Driving from Germany to Turkey and back
 

We are planning on taking european delivery on a car in Munich later this year. We would like to drive to Turkey to visit friends there. Has anyone ever had any experience with this? Thank you for any information.

BTDT, about 10 years ago. Drove down through Switzerland to Italy, caught a ferry at Ancona to Patra (great boat!), drove across to Athens and stayed a half week. Then continued to Istanbul (most fascinating city on the planet) and stayed a half week . Then headed up through Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, Poland, Czech Republic, and back to Germany. That was about one month on the road.

Make sure you have insurance for the countries you are passing through. Do you have any specific questions?

My experience was in 1966. We drove from Stuttgart all the way to the Greece-Bulgaria border - but not onto Turkey, as we had a friend to visit in Ploesti in Rumania, so that's where we went.

I would certainly take the route we took then again: autobahns down through Villach in Austria and Bled in Slovenia to Ljubljana, and on to Rijeka. From here follow the coast, (but doing a side trip to the Plitvice lakes) all the way down to Dubrovnik.

From here go up through Pec, Pristina, Skopje (we went off through Macedonia to southern Greece back then) and enter Bulgaria at Kjustendil so you get to visit the Rila monastery. From here work your way over to Plovdiv and then the autobahn takes you in to Istanbul.

We had some unimaginably bad roads to negotiate back then - one of us drove, the other cleared rocks and other impedimenta off the track - you won't find that these days, but just take it easy on the less well-maintained parts and you'll get through fine.

It's a really great trip, the sort you do once in your lifetime I think, so enjoy.

Harzer