Corfu is one of those beautiful and popular holiday destinations that'd you'd take your partner or family to for a well-planned summer vacation - you know, when you have a job, have money and are well-organised. Well, I should've thought of that before deciding to go there. First of all, it is August and peak season, so finding anywhere to stay on the island was a challenge let alone finding somewhere cheap and available relatively last-minute. I was lucky to get something a week in advance for 25€ a night on Airbnb. As this was my first Airbnb reservation, I did honestly have my suspicions about it. The host had no reviews at all despite having an account on the website for two years and was the only person of the five I wrote to who ... read more

You can't really call Tirana's 'bus station' a bus station. There is no terminal building, there are no ticket offices - it is merely a parking lot full of buses. It is pretty chaotic - but then again I've seen worse. Anyway, it was from here that I finally left Tirana for my next destination; Berat. Berat's appeal lies in its impressively intact Ottoman quarter and its hilltop castle; while I had seen the rural, majestic mountains of Northern Albania and the urban, modern metropolis of Tirana, Berat now presented a trip back to Albania's Ottoman past. The cobblestone Ottoman quarter - with perhaps the most slippery cobblestones I have ever encountered - chock-full of white houses, lends Berat its nickname as the "town of a thousand windows" and a walk around i... read more

For me, Albania is a country of intrigue. A rare majority-Muslim country on European soil and with a language that looks a bit like Turkish - and a language where I can literally recognise nothing - its culture alone promised to make it very different from anything else I had seen in Europe to date. Which is why Albania was the country I was most interested and excited about visiting on this particular leg of my journey. It isn't really on the tourist radar either - I don't think I have ever had a friend or colleague come back from vacation telling me about their amazing holiday in Albania. Rolling into Shkoder exhausted from the all-night party I pulled the night before back in Montenegro and with the Austrians Frido and Simon that I had met ... read more

I had done this journey before. But thankfully this time, I wasn't horrifically hungover for my bus ride down Croatia's Dalmatian coast to Dubrovnik. Along the way, there were loads of amazing coves and relatively empty pebble beaches; if you had a car, it would be amazing to be able to stop by at some of them. As I was leaving Croatia for the last time on this trip, I wanted to make sure I had no kuna leftover and so I spent everything I had on food while waiting for my bus to Bosnia in Dubrovnik. Feeling pretty chuffed with myself that I managed to spend every single kuna I had left, I then realised that I needed 8KN (£1) to pay the f*cking luggage fee on the bus. Why don't they just include the ... read more

Sleep-deprived and exhausted from the last few days, an early start to catch my bus from Verona to Rimini probably wasn't the best idea but it was the best and cheapest option I had. So it was probably no surprise - and it has to be said that this is the first time this has happened for a long time - that I overslept having forgot to set an alarm the previous night. I then had forty minutes to get my shit together and sprint to the bus stop; a 35-minute walk away. So if an early start was the last thing I needed at the time, I now - barely able to open my eyes - had a sweaty, exhausting, 25-minute sprint across Verona to catch my bus. It reminded me of old times. Most ... read more