Ever stood inside a Cold War nuclear bunker built to survive an atomic blast? Across the Balkans, these strange concrete domes have become a unique part of the landscape. Built by Tito's communist regime in Yugoslavia and Enver Hoxha in Albania, Balkan bunkers are some of the most fascinating Cold War relics you can explore on our adventure holidays in Europe. From Albania’s mushroom-shaped bunkers dotted across beaches and mountains to Tito’s secret nuclear shelter hidden in the Bosnian hills, Balkan bunkers show us what it was like to live under paranoid surveillance states. With military tensions once again creeping into the news, these subterranean worlds feel newly relevant. Eerie though they are, local people have been turning old communist bunkers into everything from museums and tattoo studios to wine cellars. Being adventure travellers, we love exploring these hidden - and scenic - places. Scroll down to find out how we seek out the best Balkan bunkers on our Albania, Bosnia and Serbia hiking holidays : Albania: the capital of Balkan bunkers If there is a global capital of communist bunkers, Albania claims it hands down. Under the paranoid dictatorship of Enver Hoxha, the country was sealed off from the world and obsessively fortified against imagined invasion. Between the 1960s and 1980s, an estimated 173,000 to 750,000 were constructed, giving Albania he highest concentration of Cold War bunkers anywhere in the Balkans – and arguably the world. These surreal mushroom-shaped domes were designed so that every citizen could, in theory, help defend the country. You don’t need to hunt for bunkers in Albania – they appear everywhere, like giant stealth tortoises. In city parks, perched above beaches, sunk into vineyards and looming over mountain passes. Some have been painted with bright yellow emojis, others turned into tattoo parlours. In Tirana,
Ever stood inside a Cold War nuclear bunker built to survive an atomic blast? Across the Balkans, these strange concrete domes have become a unique part of the landscape. Built by Tito’s communist regime in Yugoslavia and Enver Hoxha in Albania, Balkan bunkers are some of the most fascinating Cold War relics you can explore
Nothing says 4x4 adventure tour quite like a Land Rover! There’s something about the classic shape that has a timeless appeal, the promise of going boldly where no VW minibus has gone before. If you want to head off into the undiscovered wilds of the Balkan back-roads, there's only one vehicle that's going to do it for you - the one and only Land Rover Defender. Africans and Australians will now be snorting in derision and jumping up and down about Toyota “Troopies”, while actual Land Rover owners will be sucking in their teeth and apologetically admitting the Defender’s less-than-stellar reliability record. To which I say: Pah! The great thing about Landies is that the design hasn’t changed for 50 years, so old bits fit newer Land Rovers just as easily as old Land Rovers. Plus, when your Landy eventually dies it becomes a donor to other Landies, so there are parts everywhere. And if you've reached the limits of your mechanical knowledge, no matter where you are in the world, you are never more than 50km away from someone who can fix it for you. This is how one of the worst-built cars in the history of the automobile has become the go-to 4x4 adventure tour vehicle anywhere where the tarmac has run out – and therefore an integral part of our multi-activity adventures, whether in Montenegro or Kosovo! Ten people and six kayaks? That's not a problem for the Land Rover Defender! Land Rover owners love these vehicles despite their foibles. We forgive these hulking tanks their brittle plastics, noise, crude ventilation and enormous turning circle. We forgive them for the cramped and offset driving position, the doors that never quite shut properly and the panel gaps that can be seen from space. We forgive the lack of
Nothing says 4×4 adventure tour quite like a Land Rover! There’s something about the classic shape that has a timeless appeal, the promise of going boldly where no VW minibus has gone before. If you want to head off into the undiscovered wilds of the Balkan back-roads, there’s only one vehicle that’s going to do
Our new tour leader Nenad loves getting off the beaten track whenever he's hiking in Montenegro, the stunning country from where he hails. The more remote the location, the more likely he is to be exploring it! We asked him about some possible new additions to our Montenegro walking holiday. He's come up with something pretty amazing - the mountain of Maganik in central Montenegro; a place seldom visited by Montenegrins, let alone tourists! Nenad writes: "Undiscovered Balkans is about travelling where only a select few people have ever been. If it is accessible only by foot, so much the better! If I had to make a list of the most spectacular locations for hiking in Montenegro, though, at the very top I would put a place with the highest level of wilderness; somewhere special that you would never find without local knowledge – like Maganik. I'd always been curious about Tresteni Vrh. It's a legendary rock massif on Mount Maganik, better known to foreign speleologists than local hikers, but notorious in our country as the site of a tragic plane crash in 1973. To reach it, you have to travel to the heart of the stunning Moraca canyon in Montenegro's mid-line of mountains. The day I went there to explore, we left our motorbike at a shepherd's “katun” hut with two goals - ascend the highest peak, then descend to the plateau I'd heard was filled with hundreds of spectacular natural rock sculptures. An Empire of Karst Tresteni Vrh is not one of those classic sharp mountain peaks. Its landscape is totally unreal - more like the backdrop to a video game where a huge plateau of karst rock opens up to gigantic, deep cracks and fissures, some of which lead to caves to explore. On this day, I'm
Our new tour leader Nenad loves getting off the beaten track whenever he’s hiking in Montenegro, the stunning country from where he hails. The more remote the location, the more likely he is to be exploring it! We asked him about some possible new additions to our Montenegro walking holiday. He’s come up with something
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