After a few hours sleep, Cricket and I were UP AN’ AT ‘EM for the 0522 from Bazau to Bucharest, arriving in good time for the early bus to Sofia in Bulgaria. We crossed the Danube (again!) without too much faffing about and by lunchtime we were in the capital.

Hello Bulgaria! You have wonderful and famous yogurt! Another quick change of buses and we were on our way to Skopje, the capital of Macedonia, or FYROM if it bothers you that much.

I didn’t really understand why there was no rail line between Sofia and Skopje (the DB site will direct you via Thessaloniki in Greece) until we were on the bus — mountains, my friends, LOTS of mountains.

Not to worry, we arrived in Skopje around tea-time and grabbed yet another bus to Pristina, the capital of Kosovo. Only, as we crossed the border our friendly bus conductor told us to get on the bus in front of us as it was going directly to Montenegro, our next country.

Then something all kinds of wonderful happened… our new “magic” bus didn’t actually go straight to Macedonia… it went through Albania first! An unexpected bonus!! FIVE countries in less than 24 hours! 40 countries down, just 10 to go! Amazing! It began to feel like nothing could stop us now…

  36 Bulgaria
  37 Macedonia
  38 Kosovo*
  39 Albania