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Greetings! 

So I have seen a lot of Europe already, but for my Big Trip I am looking forward to explore a part of the continent that I am less familiar with. My general plan for now is to travel through Central and Eastern Europe and especially the Western Balkans, starting from June 12 for about two weeks.

My general idea for now is to travel from The Netherlands to Prague, Warsaw, Budapest or Vienna first; possibly by taking a night train. I've visited those places (except for Warsaw) before, but I wouldn't mind revisiting for a bit. I also would definitely like to visit Slovenia and I am kinda considering Slovakia too. In terms of Balkans I’m eyeing Serbia, Bosnia, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Albania. I'm skipping Croatia because I've already been before (it was amazing btw). Same goes for Romania.

So any useful tips or recommendations? I've been browsing through Seat61 quite a bit, but would love to hear from you guys as well. I noticed there's some serious railworks going on in Serbia and Bosnia at the moment, so international train travel to those countries looks to be challenging. Also, I don't believe Albania is part of the network yet (they currently only have one domestic trainline in operation if I'm not mistaken). I guess I will need to rely on bus connections to cross borders there?

Hi there @Ronn. Since no answer yet given by our community members, you might be interested to scroll through our Central Europe + Balkans trip ideas' page. Some routes and train connections are not yet updated, so you also need to check the timetable from railway companies and our disruptions page

Have a nice day! :)

Now I see that you planned to do this already in June, so this reply is too late, sorry. Did you do the trip, and do you have a write-up somewhere here?

But anyway, this is what I was going to reply:

You should not expect too much from the trains available in the countries you mention. Especially in Albania passenger trains are practically nonexistent. Also, cross-border trains are rare or nonexistent. Also, it is highly questionable whether using Interrail for train trips there is worth it as plain tickets are cheap. For a recent trip around the Balkans with train, concentrating on investigating the cross-border train connections (or more like the lack of them), see the posts from May–June by Jon Worth at https://gruene.social/@jon .

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