Susie and I are leaving Gainesville, FL for the Balkans on Tuesday, August 21, 2018 and returning Tuesday, September 25, 2018. Max will be taking care of Bandit and staying in our house while we are away. We fly in and out of Bucharest, Romania and will also be renting a motorcycle in Bucharest. We are renting a 2018 BMW R1200GS which should be a lot of fun. My GS is a 2008 so this is an upgrade! Below is a map I captured from the GPS route I developed. We are considering this as a suggested route, we will alter the route along the way I'm sure. We plan on following the northern route first and then the southern route along the Adriatic during the last part of the trip. We're thinking that will give us a little warmer weather in the Julian Alps earlier in the trip and the tourists should be mostly gone along the coast later in September. The only hotel reservations we have are in Bucharest for our arrival and departures. Other than that we will wing it along the way.
You can track us through this link:
https://spotwalla.com/
Whenever we mention to people where we are going the first thing they say is "be safe", which we appreciate. We will be riding (safely) on the motorcycle and have been following the news very closely; the area is calm with no safety issues to speak of. I contacted the European Studies department at UF here in Gainesville who linked me to a PhD student in their program who is from Croatia. We exchanged emails and she gave some great advice on where to go and what to eat and indicated we should be very safe in our travels. I have also registered with the State Department to receive any safety alerts that may pop up during our trip. The entire Balkans region is categorized at a safety level I which is the safest, so we're not concerned and you shouldn't be either.
I'm going to do my best to update this blog daily during our trip. If I miss a day or two it will probably be due to lack of internet service, although I'm expecting the internet access to be pretty good. We also have Sprint service on our cell phones which allows us to use the local cell service network (at slow speeds) for no additional charge so that will also be nice. We are bringing our cell phones and wifi-enabled Kindles, no laptops.
T-minus 3 days until take off.
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