Quickest route to Kosovo

dory

Hello everyone.
I'm possibly being stationed in Kosovo for a year and wondering what is the best way to get home if I fancied a weekend away. AerLingus and Ryanair don't fly there, and I thought the inter-railers around here might know the region well enough to suggest something. I wouldn't mind getting an overnight train somewhere, fly from there, then do the same in the reverse to get back.
I don't know the rail system around there at all an having trouble getting train timetables online.
Anyone know that area?
Cheers

InKonspikuou2

You could always fly from Pristina to London but i reckon that would be expensive enough. However it does allow you to avoid Serbia. There are options to travel north by bus or train but you should check if you will have problems getting back in as you would have to travel through Serbia who don't recognize the existence of Kosovo. They won't give you an exit stamp and will see you as being in a part of what they see as their own country illegally. There are still a few countries who don't recognize the state of Kosovo and having their stamp on your passport will create problems if you ever decide to visit them. So it's worth checking up on that if you weren't already aware.

Another option would be to go to Montenegro and take the ferry to Bari in Italy. From there you can fly with Ryanair to Dublin. Look up the Bar to Bari route.

dory

Thank you very much. That ferry is exactly the kind of thing that would have taken me hours to find from net searching.
I understand the difficaulties in the region, but still wouldn't have thought of the passport trouble. And seems that there's no main road going from Kosovo to Montenegro. It might be a lot easier, if more expensive to just fly.

I'd be grateful for any knowledge or tips on the region. My plan is to drive there as I'd be bringing a lot of equipment for my year stay, nopoint in shipping if I feel I can drive. But with trying to skip around different countries it might be quite difficult.

InKonspikuou2

Yeah it would probably take the same length of time as a flight from Pristina to London as it would just going next door to Montenegro. There's no direct roads as far as i know.

If a direct flight to London is too expensive you could try combine a flight with http://www.germanwings.com/index.en.shtml and ryanair. German wings fly to London but the flights aren't regular. Could work out better to fly to somewhere in Germany that Ryanair use and then from there back to Ireland.

nick1

When in Pristina go to the offices of Malev (Hungarian) and Austrian Airways - they had reasonable flights to Dublin via Hungary or Austria.

However, timings keep on changing and in the present recession many flights have been cancelled across Europe. But generally these are the two most reliable airlines out of Pristina that connect with Dublin.

for some strange reason flights from Skopje to Dublin are usually much cheaper than from Pristina. Again, Malev and Austrian had -last Summer- good connections.

Skopje is only a couple of hours by bus from Pristina - five euros each way (I'm not sure of train cost) and it may be worth flying from Skopje if the price/connecting flights are O.K.
Skopje is more sophisticated than Pristina -but that's not saying much.

Stky10

I'd recommend going via Skopje as well. Thats the way we did it (by bus rather than train though, I think they're a lot more frequent). Avoid Serbia if at all possible is my recommendation (they don't recognise Kosovo as a legal entity, so they hassle foreigners crossing the border from Kosovo).

Checkout Skopje as well though for a weekend. I can't remember what was on at the time, but we did a women watching exercise from the comfort of an on-street bar, and I was very impressed.

NoQuarter

This might not work but you should chance your arm popping into the irish army camp over there and seeing if theres any way you can get home on their flights, they run a flight over and back direct about every 2 weeks!

Could be worth a try!