Somewhere on the ferry across Komani Lake, between cliffs that looked like they had been drawn rather than formed, we realised the trip we were on would push us past a small personal marker. As a travel couple, 25 countries is where our map now stands — and four of those stamps arrived in a single August: Croatia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Montenegro and Albania, strung together on one long, hot, occasionally chaotic drive.

This is not a victory lap. Twenty-five is a modest number by travel-blogger standards, and we are fine with that. But crossing four new borders in two weeks — after years of travelling in a very different rhythm — taught us more about how we actually like to travel than the previous ten countries combined. Here is what changed.

The four stamps: how one road trip added a fifth of our map

The plan was simple on paper: fly from Poland to Croatia, pick up a rental car near Split, drive through Bosnia & Herzegovina and Montenegro down to Albania, then loop back through Croatia and home to Finland. The reality started with our outbound flight being cancelled, which cost us a full day of Croatia before we had even seen it. If you want the complete route with what we would keep and what we would change, our Balkan road trip itinerary lays it all out.

What made this trip unusual for us was the density. Four countries we had never set foot in, back to back, in roughly two weeks. We have never travelled like that before — our usual pattern is one country, taken slowly. And to be honest, we booked it half expecting to feel rushed the whole time.

We did feel rushed — but only in Croatia, and only because the airline stole a day from us. Bosnia we mostly drove through, pausing at Kravica Waterfalls late in the afternoon as the crowds were leaving, and swimming in water cold enough to make the +35°C day finally feel reasonable. Montenegro got four days, Albania got the better part of a week. That balance, it turned out, was roughly right — and reaching it by accident taught us something about planning that we will come back to.

What 25 countries as a travel couple actually feels like

Here is the honest part: neither of us remembers the exact moment we agreed to count. Between the two of us there was always a mental list — Joona’s Finnish childhood trips from Mikkeli, army and university years in Joensuu, then working life in Lapland tourism; Alla’s path from Ukraine into engineering and a life where laptops open in strange places. Somewhere along the way the shared list settled, and this August it ticked from 21 to 25 in one go.

What does it feel like? Less like an achievement, more like a photograph album getting heavier. The number itself does nothing. What the number carries is texture: we now know what a water-formed cave in Montenegro smells like compared with a lava cave in Iceland, because we have stood in both. We know how differently a Bosnian petrol station and a Finnish one handle a queue. That accumulated texture — not the count — is the thing we would actually defend.

And travelling as a couple changes the arithmetic anyway. Twenty-five countries visited together is really fifty impressions argued into one shared memory — and the compromise between them is the travel style. More on that below.

What each new country gave us (and what it asked in return)

Croatia gave us the softest landing and the hardest goodbye. Split’s architecture genuinely stunned us — walking streets where the history is not fenced off but lived in — though in August heat we lasted two or three hours in the city before surrendering and heading for the sea. The rocky beach we found near Split had some of the cleanest, warmest water of any beach we have ever swum at. What Croatia asked in return: come back in a cooler season. We intend to.

Bosnia & Herzegovina was a transit country for us, and it still managed to charm: great roads, noticeably cheap petrol and groceries compared with its neighbours, and very friendly people. Kravica Waterfalls, reached around five in the evening in a traffic jam’s aftermath, was a properly set-up holiday spot — restaurants, ice cream, and a waterfall you can swim under. What Bosnia asked in return: a working data plan, because EU roaming does not cover it — a discovery we explain in our Balkan eSIM guide.

Montenegro gave us the single best excursion of the trip — Lipa Cave, a see-it-once-in-your-lifetime kind of place — and our favourite base of the whole coast, quiet little Petrovac. It also gave us a scratched rental car, courtesy of Google Maps rerouting us onto a one-lane mountain road in high season. What Montenegro asked in return: patience, and a firm refusal to follow the app onto the “faster” small road.

Albania gave us the most. The Komani Lake ferry felt like a fjord dreamed up somewhere warmer; the Albanian Alps around Razëm fed us the best vegetable dishes of the trip; the hospitality was warm nearly everywhere. It also quietly corrected a myth we had carried in: Albania is not the “dirt cheap Balkans” of internet legend. Prices felt broadly Eastern-European, with some supermarket items at Finnish levels — though accommodation remains excellent value for what you get. What Albania asked in return: more time. Five or six days were not enough.

How our travel style has quietly changed

Looking at the first fifteen or so countries on our list, we were box-tickers like everyone else — capital city, main sights, move on. Somewhere in the last few years, and decisively on this trip, that stopped. The nights we still talk about were not in any capital: a wooden hut above Komani Lake with a star-filled sky and no light pollution, and a small coastal town where the walk to the beach took three minutes and the evening hike along the cliffs ended at a quiet cove.

Three shifts, specifically. First, we choose bases, not itineraries. In Montenegro we based in Petrovac and day-tripped to Budva, Kotor and the Sveti Stefan viewpoint, rather than repacking every night — and we would make the same choice again without hesitation. Second, we plan around our bodies now. As Lapland residents, +35°C — and a few days pushing +42°C — was our honest limit; we adopted a full siesta pattern, staying out of the midday sun between roughly 12:00 and 15:00, and we skipped a proper Albanian Alps hike because of the heat, settling happily for roadside viewpoints instead. No guilt. The mountains will still be there in October.

Third, we stopped treating setbacks as failures. A cancelled flight ate our first Croatian day; a decade ago that would have poisoned half the trip. This time we shrugged, re-sequenced, and got two good Split nights on the way home instead. The lost day even taught us a few practical lessons about cancelled flights that we suspect will pay for themselves at country thirty.

The lessons we are packing for country number 26

Some lessons from these four stamps are Balkan-specific; the useful ones are not. This is what genuinely changed in how we will travel from now on.

• The bigger road is the faster road. Navigation apps optimise for minutes, not for the width of the road or the state of your nerves. After a ten-car reversing standoff on a Montenegrin single-lane — and a scratch on the rental to remember it by — we now take the main road even when the app promises to save us twenty minutes.
• Drive like a guest. Balkan driving is simply less patient than Nordic driving: constant beeping, overtaking without signals, cars appearing from side streets. None of it is aimed at you. Go slower than you think you need to, and never take the horn personally.
• Sort your data before the border, not after. One country without EU roaming was all it took to convert us permanently to buying an eSIM before the trip rather than hunting for SIM kiosks in the heat.
• Book fewer, better beds. The two-night minimum we accidentally discovered — long enough to unpack, short enough to keep moving — produced every single favourite stay of the trip, from the lake huts to the quiet resort in the Alps.
• Budget on evidence, not folklore. “The Balkans are cheap” is a half-truth that sets you up for surprise. We broke down every euro in our real Balkan road trip costs post — the short version is: cheaper than Finland, yes; free, no.

None of this is revolutionary. But there is a difference between reading advice and paying for it with your own rental-car excess, and we have now done the paying.

The map of what comes next

People assume a country counter always points somewhere new. Ours, right now, mostly points backwards — and we think that might be the real milestone. The two firmest intentions we brought home are both returns: Albania’s mountains in a cooler season, with a week or more to actually walk the trails we could only look at from the road this time, and Split out of season, when the city can be enjoyed for more than three hours at a stretch.

Beyond that, the map is deliberately open. What we know is the shape of what we are looking for: mountains over marinas, shoulder season over peak, one country taken slowly over three taken at a sprint — unless, as with the Balkans, geography makes the sprint irresistible. Whether country 26 ends up being a new stamp or just a deeper stamp on an old one, we have stopped feeling like that distinction matters much.

If you are earlier in your own count, one piece of advice: the number is a fine excuse and a terrible goal. Chase the ferry rides and the cold waterfalls, and let the counter tick over on its own.

Frequently asked questions

Our final word from Rovaniemi

Back home, where September already smells like autumn, the four new stamps have settled into place. If you had told us the milestone trip would be remembered less for any border and more for a slow ferry, a cold waterfall swim and a plate of aubergine cooked by a family above a lake, we would have believed you — that is precisely why we travel the way we do now.

Go for the countries if the counting motivates you; it got us out the door for years and we will not pretend otherwise. Just leave enough slack in the plan for the places that do not fit on a checklist. That slack is where all four of these countries did their best work on us.