Insurance from Slovenia to Albania

The crossing was to the west of livno as that's where we stayed the night
 
Anyway, for the OP, the border insurance is either 30KM or €5, or possibly another number depending on circumstances. We had to pay cash but I'm sure someone will be along in a minute to say they were able to pay with their Tesco Loyalty Card or a promissory note signed by their mum. Our experience from this and previous trips is that not all the crossings into Bosnia have the facility to provide insurance, and if that's the case they won't let you in, although again I'm sure that others have been able to get around this by buying the guards a bunch of flowers, etc.etc.

Basically, get a green card that covers Bosnia before you leave - some companies will provide it.
 
Basically, get a green card that covers Bosnia before you leave - some companies will provide it.
I'd prefer to pay the €5 euros just for the banter with the guards . Think they would have been a bit pissed off if we'd had full insurance and it's only £4 as one of our group pointed out . :thumb
 
I'd prefer to pay the €5 euros just for the banter with the guards . Think they would have been a bit pissed off if we'd had full insurance and it's only £4 as one of our group pointed out . :thumb

Spot on! Our banter went like this:

(At the Bosnian border crossing at Llubovija, and after being stamped out of the country at the Serbian border)

Us: Hello Mr Border Guard, may we please we buy insurance and so enter your lovely country?

Border Guard. Yes, of course, but not here - it's only available at the main crossing at Zvornik

Us: But we've got 200km further to go to get to Visegrad on dirt roads from here, and it's 4 clock, and Zvornik is 50km in the wrong direction, adding 100km to our trip. Can we pay here?

Border guard (smiling): Tough tits. The crossing at Zvornik closes at 5pm so I'd crack on if i were you

(hiatus while we get stamped back in to Serbia and then break lots of laws to get to Zvornik by 5pm)

(at border crossing at Zvornik, very hot and sweaty, at 4.55pm)

Us: We've just come from Llubovija to cross here as we understand we can buy insurance here. May we please buy insurance and cross into your country?

Border guard: yes, from that booth all the way over there

Us: Oh good. How much is it, and can we pay in €

Border Guard: We don't use €. It's 30KM. KM is the currency of our country. (note to audience, 30KM is €15)

Us: But we don't have any KM

Border Guard: You can get KM in that scruffy building all the way over there in the other direction. It closes at 5pm though, and I expect it will be uncomfortable running all that way in your heavy bike gear, since of course you can't take your motorbikes in. They're not insured!

Us: (sweaty run to money changer, followed by another sweaty run to the insurance booth, then run back to border where our bikes are, and which closes at 5pm)

Us: (rather breathlessly and much smellier than we were on arrival at his booth) Hello Mr Border Guard, here's the insurance for our motorbikes

Border Guard: Welcome to our country

Us: Which way to Visegrad?

Border Guard: Normally that way (points) but the road is closed. You'll have to detour over the mountains and though the forests using lots more dirt roads. It's kilometres and kilometres, and it will be dark soon. There are no villages or houses on the way, and no fuel. Have a safe trip!

Us: Thanks, we'd better be off!

Border Guard: Bye, and by the way, don't stop as there are packs of wolves up there!



(footnote. There really are packs of wolves up there)
 
Spot on! Our banter went like this:

(At the Bosnian border crossing at Llubovija, and after being stamped out of the country at the Serbian border)

Us: Hello Mr Border Guard, may we please we buy insurance and so enter your lovely country?

Border Guard. Yes, of course, but not here - it's only available at the main crossing at Zvornik

Us: But we've got 200km further to go to get to Visegrad on dirt roads from here, and it's 4 clock, and Zvornik is 50km in the wrong direction, adding 100km to our trip. Can we pay here?

Border guard (smiling): Tough tits. The crossing at Zvornik closes at 5pm so I'd crack on if i were you

(hiatus while we get stamped back in to Serbia and then break lots of laws to get to Zvornik by 5pm)

(at border crossing at Zvornik, very hot and sweaty, at 4.55pm)

Us: We've just come from Llubovija to cross here as we understand we can buy insurance here. May we please buy insurance and cross into your country?

Border guard: yes, from that booth all the way over there

Us: Oh good. How much is it, and can we pay in €

Border Guard: We don't use €. It's 30KM. KM is the currency of our country. (note to audience, 30KM is €15)

Us: But we don't have any KM

Border Guard: You can get KM in that scruffy building all the way over there in the other direction. It closes at 5pm though, and I expect it will be uncomfortable running all that way in your heavy bike gear, since of course you can't take your motorbikes in. They're not insured!

Us: (sweaty run to money changer, followed by another sweaty run to the insurance booth, then run back to border where our bikes are, and which closes at 5pm)

Us: (rather breathlessly and much smellier than we were on arrival at his booth) Hello Mr Border Guard, here's the insurance for our motorbikes

Border Guard: Welcome to our country

Us: Which way to Visegrad?

Border Guard: Normally that way (points) but the road is closed. You'll have to detour over the mountains and though the forests using lots more dirt roads. It's kilometres and kilometres, and it will be dark soon. There are no villages or houses on the way, and no fuel. Have a safe trip!

Us: Thanks, we'd better be off!

Border Guard: Bye, and by the way, don't stop as there are packs of wolves up there!



(footnote. There really are packs of wolves up there)


Sounds like you had yourself quite an adventure ��

Talking of wildlife , when we were going over the transfargashan , apparently they've got 90% of all of europes bears living there .good job we didn't camp
 
Wow Complicated - I just got a green card and went to Albania, although I was heading for Bulgaria at the time but detoured a bit. Ended up destroying the rear wheel bearing in the GS in Sarande which made for an interesting return after waiting a few days to get it fixed but that's what adventures are for. On the plus side the sun was out and the beer was cheap.
 
Didn't see many bears on the transfagasan. Saw lots of Romanian brides draping themselves over the rocks by that shitty little lake halfway up having tasteful wedding pictures taken. I imagine they scare the bears off.
 
I've just ridden in and out of a few of these countries, my experiences were:

Serbia into Montenegro - although the gov.uk website say "insurance is available for purchase at all official border crossings", the border guard laughed at me when I asked to buy insurance and told me none was available at that crossing (the E65 at Spiljani - a major crossing point). He was more than happy for me to continue into Montenegro, he just explained I'd get fined if I was stopped by the police.

Croatia into Bosnia back into Croatia at Neum - border guards litterely not interested, as soon as they caught a glimpse of my GB passport they waved me through, same at the other border getting back into Croatia. I was told there's some agreement that although it is technically Bosnian soil for 10km, travelers can pass through as though it's still Croatia, but that's just gossip.

My advice - get green card before you leave uk, just not worth the hassle and unpredictability as the vastly different experiences each traveller has had shows.
 
Buying at Border. Read the Small Print

Lots of comments about buying at border and if you want to travel to some of these countries that is about the only option. Remember though that you are most certainly buying the absolute minimum legal cover required. For example. We have been into Bosnia a few times on bike and by car. 2017 price for a week in the car was 30 Euros which equates to 1560 euros per year. What you normally get in these countries is third party personal injury ONLY. No cover for damage to your bike/car. No cover for any damage to vehicle or property you may cause. Just damage to people !!. If you have a no fault collision best of luck trying to claim off a local and you do not of course have any cover if you bike or car is nicked.

If you can get cover from your UK insurers (managed to get Bosnia once on a free green card) even if the price seems high, go for it. An earlier post commented that NFU was charging £85 and that was too much so the intention was buy at border. If my insurer offered me cover for £85.00 I would jump at it. For £55 more than the worthless piece of paper I can buy at the border I would get the fully comprehensive cover I enjoy at home. Not much money on the cost of a European adventure.

We will be back in Montenegro this summer. Their cover for two weeks is a lot less than Bosnia's for one but its a real pain getting it.

1) go through immigration control. No insurance so they hold your passport while you drive a few hundred yards to another control booth where they will sell you the expensive piece of paper in between taking road toll money.

2) go back to first booth to prove you now have insurance and get passports back.

3) drive back to booth that sold you the insurance and pay the road toll.

This is time consuming hassle on a bike. In a car its a real pain as the congestion means you are forever stuck in queues.

For Bosnia we have developed a technique to reduce the long queue time (can be hours). The insurance booth is in "no man's land" so once we reach the queue the passenger walks to the Croatia control taking passport and V5. Leaves Croatia as pedestrian, buys insurance, enters Croatia again as pedestrian and walks back to vehicle. Now we can leave Croatia and enter Bosnia with no delays.

We still enjoy travelling to these countries but the potential cost does focus the attention and encourage us to look for accommodation with secure parking. Nice to see insurers now extending cover to Serbia so we will try there as well this summer as well safe in the knowledge that we have our full insurance cover..
 
Lots of comments about buying at border and if you want to travel to some of these countries that is about the only option. Remember though that you are most certainly buying the absolute minimum legal cover required. For example. We have been into Bosnia a few times on bike and by car. 2017 price for a week in the car was 30 Euros which equates to 1560 euros per year. What you normally get in these countries is third party personal injury ONLY. No cover for damage to your bike/car. No cover for any damage to vehicle or property you may cause. Just damage to people !!. If you have a no fault collision best of luck trying to claim off a local and you do not of course have any cover if you bike or car is nicked.

If you can get cover from your UK insurers (managed to get Bosnia once on a free green card) even if the price seems high, go for it. An earlier post commented that NFU was charging £85 and that was too much so the intention was buy at border. If my insurer offered me cover for £85.00 I would jump at it. For £55 more than the worthless piece of paper I can buy at the border I would get the fully comprehensive cover I enjoy at home. Not much money on the cost of a European adventure.

We will be back in Montenegro this summer. Their cover for two weeks is a lot less than Bosnia's for one but its a real pain getting it.

1) go through immigration control. No insurance so they hold your passport while you drive a few hundred yards to another control booth where they will sell you the expensive piece of paper in between taking road toll money.

2) go back to first booth to prove you now have insurance and get passports back.

3) drive back to booth that sold you the insurance and pay the road toll.

This is time consuming hassle on a bike. In a car its a real pain as the congestion means you are forever stuck in queues.

For Bosnia we have developed a technique to reduce the long queue time (can be hours). The insurance booth is in "no man's land" so once we reach the queue the passenger walks to the Croatia control taking passport and V5. Leaves Croatia as pedestrian, buys insurance, enters Croatia again as pedestrian and walks back to vehicle. Now we can leave Croatia and enter Bosnia with no delays.

We still enjoy travelling to these countries but the potential cost does focus the attention and encourage us to look for accommodation with secure parking. Nice to see insurers now extending cover to Serbia so we will try there as well this summer as well safe in the knowledge that we have our full insurance cover..
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Check the small print on your green card - often it is 3rd party only insurance cover for countries outside EU not fully comp.
 
May I ask about payment for insurance at the border crossings? Do they generally only take local currency or a bank card?
I'm particularly interested into Serbia and into Bosnia as I am conscious I'll have no local currency on me.

Its an old post now but if anyone disinterested. Serbia stopped asking for insurance at border a while back. They accepted a UK certificate even although it was probably worthless in event of a claim. I now see that Uk insurers are extending cover to Serbia as the country now has an official agreement with EU (as used to be the case with Croatia before they joined EU). Check with insurer but your certificate should now show Serbia and that's all they will want at the border (if they still bother to look). Kosovo will be excluded though.

For Bosnia and Montenegro our experience is that they want paying in cash. Both want Euros which is Montenegro's currency anyway. For short visits to Bosnia you can pretty well use Euros everywhere anyway. On our first visit we rode for ever in 40+ temp trying to find a bank so we could get some local money and buy some drinks. Then we found that even the road side bar wanted Euros anyway.
 
Quote Check the small print on your green card - often it is 3rd party only insurance cover for countries outside EU not fully comp.

Agreed. Never assume. Always check the small print.

Incidentally, When we went to Bosnia the first time I specifically asked my broker some months beforehand to confirm my insurance renewal would cover Bosnia. They told yes but later when I asked for a Green Card they told me I did not need one. Lots of calls and threats later they agreed they were wrong and would cancel my policy and find a new one which allowed a green card. My original full comp insurance was under £300. The new policy was over £1200. As the broker had given me wrong advice they had to cover the additional costs of the new policy and the cancellation costs for the old one. The new policy gave me full comp cover in Bosnia. My wife could not get cover for her bike so paid 10 Euros for the worthless paper at the border.
 
Good, hands-on advice from andyclift.

How the comfortable (no green card) arrangement UK insurance holders enjoy vis-à-vis the EU member states - and other countries - alters (if at all) post Brexit, remains to be seen. Those that recall the joy of buying green cards, Spanish bail bonds and the like, will be hoping that something smooth will be worked out. But for the others, the freeing of Britain from the tyranny of Brussels and Polish shops on every high street, will be its own reward.... and anyway, who ever wants to leave England anyway?
 
Good, hands-on advice from andyclift.

How the comfortable (no green card) arrangement UK insurance holders enjoy vis-à-vis the EU member states - and other countries - alters (if at all) post Brexit, remains to be seen. Those that recall the joy of buying green cards, Spanish bail bonds and the like, will be hoping that something smooth will be worked out. But for the others, the freeing of Britain from the tyranny of Brussels and Polish shops on every high street, will be its own reward.... and anyway, who ever wants to leave England anyway?

We are already getting the panic headlines of needing International Driving permits and Green cards for a day trip to Calais but I am sure that in the real world little will change. I can remember in the 1950s my father going to the AA to get his international driving permit and his green card so we could go to France. Crossing the channel required sitting on the front in Dover waiting for the dock to open in the morning and getting on the Sealink (British Rail) ferry. I also remember taking my own kids on a day trip in January in the late 1970s and the ferry had two cars and one truck on board. Now we have up to three huge ferries per hour leaving Dover 24 hours per day plus the tunnel plus many other crossings. These all take vehicles from all over Europe and I hope that not even the EU is stupid enough to have a situation where all their citizens will need green cards and international driving permits to come to UK and mainland Europe lose British business (especially the Pidou wine warehouse near Calais terminal).

Switzerland and Norway are not EU but our insurance and licence are still valid there with no hassle. I worked for a Swedish country for years before they joined and renting cars there was no problem with UK licence. I don't think any of the near EU countries insist on International Driving Permits now although, back to small print, Bosnia requires one if the driver is not the registered keeper.
 
Thx for post a while ago - hope to meet you but not need to use your services!

Is, my username @gmail.com
+355692095891, in case of emergency.

Sent from my HTC_M910x using Tapatalk

Hi - I’m in Albania on 4-5/7 if you are around!
 
Interesting to see that the UK Government is committed to keeping UK in the EU "free circulation zone" for vehicle insurance meaning that after leaving the EU our insurance will still be valid in EU + Serbia, Switzerland and Norway. Did find the article on this in the Express showed a lack of EU travel knowledge by so called "experts". There was relief that travel in Europe would not be delayed in the future by the need to show a Green card at border crossings. Have any of these people heard of Schengen Agreement. Once the Schengen countries decided that there would be no internal border controls all the border posts were dismantled. Travel from France to Belgium to Germany to Austria and the ONLY thing showing a change in country is a small EU flag at the side of the road. Same with almost all the EU countries. Travel to Bosnia from Croatia or Montenegro and and you can look forward to 3 and 4 hour waits at the border. Not just for "foreigners" but all that cross. They are relatively minor borders.

After the big Paris terror attack France and Belgium needed to look at who was crossing between countries. The result was that at the border near Ostend all traffic was diverted off the main autoroute and around a roundabout which had flood lights installed for the purpose so the two police officers sitting in a car could watch the vehicles driving past. Then back up the ramp onto the main road. Nobody was stopped but this action caused hours of delays due to traffic volumes. Do we really expect France and Belgium to build new border posts and staff them on every border crossing and have massive traffic jams and delays just to piss off UK travellers after Brexit.
 
What you are forgetting is the ball ache the whole thing is for insurers to resolve.

For years we have all benefited from UK registered insurers’ ability to accept (insure) risks - not just Motor, that’s a tiny small part of the whole - throughout the EU, enjoying the Freedom of Services provision. The same FoS provision allowed cheap insurers (like E Bike) to sit in low cost EU territories, like Gibraltar and provide very cheap Motor insurance to bikermates in the UK.

The simple truth is, despite the Express (who really reads that shite) nobody knows how this very easy arrangement is to continue after March 2019. So concerned are insurers that it will come to a jangling halt, they are going to the considerable expense and trouble of opening offices inside the EU, just to maintain at least their ability to accept pan-EU business and then - in a convoluted fashion - use the same EU domiciled office to deal with its UK domiciled counterpart to issue the UK part of a Motor policy, as required by UK law. Is it something they wanted to do? Of course it isn’t; business is all about reducing cost and complexity, not adding to it.

Do not confuse the Schengen Agreement (which the UK was never part of, nor are we ever likely to be) which allows the free movement of people with the free movement of cross border financial products, they are not even close to the same thing.

Do I hope that something can be worked out? Yes, of course I do as the old basis - prior to the Freedom of Services provision - was a pain in the arse. That of course will not worry Fat Bob from Gillingham, providing no more fucking Poles can steal our shops and vegetables.
 
Hi Olsin

Thx v much - I am going to be in Albania too then but not sure which road I’m coming in on or indeed exiting to Greece on at the moment - will drop you a line as I get closer - are you near Shkodra? Thanks S
 


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