meamop

HI all!

I am flying into DBV and plan to rent a car to travel to Montenegro for 5 days. (I have already visited Croatia and love it!) I have two questions:

1. Is it possible to purchase a SIM card at the Dubrovnik airport to use in Montenegro? Or do I need to wait until I am in Montenegro to buy a SIM card to use in that country?

2. I am renting a car in Croatia but using the car mostly in Montenegro. Has anyone done this before? Any issues? I plan to notify the rental car company of my plans.

Thanks!

Andrew

I drove through Croatia and Bosnia in May 2015 with a car rented in Croatia. I also drove from Dubrovnik to Kotor for a few days. Driving in Montenegro was easy enough. FYI, if you want to avoid a busy border crossing at Dubrovnik (if you will cross at a busy time), look for the Konfin border crossing (google it). That crossing is a little bit of a detour, but tour buses can't use it, so it doesn't get backed up like the main crossing can. I had to wait five minutes to cross at the tiny Konfin crossing because the guard on the Croatia side was on his phone for five minutes - no one in front of me!

You do need to notify the car company NOW though to make sure you get a car with a "green card" (insurance card, sometimes called a "cross border card,") to drive the car out of Croatia. In 2009, the first time I rented a car in Croatia, I had forgotten to do that, and I was driving to Bosnia on the trip. Luckily, the only car they had left happened to have the green card and I was OK.

At that time (I rented with Sixt in 2009), there was no extra charge to cross the border, but there may be a charge now depending on the car company. I think I paid 40 euros including VAT to cross the border (out of the EU) in 2015 when I rented with Oryx. You NEED that green card or you won't get past the border crossing! They do check it - mine was checked several times (to make sure the car isn't stolen).

Andrew

As for the SIM: I was using T-Mobile in 2015 so I didn't need one for Croatia (free international data roaming in many countries). But I needed one for Montenegro (T-Mobile US didn't cover free roaming Montenegro in 2015 but seems like they do now), so I simply bought a SIM at the T-Mobile store in Kotor, a data-only SIM that cost like 5 euros for 1GB of data, I think.

You might find a SIM card at DBV when you arrive, not sure (I picked up a car there but haven't actually been in the terminal). But you need to make sure the SIM will actually work in Montenegro - it may not. Montenegro is not in the EU yet (even though they are on the Euro currency), and SIM cards don't have automatic roaming between countries. Some roam for extra fees; some can't roam at all. You might just do what I did and buy a SIM once you get to Montenegro, if you will spend most of your time there.

I found this Wiki helpful for other countries:

http://prepaid-data-sim-card.wikia.com/wiki/Montenegro

meamop

Thanks Andrews! This is incredibly helpful. I notified the rental car company that I will be traveling to Montenegro and they said I could pick up the paperwork at the rental car counter and pay the fee. Now it is 50 EUR. I also plan to get a GPS device and then just wait to purchase a SIM card in Kotor.

Thanks again for your great advice!

Andrew

If you have a smart phone and Google Maps, you can use it as a GPS without a SIM or an internet connection. All you have to do is preload the maps for the area you will be driving in.

You can try this out at home first by predownloading a map for say your home area, then putting your phone into airplane mode, then try to navigate somewhere.

It isn't perfect, but it does work. I used my phone last week to drive in Slovenia. (I had a SIM and mobile data, but I turned it off to save data.) Occasionally the phone would complain that it could not load a map, but it did not stop navigating (talking), and if I hit the back key, it would resume where it had left off. I felt confident I would not have gotten lost with just this as my GPS-type of device, though having mobile data makes it more useful, of course (real-time traffic into, etc.).