Road trip through Eastern Europe in November
 

My husband and I will go on a road trip starting from Italy and through Slovenia, Croatia and Serbia we will reach Bulgaria, where we will stay for a month or so. While in Bulgaria, we will visit Romania.
Has anyone got any tips for us? Not so much on sightseeing and the like, more like about the conditions of the roads, best area to enter each country, things to look out for (I heard nightmare stories about Serbian roads, for example, but we will drive mostly on motorways). I would love some practical tips, basically.

Both hubby and I hold the EU Covid Green Pass (in Italian, French and German) in paper form; our car will have winter tyres (+ chains in boot in case of need).

Thank you in advance to whoever will reply.

Re: Road trip through Eastern Europe in November
 

Romania really worth visiting , so much to see in Transylvania, full of history with generally good roads, some excellent hotels and great food. One irritant was town parking which when we were there relied on coin-slot meters and they needed loads of coins.
We drove with a hire car in Romania and when we wanted to travel into Bulgaria the hire company refused to let us use the existing car but downgraded it to a very old model as they considered the Bulgarians as "thieves" . Similar quality roads, border crossing slow while passports checked in great detail but no real hassles.

Re: Road trip through Eastern Europe in November
 

Thank you so much for your comment! We'll keep in mind what you wrote about some Romanians' attitude towards Bulgarians :omg_smile:

Re: Road trip through Eastern Europe in November
 

Roads and driving standards will get progressively worse the further east you go. When you enter Serbia you’ll get on a stretch of motorway with tons of potholes (unless this has been fixed in the meantime). You will find people speeding, cutting in etc. However if you’re in Italy now none of this should be too shocking.

Re: Road trip through Eastern Europe in November
 

Loafing Along is right, Romania (especially Transylvania and perhaps the Delta) are well worth a visit. As for driving there, as LA says, most the main roads are in decent condition, although there's not much motorway yet - but anyway, motorways are boring for roads trips so if you're not rushing, the regular roads probably give you a more interesting point of view. The driving can be a bit iffy at times as people here tend to like to overtake even for very little advantage, so you have to keep an eye open and don't assume the guy behind you won't try to overtake just because it's a blind bend on a foggy day :-) It's got better in the last ten years though. Passing through Romania from Transylvania through the Carpathians to the south region can be problematic at times as there are only a handful of routes through the mountains, mostly single-lane roads, so if you hit them when people are heading to/from the capital they get very congested - try to avoid travelling South to North on Friday evenings, Saturday late morning/afternoon, and North to South on Sunday afternoons. As for parking, most the big cities have carparks and for a lot of them you can pay by SMS - just look for the sign (usually near the coin payment machine). It's often a bit more expensive using the SMS option but less hassle and still pretty cheap.

Re: Road trip through Eastern Europe in November
 

How did everyone like Slovenia and Croatia? I heard only good things about and lots of fun things to see and activities to do like rafting, canyoning and climbing. Any advice would be appreciated?

Re: Road trip through Eastern Europe in November
 

And what nightmares about Serbian roads have you heard? I'm really interested...

Re: Road trip through Eastern Europe in November
 

+1 I had good experience driving between Belgrade and Timisoara (Romania), perhaps other roads are in worse condition ...