Coffee, kelims and the call to prayer: an overland journey to North Macedonia

Manageable in scale but crammed with history and nature, North Macedonia is a perfect introduction to the underexplored west Balkans

Trains no longer arrive at Belgrade’s riverside main station, at the foot of the limestone scarp that gave the white city its name. Today, the yellow stucco facade faces a gleaming new statue, eight storeys high, which dominates the forecourt where refugees, mostly from Syria, camped in the late 2010s.

Our flight-free trip from London to the Balkans has taken just 24 hours as far as Budapest, via Eurostar and the Brussels-Vienna sleeper. But now here we are, gazing across a dusty bus station at a 23-metre-high (75ft) Grand Prince Stefan Nemanja. We had expected to arrive at modern Belgrade Prokop station for the final leg to Skopje. But in 2024 no international trains are running south into Serbia, and none at all on to North Macedonia.

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