I spent two weeks backpacking through southeastern Europe a few years back and I still think about it more than trips that cost five times as much. The Balkans will do that to you. You show up expecting a cheaper version of western Europe and you leave realizing it's just a different thing entirely, with its own rhythm and its own priorities and food that ruins you for everything else.

A recent guide over on MSN runs through some of the highlights across the region, and it's worth a read if you've been Balkans-curious but didn't know where to start. I'll add my own two cents from the ground.

Mostar in Bosnia and Herzegovina is the one I tell people about first. There's this famous Ottoman bridge, the Stari Most, arcing over the Neretva River in a way that doesn't look real. Young guys leap off it into the freezing water below for tips, which is either brave or insane depending on your tolerance for adrenaline. I watched for forty minutes and never once felt the urge to join them. The old town is small and walkable and you can get cevapi, these little grilled meat sausages stuffed into flatbread with raw onion, for practically nothing. I ate them twice in one day and have zero regrets.

Kotor in Montenegro is another stunner. It's a walled coastal town wedged between mountains and a bay so blue it looks edited. The hike up to the fortress is brutal in summer heat, somewhere around 1,300 steps, and I did it at noon like an absolute fool. Go early. Go at six in the morning if you can manage it. You'll get the view to yourself and you won't feel like you're melting into the stone.

And then there's the food. My friend Marco over in our Food section would lose his mind in the Balkans. You've got burek everywhere, which is this flaky pastry stuffed with meat or cheese or spinach, and it costs maybe one or two euros from a bakery. It's the ultimate travel food. You eat it walking, you eat it on a bus, you eat it standing outside a shop at midnight because the bakery is still open and you're still hungry. Every country has its own version and every version is correct.

I'll leave Albania underdeveloped here, not because it isn't worth your time but because I want you to discover it the way I did, which was by accident when a bus I was on went somewhere I didn't plan for. Best wrong turn of my life.

The whole region is cheap, genuinely cheap, not "cheap for Europe" cheap. Guesthouses for 20 euros. Meals that feel like feasts for under 10. Buses between countries that cost less than an Uber across town. The infrastructure isn't always seamless and sometimes the wifi drops and sometimes the bus is an hour late and nobody speaks English and you point at things and smile. That's the tradeoff. You get raw, beautiful, unforgettable places before they get polished smooth.

Where would you go first? Every place in the Balkans has something, and the something is different every time.