Stuart Pinfold
Freelance studio manager, audio engineer and web designer
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Dubrovnik to Mostar on Google Maps
08 November 2008 at 22:47
As you may know, we spent 10 days in July in the Balkans, taking in Dubrovnik (and its surroundings), Mostar and the Bay of Kotor area of Montenegro.
At the time, and while planning the trip's various journeys in the hire car before we flew out, Google Maps didn't have very good plans for Bosnia-Herzegovina or Montenegro, although Croatia's was alright-ish. This meant that we couldn't plan directions between Dubrovnik and Mostar, or Dubrovnik and Kotor.
Microsoft Live Maps, however, could do the directions and we went along merrily on our way.
Tonight, out of curiosity while looking up the location of Cilacap compared to Jakarta in Indonesia, I tapped in "Dubrovnik to Mostar" to see if anything had improved in the last three months or so.
Here's what came out:
The use of the old - and Colonial - name of Ragusa is a bit odd; but, odder still, Google want you to forget about the two-hour trip by car (admittedly crossing the Bosnia-Herzegovina twice, as it has a tiny coastal section). Instead, they suggest getting a boat across to Bari in Italy, travelling along the Italian Meditteranean coast to another port, Brindisi, to board another boat to - wait for it - the Greek port of Parga, after making a stop at the island of Paxi.
From Parga, you can get back in a car, travelling inland and northwards to cross into Albania near the border town of Ktismata. It then passes the entire length of Albania and Montenegro, finally crossing the Bosnian border near Foca. Keep driving, until you hit the capital Sarajevo, before travelling south, arriving in Mostar 30 hours and 1,541 kilometers (953 miles) later!
Dubrovnik to Kotor in Montenegro, an even shorter overland drive at an hour-and-a-half,also uses the first bit of the route up until the Montenegrin capital Podgorica, before travelling along the coastal road to Kotor.
All of which reminds me of when you tapped New York to London into Google Maps, and it suggested swimming the 3,462 miles across the Atlantic... via France, apparently taking just under a month.
Update 11th November
Alan over at the excellent Balkanology website (which was a great help when planning our trips) has picked up on this blog post and has done some experimentation of his own of different routes in southeast Europe - none of which involved the most straight-forward journey!