Balkans - #38HT

In a sad goodbye my host hitchhiker we went to different directions. Now it's starting the stage number 3 of my trip. In this moment I was traveling just with Cris and again it changed a lot the experience that I would have just traveling by myself.

She was a really beginner in this style of trip. Hitchhiking and Couchsurfing weren't part of her vocabulary until few days earlier. Since the beginning she wasn't really excited about the idea to hitchhike and over time her mind was changing and in fact she started to enjoy the moments. But she wasn't really prepared for hard times.

The hard times that we had until now weren't really comfortable for her. My host hitchhiker and I could control our feelings and optimism more than her. Once now it was just both of us, this contrast would be equal and in this time

I lost the battle this day. The weather wasn't really good and we need to walk to take a bus and walk few kilometers until reach the highway. In the ending we opted for a conventional way to travel, by bus. We've found a bus with a attractive price and we skipped 200km traveling in the mountains. I have no clue how hard or easy it would be, but probably this trip in the mountains would give us the chance to see nice landscapes. 

Anyway we picked the bus going to Gras, our second stop in Austria. Again, it was chosen by location. The best route in the direction of the Balkans. Arriving the Gras I would be just 50km from the border of my first Balkan destination, in the case that you consider Slovenia as a Balkan country as well. This is because technically Balkans countries are countries located in the Balkan Peninsula. If you need to think about countries 100% located in this peninsula you'll think about: Bulgaria, Bosnia, Albania, Montenegro, Kosovo and Macedonia. 

For you see how the Danube is important, the separation of the Balkans is made in the point that the Danube River meets the Sava River.  From this point the geographic division starts in the area where is the source of the Sava river in Slovenia and keep following the river until it meets the Danube river in Belgrade, afterwards it follows the Danube crossing few countries until it meets the black sea in Romania.

Countries such as Croatia(54%), Italy("Trieste and Monfalcone" 0.1%), Romania(5%), Serbia(65%), Greece(80%), Turkey(3%) and Slovenia(25%) have part of the territory located in the Balkan peninsula. That's why I'm saying that I was just 50km from there.

Balkans for many people is associated with the Yugoslavian conflict that happened for several years. The view is that Balkans is define by its ethnic conflicts and failed states. The fact Slovenia is the richest country in the central Europe; it wouldn't fit in the conception of Balkans. 

Whatever the theory that you accept, it doesn't really matter; my experiences in the Balkans would start in one day. The area of Europe that I really wanted to go wouldn't be defined for history books or economic studies. It would be define by the places that I would visit, people that I would meet and the experiences that I would put in my backpack, the label of the regions or country's flags wouldn't really matter.

References:

https://www.economist.com/node/2206879
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balkans
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sava