With just days to the start of a new year, we decided that Shkodër might not be the most happening place in the world to ring it in and so we made the short journey southwards along the exceedingly bumpy E762 highway to the capital: Tirana. Brought under communist rule after the Second World War before decades of brutal governance under Albanian Voldemort Enver Hoxha, older Tiranas have witnessed more change in their municipality than most.
If there is one nation that is keener than any other to remind people that it is not a former member of the erstwhile country of Yugoslavia or, indeed, that it is not Slavic in any way, shape, or form then it is Albania. Proclaimed independent from the Ottoman Empire way back in 1912, the Albanian people are certainly proud of their rich and distinct history, separate from Europe for so long in their own Balkan bubble.
Google the least visited capital cities in Europe and this one is going to be right up there. Montenegro’s unheralded capital city Podgorica (pronounced pod-guh-reet-suh) attracts just 30,000 visitors yearly, less than the population of Llanelli (pronounced lla-nell-i), and it seems to have absolutely no interest in increasing that number.
When one mulls over festive getaway locations from which to ring in the big day, one might be forgiven for overlooking the diminutive Balkan nation of Montenegro. However, as the end of December neared, it is exactly where we found ourselves, in the Bay of Kotor to be precise, about ninety kilometres southeast of Dubrovnik.
Our race to escape Bosnian blizzards brought us back to the safe haven of the Dalmatian Coast and to the Pelješac peninsula in Croatia where a slower pace of life was extremely welcomed. Connected by a small land bridge and sharply jutting into the Adriatic, Pelješac has all the bays, beaches, and nauseatingly expensive bars one would expect of a Croatian island but with the ease of being connected to the mainland.
The more southerly region of Herzegovina, like so many others in the Balkans, has struggled to define its geographic, cultural, and historic borders over the years. Thankfully, for everyone concerned, this has never posed a problem as their northerly neighbours, Bosnia, don’t have any issues with the ambiguity.
As a child of the late 90s, the news stories I faintly remember Moira Stuart drily informing me of were the unstoppable rise of a generation-defining girl group, the sudden death of a beloved princess, a greying man in a suit “not having sexual relations with that woman” (with no clue what that meant), and of a thing so unspeakably terrible going on in a place called Bosnia.
Belgrade. Over one-and-a-half million people call this sprawling, baroque-brutalist metropolis home which comfortably makes it the largest city in the Western Balkans and one of the largest in South-eastern Europe.
If there is one country that influences, or at least attempts to influence, the Western Balkans more than any other it is Serbia. The beating heart of former Yugoslavia, it comprises many of the biggest cities of the erstwhile country as well as the largest ethnic population, not that that has caused any problems ever.
As signs of a frigid winter began to cast a dark shadow over the Western Balkans, our itinerary took us away from the comfort and relative warmth of the Adriatic coastline inland towards the centre of the country. I say centre, but when the country you’re describing is shaped as peculiarly as Croatia is, the centre could be pretty much anywhere.
