Croatia, Montenegro and Albania

you need your V5 in most of Europe so you are going to have to take it anyway

John
 
Planning on a trundle through the 'ears'. Romania, Bosnia, Croatia, Serbia, etc in early April, getting rather excited by it to be honest. The plan is to get to Istanbul and ferry across the Bosphorus to 'do' Asia, i.e. turn around and come back again.
Anyone got any thoughts/news on the Transfagaras highway at that time of year? Is it normally 6ft under snow or is it good enough for a bike? Would be nice to have a play on that.

(also going to try and get back via Italy, S France, Spain and Morocco i.e. 3 continents in 3 weeks)
 
I don't think Transfagarasan highway opens until about mid June most years depending on weather
 
just had a quote of £75 for a green card which covers 1 week in montenegrao!!! Bosnia not coverd!!! where do people get their greencards from?
 
just had a quote of £75 for a green card which covers 1 week in montenegrao!!! Bosnia not coverd!!! where do people get their greencards from?


I was in Montenegro 1n 2011 with no green card and bought 1 week insurance at the border.
I was there and Bosnia in 2012 with a green Card from Carol Nash (Ireland) and I think the main charge was for a few weeks in Russia
 
Update:
Lost too much time having a look at Transfagarasan (not closed as such just covered in several feet of snow that no-one can be bothered to clear away!) Also lost a lot of time getting through Turkish border. You will need original copy of the V5 and a Green card and even then I had to visit 9 seperate booths and have my bike X-rayed (?!?!) so never made it to Africa.
However did go through:
France, Belgium, Germany, Czech Republic, Austria, Hungary, Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania, Turkey, Greece, Montenegro, Croatia, Bosnia, Slovenia and Italy.

Albania - go there right now, don't even close down your pc. Incredible place! Amazingly friendly, cheery people a real gem!
Montenegro, amazing coast road, take the camera if it is sunny
Croatia - see Montenegro!

A Green card would smooth a lot of things out with the difficult borders (Turkey and Macedonia). It will have to be green and be made of card, they are bizarrely literal!
 
I can echo a lot of what Gnits says as passed through many of these on way to/from Syria (see ride report....)
Update:
Lost too much time having a look at Transfagarasan (not closed as such just covered in several feet of snow that no-one can be bothered to clear away!) Also lost a lot of time getting through Turkish border. You will need original copy of the V5 and a Green card and even then I had to visit 9 seperate booths and have my bike X-rayed (?!?!) so never made it to Africa.
However did go through:
France, Belgium, Germany, Czech Republic, Austria, Hungary, Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania, Turkey, Greece, Montenegro, Croatia, Bosnia, Slovenia and Italy.

Albania - go there right now, don't even close down your pc. Incredible place! Amazingly friendly, cheery people a real gem!
Montenegro, amazing coast road, take the camera if it is sunny
Croatia - see Montenegro!

A Green card would smooth a lot of things out with the difficult borders (Turkey and Macedonia). It will have to be green and be made of card, they are bizarrely literal!
 
A point to beware of, if you use Garmin Navigation their maps are very poor off the beaten track in BIH and in places in Albania they are non-existent (Sarande for instance isn't covered).
I just finished riding through all the former Yugoslavian countries & Albania in August 2014. I echo Roberto's caution about Garmin cartography, but with a bit of a twist as a result of recent updates Garmin has made to the maps (I used CN Europe 2015.1): I found that just about every highway, roadway, dirt track and cow path in BiH, Macedonia, Montenegro, Kosovo and Albania was present on the current Garmin maps, but many of these roads were missing the road attributes that enable the navigator to discriminate between highways vs. cow paths or paved vs. dirt roads.

The result of this was that even though I had my navigator set up to choose "fastest route" between two places, and to avoid unpaved roads, I was often routed down obscure one-lane dirt tracks that would make a GS rider think he had died and gone to heaven. This did no good for me, because I was riding a ST 1100, a motorcycle that has many competencies, but off-pavement riding is not one of them.

So, my advice would be to not trust the Garmin cartography to always keep you on primary roads. On the other hand, I suppose if you set the navigator to calculate the "shortest route", you would probably have a great time if you ride a dual-sport with knobbies.

just had a quote of £75 for a green card which covers 1 week in Montenegrao!!! Bosnia not covered!!! where do people get their greencards from?
Your quote might have been from your UK insurer, and it might have included extending full coverage (theft, collision, etc.) for that week, rather than just providing the minimum liability coverage required by law.

You can buy minimum liability coverage at the Montenegro border. In fact, you can buy minimum liability coverage at almost all the border crossings within former Yugoslavia. Below is the story of insurance coverage on my trip through the Balkans in August 2014. I was riding a Canadian-plated moto, and only had basic "Green Card" coverage within the EU, none at all outside of the EU countries.

As of 2014, the 'generic' green card European insurance includes coverage for Slovenia (SLO) and Croatia (HR), as well as Romania (RO) and Bulgaria (BG). That makes sense, because those 4 Balkan region countries are either full members of the EU or somewhere along the process towards becoming members of the EU.

Balkan countries that are not covered - in other words, explicitly excluded by being crossed out with an X on the form - include Bosnia & Herzegovina (BIH), Montenegro (MNE), Albania (AL), Macedonia (MK), and Serbia (SRB). Kosovo, which has adopted the identifier RKS, does not appear anywhere on the green card form (either as included or excluded), this probably due to the dispute between Serbia and Kosovo about independence of Kosovo. But, as will be shown later on, Kosovo does issue insurance for their country.

Below is the coverage document (the 'green card') for the EU. You can see the included and excluded countries.

EU Tourist Coverage 2014


The first country I reached that was not included in the above 'green card' was Bosnia & Herzegovina. Unfortunately, I elected to cross into BiH from Croatia at the border crossing near Stmica, and I discovered that BiH insurance was not sold at that border crossing. I suppose that makes sense, because it is a small border crossing on a secondary highway. Fortunately, it was early in the afternoon on a warm sunny day, and at the suggestion of the Bosnian border guards, I backtracked a little and rode south 100 kilometers to the border crossing near Kamensko, where the guards assured me that insurance would be available.

That taught me a valuable lesson, though, which was to not assume that insurance would be available at every border crossing of every country. From that point on, I stuck to the main highways when crossing borders.

At the Kamensko crossing into Bosnia, I learned how the routine worked for crossing the border and getting the insurance. It was the same in every country that followed, and it goes like this:

1) Pull up at the border crossing (immigration and customs), hand over your passport, and tell the guard you need to buy insurance.

2) The guard does all the immigration formalities (passport stamps, looks at your vehicle ownership, etc.), then retains your passport and directs you to the insurance hut, which is inevitably within 50 meters of the guard's hut.

3) You move your moto out of the way, get off, go into the insurance hut with your vehicle papers, buy the insurance (typically takes 5 minutes or so), then go back (on foot) to see the guard.

4) The guard then gives you back your passport once they see you holding the insurance document. They never bother to look at the document.

In every country, without exception, the border guards were courteous if not downright friendly. The insurance clerks, on the other hand, ranged from quite friendly and efficient (one of them) to dishonest and slow-witted (one of them). The average was bored and inefficient.

It is very much to the advantage of the rider to know ahead of time what the insurance should cost for each country, and to have exact change (in Euros, always) to pay for the insurance. If you don't know what it should cost, you run the risk of being deliberately overcharged by the insurance clerk. If you don't have exact change, you can count on the insurance clerk telling you that he has no change, this in an attempt to keep your change.

Anyway, Bosnian insurance at the first crossing was pretty simple, €10 for one week. The clerk recorded €8 on the form and explained something about the other €2 being a tax. I didn't understand his explanation, but for €2, I wasn't about to protest. Below is the document.

Bosnia & Herzegovina - first entry


The next country I entered was Montenegro. Same process, this time it cost €10 for 15 days of coverage. By now, I had figured out that it didn't make any difference what kind of moto I had, a motorcycle was a motorcycle, as far as all these countries were concerned. As you can see, the document is pretty perfunctory - no VIN, no address, just a licence plate number.

Montenegro


Next was Albania. Compared to the first two countries, Albania was pretty technologically advanced. In exchange for my €12.80 (I think the price fluctuates a bit from day to day based on exchange rates), I received a very official looking document, complete with gold foil seal, fully suitable for framing. :) The insurance agent rounded the price up to €15, this because neither he or I had any Euro coins.

Albania


I left Albania into Greece, where I had coverage based on the Mototouring document shown above. After Greece, I rode north into Macedonia.

Macedonia is the 'odd country out', in the sense that they charge €50 for 15 days' coverage (everyone else is about €10 to €15 for a week or two). Don't let that discourage you from visiting Macedonia, besides being a delightful country, everything else there - hotels, food, cigs, booze, and fuel - is dirt cheap, and in the big scheme of things, that makes up for the slightly pricier insurance.

The Macedonian insurance clerk was quite apologetic about the €50 charge... it was clear to me that lots of riders had told him that every other country charged less. He was pretty friendly and told me about a number of good moto roads that he thought I might enjoy. He also took the time to explain that the insurance was priced in Macedonian currency (3,050 of them, whatever they are), but that that amount was equal to €50, which he noted was written on the insurance document.

Macedonia


Kosovo won the prize for being most meticulous about making sure all the details were correct on their insurance document. The agent actually got up and went outside to visually verify the licence plate on my moto. In exchange for my €15, I received a very nice little A5 size document, with a gold seal on it, also suitable for framing.

Kosovo


I left Kosovo headed to the northeast, back into Bosnia. This is where things got interesting. I was expecting to pay another €8 or €10 a week of coverage, but it seems that at this particular border crossing (on R-8 / R-106, between Peje and Rozaje), insurance is offered by a different insurance company. This time, the fee was 40 Bosnian Marks (€21) for 3 days of coverage. I was a bit surprised. The insurance agent took pains to show me all his company documents that set out the prices, and filled in the receipt properly. I don't think he took advantage of me, I think that either he had out of date information (it was a small, remote border crossing), or it was simply a case of a different insurance underwriter and different fees.

In any case, that did lead me to conclude that Bosnia was the least organized of all the countries that I visited, so far as insurance was concerned. Here's the document:

Bosnia (second entry)


I did not visit Serbia. I was concerned that I might have difficulty entering Serbia from Kosovo, or difficulty entering Serbia from Bosnia with Kosovo stamps in my passport. Perhaps someone else can post their experience with Serbian border insurance.

Anyway - that's the story of my summer trip, insurance-wise. I hope this information is useful to other riders.

Michael
 
SERBIAN INSURANCE

All EU insurance policies will give you basic cover in Serbia. There was probably a mistake when Pan got his green card (or for some reason as he is with a non eu bike) - the agent not used to the new regs of the last couple of years. So you do not need a greencard for Serbia - just your standard policy cert.
:)
 
Got a greencard for Serbia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Croatia, Slovenia etc this year although never asked for it. I can recommend Albania, great trip down there last year and even getting stuck in Saranda with a bust bike was not too bad as beer was cheap. Can always get a ferry over to Italy overnight which makes getting back different and a bit faster (Durres to Bari although Durres is a sh#thole) then 2 days to the coast of France. Roads down were great just watch for sudden surface changes and gaps in bridge decks.
 
Not wishing to highjack any insurance bromance, but Francis and I are planning this route next autumn down to Turkey and hopefully into Iran.

Question:

Would it be worth taking camping equipment? I enjoy camping but my feeling is that for much of the adriatic coast, Turkey and Iran we probably would not camp, and coming back through europe in November would probably be too cold.

Thoughts?
 
All EU insurance policies will give you basic cover in Serbia. There was probably a mistake when Pan got his green card (or for some reason as he is with a non eu bike) - the agent not used to the new regs of the last couple of years.
Hi Gavin:

I have heard the same comment from others - that "All EU insurance policies will give you basic cover in Serbia." Clearly this was not the case when my EU policy was issued in early August 2014. Although it is possible that the issuer (the Italian Auto Association) might have been behind the times, and it is also possible - though not likely - that the fact that my bike is registered in Canada may have affected things - I kind of suspect that Serbia has not yet completed 100% of the process needed to participate in the EU green card scheme.

There is a correlation between being in the EU and being included by default in the 'green card' scheme for Europe, but that correlation is not absolute. The Swiss have been a full part of the green card scheme (automatically included in all European coverage) for over 10 years now, and for sure they are not part of the EU. Similarly, I don't believe that Norway or Iceland are part of the EU (even though they are part of the EFTA), and they have both been in the EU green card scheme since the old King died.

I suspect that there is some form of trans-national insurance treaty or protocol that enables non-EU countries (including but not limited to EU candidate states) to join the green card scheme, and the Serbs are perhaps in the process of getting compliant with this, but they are not there yet. I don't think that this treaty or protocol is directly administered by the EU, although participation in it is probably a prerequisite for full EU membership.

It is worth noting that any insurer can write cover for any country, providing that they register with the country they wish to write cover in and meet the requirements set out by that country. In other words, an Outer Mongolian insurance company could provide cover for riding in France if they complied with all the requirements set out by the French insurance regulator. Hence it is possible that some British insurers have registered in Serbia and complied with the Serbian insurance regulator requirements, and that is why Serbia is showing up as 'included' on the green cards that these insurers issue.

Perhaps one of our forum members knows more about what this 'green card governing protocol' is and can elaborate further.

Michael
 
Came up from Crete To UK through the Greece Albania etc coast rd, it was October, the roads were glass like polished, covered in dust and it rained lots. this turned the roads into skating rinks from north Greece, Albania (stroppy border crossing wanted tip) Montenegro. We nicknamed it the soup road.
Mike.
 


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