Last month I received an invitation to participate as a lecturer at a conference in the Macedonian town of Kruševo. I went there for the first time back in 2008 as a participant. Although it was not so often traveled through Albania, we decided to try that route, and we regretted driving to Kruševo many times.
The route went from Sarajevo to Podgorica, via Šćepan Polje, then after lunch in Ulcinj via the Sukobin border crossing, further through Albania, all the way to Kafasan, and then through the Macedonian hills and valleys. We thought that there was no worse road than the one between Sarajevo and Podgorica, but Albania dissuaded us from the very beginning; the bridge over Bojana in the city of Shkoder was wooden, and the entrance to Tirana looked more like macadam than asphalt.
A year later, I ventured with my friends on a trip to the south of Albania, and we traveled at an average of 30 km/h, because in some parts it was simply not possible to go faster, since only the old Roman road led between Vlora and Saranda. That road is now covered with asphalt, and part of it has been left and rebuilt in Dhërmi itself, where it serves as an attraction. The Skadar bridge on Bojana is now beautiful and functional, and the entrance to Tirana is a highway.
In the last 15 years, so much has happened that now it is a pleasure to drive through Albania, and you can get from Tirana to Pristina in three hours. It used to take ten hours to walk that way, and that was in fear of street gangs.
How connected are we?
After receiving the call, I started looking for a way to get to Kruševo. I used to always go by car, but since I'm going alone this time, a plane sounds more appealing to me. I found a flight from Sarajevo to Skopje and to my great surprise I saw that it was direct. The Greek company Aegean has introduced a flight between these two cities since October. By the way, Sarajevo and Skopje were not connected for years, so you flew via Vienna, Belgrade or even Istanbul. At one time, B&H Airlines had a flight with a stopover in Podgorica, but it was short-lived. All of this got me thinking to explore how connected we are to each other today.
In the region, there are flights from Belgrade to almost all major cities except Pristina, and there are also flights to Dubrovnik, Split and Banja Luka. From Sarajevo, there are flights to Belgrade, Zagreb and Skopje, while other companies are mostly focused on longer flights, so we are connected to almost the whole world via Istanbul. From Zagreb you can reach every capital city in the region except Ljubljana, which is too close, but this is not the case with Skopje and Ljubljana because their national companies, as well as the only one in Bosnia and Herzegovina, failed, and Wizz Air recently introduced a flight between these two cities. There are many other flights that are obviously of higher interest to certain countries, so in the summer Sarajevo is connected to many Arab destinations, and Belgrade to Russia, but also to China and the USA. The time when JAT had flights from every Yugoslav airport to almost every airport has obviously passed, so it is impossible to fly, for example, from Ohrid to Sarajevo or Maribor. It used to be all connected, but today it seems that there is no interest.
The railway has been 'in the planning' for years
After I bought a plane ticket to Skopje, I also rented a car through the Rental Cars website. Since it's October, it's significantly cheaper than usual, so I got an SUV for the price of a small car. My idea was to visit the Macedonian mountain roads, and maybe enter Kosovo, but after the latest events, I am not sure that I will embark on that adventure. It is possible that I will visit the route of Corridor 8, since I remember the Bulgarian film from 2008 that talks about that corridor. Namely, after years and years of closure between Bulgaria and Yugoslavia, the film deals with the reunification of families, when the Bulgarian minority was finally allowed to see their loved ones. Today, after 30 years, the road in that corridor is much better, but there is still no railway, although it is planned.
When I think about the connections in the former Yugoslavia, the territory that we now call the region, writing in lower case, I conclude that the railways have gone backwards, the flights have been completely changed, and the roads are much better. This is especially pronounced in Croatia, where trains are not exactly the most popular mode of transportation, while the roads are almost perfect. Of course, the downside of those highways is that they are among the most expensive in the world, but if vignettes were introduced, that would certainly not be the case.
Unlike Croatia, which has connected everything except the extreme south, and it will do so soon, Bosnia and Herzegovina is very slow in that field. Corridor 5C has been under construction for years, and the relevant minister says that it is unrealistic to expect completion before 2030. However, there are visible changes in Bosnia and Herzegovina, so Neum is connected to Mostar by a road that can be traveled much faster than before, and parts of the highway have somewhat shortened the journey to the north and south. When we add to that the neighboring Pelješac bridge, we can conclude that the journey to southern Dalmatia is shorter by more than an hour than before.
Unfortunately, the section between Doboj and Gradiška is completely unprofitable, and when it first opened, I used to pass there without meeting a single car. Highways and other infrastructure are already being built by foreigners because there are fewer and fewer local people. The Sarajevo railway was built by people from Nepal and Turkey, and when I spoke to the former, they seemed very satisfied. I was waiting for someone to pinch me to wake me up, but it wasn't like that; I guess we are also the west for someone.
Even though many of these shares are unprofitable, experts told Al Jazeera about this back in 2016, today it seems as if total road connectivity is smiling upon us. Bh. Corridor 5C will be built in one moment and rest on the Croatian highways between Zagreb and Lipovac, that is, Ploče and Split. The highway to Dubrovnik, although the most expensive section in the history of highways, will be built soon, without any economic or other logic. For the last 20 years there has been talk about that road, it was said that it would also go through Bosnia and Herzegovina, so at one point it was abandoned, but it seems that two billion euros will really be spent on something that can hardly be recovered. Dalmatia is quite empty in the off-season. Be that as it may, it will be nice to drive the bridges and tunnels between Ploče and Dubrovnik in the summer, and that at a time when BH. the highway will be finished.
In terms of infrastructure, we are the periphery of Europe
And how is it in the West? Since living in the Netherlands, I have witnessed huge investments in road infrastructure. The Dutch railways transport one and a half million passengers a day, the highway between Amsterdam and Utrecht has as many as five lanes, and the airlines are often fully booked.
Earlier I wrote about the frequency of flights between e.g. Amsterdam and London, and I felt for myself how nice it is to live in a city from which you can directly reach many parts of the world. Through neighboring Belgium and Germany, the roads are of slightly lower quality, but good enough to drive through them at 120 km/h or faster. However, in Germany there can be works that take several years, so I once saw how a kilometer of a bridge took two years to build. I posted that picture on Facebook, and people mostly made fun of me that it was a photomontage, while the serious ones claimed that it was normal because it was about a bridge. It is interesting how people often find reasonable reasons for something in other countries, while in their own they usually only criticize.
Other EU countries mostly built their road routes and did not neglect the railways, and when you compare e.g. compare the rail network in Europe with the US, on the European you see a lot of curves and a huge network, while in the US there are only a few major lines. We somehow look like a suburb on that map, so there are very few railway lines here.
However, there is every chance that by 2030, we will have all major cities in the region connected by highways, and rail and air traffic will be replaced by road traffic. The only question is whether people will have the money to pay for all that, or, like me when I was a student, they will avoid highways in order to save on tolls. If we were smart enough to enter Schengen together, we could brag far and wide, but there is a long way to go. First of all, we have to end the conflicts, so maybe soon we will enter the league of the smarter ones, those who abolished borders. The limits are definitely more in the heads. He who has traveled will travel with them and without them.
Bonus video:
