Travelling through South East Europe on trains

[Mamaka]

We are thinking of taking a month's holiday to travel through SE Europe. Any recommendations, must sees or places to miss? Dh would like to see Montenegro, I quite fancy Albania. Ideally we would travel by train wherever possible as we have 2 DC and they like the freedom of walking around on the train.

@Mamaka Ideally we would travel by train wherever possible as we have 2 DC and they like the freedom of walking around on the train.

Presumably you have seen this site? www.seat61.com/index.html

Thanks for that Shots, the Belgrade to Bar train journey looks amazing!

Sounds like a great idea! About 25 years ago I went round Romania by train. Beautiful scenery, unexpected places and people. Not luxury by any means on some sections (standing room only with peasants in Moldova, chicken in the corridors, leaking roof). The trains must have changed a lot since it joined the EEC, but not the stunning landscape.

Romania is intriguing and looks lovely! Wouldn't mind the lack of luxury or the chickens, will do DC some good

It definitely will transport you somewhere very different. Transylvania is probably the country's most beautiful province.

we've travelled by train through Montenegro - Podgorica to Zagreb, then to Belgrade, then onto Germany, using day trains and sleepers. I would recommend it, although there are large areas of Montenegro not covered by trains.
The trains are clean and modern. When we travelled, you couldn't buy advance tickets from outside the country.
Even if you're told that there will be a buffet, don't depend on it. The journey from Belgrade to Zagreb is really boring - an endless plain, try and get a sleeper for that section, then travel by day from Belgrade to Podgorica.
Try and spend some time in Zagreb - we intended to stay for one night, but stayed a week! but don't have high hopes of Belgrade or (even worse) Podgorica.
the Seat61 site is really useful

Thanks for the tips Lucy! What didn't you like about Podgorica? I'm hoping to skip over the city and get straight to the beach anyway..

Podgorica is just a dump. the train south goes by Kolasin, a ski resort, which is nice. We didn't go to the coast (it sounds pretty built up, in a bad way) but walked from Kotor to Cetinje. The walking was fantastic, but not exactly what you're thinking of, from the sound of it.

Oh wow I'd love to do a walk like that but not on this holiday unfortunately! Dc are too young. How long did it take you? And what did you like about Zagreb?

I really loved Zagreb but, to be fair, my DH didn't think it was that great, so take my heartfelt recommendation with a pinch of salt.
It's not too big, so good to walk around. The climate is good for sitting around in bars, watching the world go by. It has old trams zipping backwards and forwards.Good, reasonably-priced restaurants. It has 3 tourist attractions that I loved - The Museum of Broken Relationships, the Gallery of Naive Art, and an exhibit of the solar system, where the size of the planets, and their distance from each other, are all to scale. So there's a big sun in a square. A few streets away is Mercury, the size of a tennis ball, up on a street wall, and Uranus is in an underpass, way out on the edge of town. With all the other planets in between.
In short, a perfectly-sized capital city.
Kotor is like a tiny Dubrovnik, with a wonderful location. Not yet totally ruined by the cruise ship trade, as Dubrovnik has.
If you find it helpful, what we did, over 3 weeks, was fly into Split. Spend 2 nights there. Took a ferry to Korcula. Spent a couple of days there. Lovely town and you can swim from there, or take a bus to a beach elsewhere.
Went to another island (can't remember the name).
We would have island hopped indefinately. In September, it was easy to roll up somewhere and find rooms.
Took the ferry to the mainland, north of Dubrovnik. A day in Dubrovnik - very disappointing.
Bus to Perast, near Kotor.
a week of walking
then back through Europe to UK via Zagreb
The latter half of the holiday actually got a bit boring, and, another time I would spend more time island hopping and walking. I would really recommend the first part of the holiday if you have children.
have a lovely holiday

I'd echo what lucy says about Dubrovnik- we were there for 2 nights this summer horribly crowded and over commmercialised. A tourist trap of the most blatant kind I'm afraid. Think I'd prefer Podgorica!