Something to Declare

(Just Ask Neil Sedaka)

Upcoming Travels with Stan and Stef: The Balkans, September 9 – October 1, 2024

Talk about “West Meets East!” The Balkans is where the Ottoman Empire faced off against western Europe, and it was really not clear who would prevail. The Turks were literally at the gates of Vienna until late in the 17th century. This is a place where European countries have had majority-Muslim populations. Where unifications and confederations have been established and fallen apart. Where inter- and intra-cultural conflicts have been so profound that the entire area has been called “The Powder Keg of Europe.” Where languages occasionally do without vowels (viz., Mount Srď).

The history of the Balkans has been, if nothing else, “interesting” – – in the sense of the ironic and apocryphal Chinese curse (“May you live in interesting times”). Ask Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. (He was assassinated in Sarajevo in 1914 by a Bosnian Serb nationalist, precipitating the First World War.)

The Balkan Peninsula is most of eastern Europe south of Hungary and north of Greece, and between the Adriatic and Black Seas:

For this trip, we’re talking about most of the “Western Balkan” countries, the ones that border on the Adriatic: Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Montenegro and Albania.

With the exception of Albania, these countries were part of the former Yugoslavia (1918 – 1992). This was the entity created from the wreckage of parts of the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires after the First World War. Yugoslavia fell apart in the 1990s, and these countries went their separate ways, which led to some “interesting” political developments in the 1990s (remember the “Srebrenica massacre?” and “ethnic cleansing?”). This sort of conflictual splitting-up goes back over a century, and has given rise to the expression “Balkanization.”

I leave on September 9 for a “pre-trip” extension tour of Albania. Stef flies to Dubrovnik, Croatia on September 13. This is where we meet up for the main tour as a group of sixteen travelers, “Crossroads of the Adriatic,” with Overseas Adventure Travel (OAT).

Buckle your seatbelts!