If this is the first blog you read from me, you won' know it but in spring this year I wanted to explore the Baltic countries and within 10 days days my partner and I visited Budapest (Romania), Belgrade (Serbia), Pristina (Kosovo) and then went to Skopje before finishing off our trip in Sofia (Bulgaria). As always let's start off with a bit of history Skopje is the capital of North Macedonia which you might only remember as Macedonia prior but since there is a Greek city with the same name, the country had to adjust and came up with North Macedonia (geographically clever because yes, North Macedonia is further north in Europe than Greece). The country has been independent since 1991 after the breakup of Yugoslavia which used to be a region composed of several countries [insert here] While it is located in Europe and is therefore a European country, it's not part of the Schengen Area which means that you will need to have a passport to get there and your SIM card will not ...
This year I’m exploring the Balkan countries a bit more and decided to start in Bucharest and then heading over to Belgrade and from there head over to the Kosovo afterwards. For me, the main stereotype I heard is how poor this part of Europe is and I barely know anybody who was there yet either therefore I was eager to see how it is for myself. But let's start of with the basics as per usual: How to get to Pristina Pristina is the capital of the Kosovo. The Kosovo is a quite controversial country in Eastern Europe because it's not considered a country in all countries of the world. This goes back when the whole area was better known as Yugoslavia which are now all individual countries (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Slovenia). Kosovo was technically part of Serbia but declared its own independence back in 2008. Several hundred countries recognize it but Serbia for example doesn't. Because of that it's actually not as easy t...