo started, to quote my English teacher, Mr. Mychajluk, as if he had a torpedo in his ass. So we had a very high pace to start with.

What stopped us after ten kilometres was that my rear brake did not work properly. I had already noticed that yesterday, but today I felt like I did not have any brake power at all. Actually, the brake has always been a problem with this bicycle. Now, fixing brakes isn’t something I had done before. But Udo said, we should try to fix it. We removed the brake from the frame, opened it up, and took out the brake pads. For some reason, there was no visible opening and closing movement of the pads. One cause was that the metal clip meant to keep the pads apart was bent. So, we straightened it. Another reason was that the pistons, which are supposed to push the pads together, were barely moving. So we adjusted the brake cable until the pistons started moving again. In the end, we screwed everything back together, and now my brake works better than it ever has.

There were hardly any towns or villages on the route today. Our first possible coffee break was after forty-five kilometres. Some time before, though, we passed a house with two plum-trees in the front yard which were full of plums. I got tempted to pick a few. Then the grandmother who lived there opened the window and said something in Serbo-Croatian – I don’t know what exactly, but apparently she wanted to say “go ahead and pick as many as you like.” I said “hvala, hvala” and filled my pockets with some very sweet and juicy plums.

The café we eventually reached was called “Café Rustik”, and rustic it was, but also cozy. We had two coffees each, and then came the only longer hill of today’s route. After we crossed the pass, we had a very long, almost twenty-five kilometres’ downhill stretch with a spectacular view. The remaining twenty or so kilometres to our destination, Knin, another small town, were relatively easy, just very windy at times. The house we are staying at in Knin looks shady from the outside – east-block big apartment block style – but the apartment inside is very modern and nice. We had a nice Italian dinner at restaurant La Rossa and look forward to a working day tomorrow.

Day 16: Sveti Juraj-Gospic (77 km, 1410 m ↑)

After one night in Sveti Juraj in probably the nices apartment we’ve stayed at so far, we continued this morning into the moutains. The Dinaric Alps stretch over more than 600 kilometres from Italy in the northwest through Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, and Kosovo to Albania in the southeast. Our planned route for today was not too long, but it had a very challenging climb right in the beginning with 1020 metres elevation gain. As a comparison, this is almost the same as the Tour de France climb to Alpe d’Huez with 1090 metres. I still had good power from yesterday’s Cevapcici, so Udo and I mastered this challenge, surprisingly, with relative ease. We were also rewarded by amazing views, both during the ascent and at the top.

Once, we reached the top, the terrain got more wavy. It was never flat, but the most challenging part was behind us. We stopped for one coffee break right after the first descent. And then we stopped for a schnitzel and burger break twenty kilometres before Gospic.

When we arrived in Gospic, the owner of the apartment, Danko, and his wife met us. Danko did not speak much English, but he had a lot on his heart to tell us. He was retired, but used to be a music teacher in Gospic. After a quick shower, we went to the supermarket to buy some supplies for tomorrow. And we went to the sports café because it had good Google reviews. And would you believe that the waitress Antonia used to be Danko’s student? I guess Gospic is a small town really.

Day 14: Vrbovsko-Rijeka (75 km, 1520 m ↑)
Day 15: Rijeka-Sveti Juraj (75 km, 1130 m ↑)

For some reason, I forgot to write a blog entry when we came to Rijeka. So, this is a combined post for cycling days 14 and 15.

Vrbovsko was a small nest. After the nice dinner we had at Nina’s fast food place the first night, we had to go to another restaurant on Monday, because Nina’s place is closed on Mondays. This demanded cycling down into the valley and then cycling up to Vrbovsko again after dinner. The coffee supply was very good though in Vrbovsko. There were several cafés, and the price was 1,20 € per coffee.

The weather forecast for Tuesday was bad, and it was pretty accurate, too. We left at half past seven, I think, when it was still dry. But around noon, it started raining – first a little, then a more and more. The route from Vrbovsko to Rijeka was pretty mountainous, but also picturesque. If it hadn’t been for the rain, it would have been a very nice cycling day.

Shortly before we arrived in Rijeka, our friend Freek messaged and told us that he was already there. Our apartment was very spacious and modern. There was a pizza restaurant in the same building at which we enjoyed dinner the first evening. The second evening, we went to a more traditional local restaurant. And we found some nice bars as well.

Wednesday and Thursday were working days. Today, Friday, Freek returned towards Germany, and Udo and I continued along the Adriatic coast southwards. The route to Sveti Juraj, Croatian for Saint George, was very scenic. We had a climb in the beginning and then a great view over the sea and the island Krk. And the last stretch was along the coast.

In Sveti Juraj, we also rented a very nice apartment. Our host Mario offered us a beer when we arrived which we gladly accepted and enjoyed on one of the two balconies with a great view over the sea. We even managed to go swimming this afternoon.

Now, we are back at the flat and just watched Schalke win against Fürth. And tomorrow, we will continue into the mountains towards Gospic.

Video from week 3: Ljubljana-Vrbovsko