I remember those days back in Denver, land of wide streets and ample parking, like a distant dream. “Let’s rent a car and drive all over the Balkans! We can visit all of these tiny towns and hike and sip wine at vineyards and discover secret villages! Rick would be proud!” Ah, yes. The planning stages, when reality is far away and my eyes are dazzled by rolling hills and tiny seaside burgs. I love road trips, and of course I’m not alone. Loving a good drive is like loving the beach or puppies: a universal human experience. The freedom is intoxicating. As an American and a Westerner, long car drives are part of our blood. I have so many fond memories of driving with my dad all over the back roads of the West, taking turns whenever his heart desired, pulling over for photos and burgers, and having nothing in front of us except highway, sky and desert. Can you blame me for wanting to transfer that feeling to Europe? And once I found a sweet deal on Kayak to rent a manual transmission car for a month for less than three hundred bucks, I was sold hook, line, and sinker.

However, the reality of driving in Croatia and Bosnia soon spiked my blood pressure and resulted in a permanent state of teeth grinding. Ben had it just as bad, navigating me through 20-syllable street names and specifying which of the eight exits in the traffic circle to take. By the time we got into the minuscule garage space in our Sarajevo Air BnB, after a PacMan esque-dance through a parking lot (Back! Forward! Back a foot! Angle reverse! 3 point turn! 8 point turn!), we were DONE with our poor little rental.

As in, “can we convince the Enterprise people to take this thing back right now?” Answer: no, unless we wanted to pay hundreds in the “drop off in a different country” fee. After going to the market downstairs to buy a bottle of wine (me) and a bottle of whiskey (Ben), we decided that pursuing the five additional stops on our planned agenda was just too potentially traumatic . We rebooked places in Dubrovnik and Rovinj with ample parking spots and canceled the rest. We will just have to see Kosovo another time. WITHOUT a rental car. #neveragain

The remaining 2 weeks with our rental were still stressful but uneventful. We didn’t crash, scratch, or otherwise damage the vehicle. We weren’t pulled over or robbed. But we were constantly on edge (more than once I woke up in the middle of the night, imagining that I was hearing our car alarm), and turning in the key at the Zagreb airport was a moment of pure joy and freedom. I literally felt lighter as we walked away from the car with only my backpack on my shoulders.

So here are my few pros and many cons of renting a car in a foreign country. Ultimately, I would not do this again (this is “when hell freezes over” kind of no): the stress, cost (both financial and environmental), and reality of driving and parking in Europe far outweighed the benefits. My experience is specific to Eastern Europe, because we rented a car way back in Poland as well as our time in the Balkans. However, I can’t imagine that our experience would be that different than other places in Europe, and I can’t even fathom renting a car in Asia or Africa.

PROS

Views: The scenery we were able to experience was stunning. The rolling autumnal hills outside of Zagreb, the craggy mountains in Bosnia, the peaks of the Adriatic as we approached Dubrovnik, and the perfect, tiny hill towns in Istria would not have been possible to see without our wheels.

Access to Nature: When we were in Lake Plitvice, I was so thankful to have our own car, especially when I saw loads of busses exhaling their passengers all at the same time to clog the paths and trails. Because we could choose our arrival and departure time, we were able to get to the park before most of the tours showed up, resulting in some rare solitude in this spectacularly popular place. In Istria, we were able to access the remote Saint Simeon’s trail, which was really nice for the first half…it was only the death march back up to the car that nearly did me in.  

Nice roads in the Balkans: I was worried about potholes, crumbling bridges, and dirt lanes into nowhere, but I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the roads in Croatia and Bosnia. Even the back roads were well-maintained pavement or gravel, and the highways were modern and slick. No issues there.

Carrying your gigantic backpack in a car > carrying your gigantic backpack on your spine: Obviously, this is a huge advantage to the car. Instead of hauling our backpacks and daypacks, turtle style, all over bus terminals and train stations, we could just sling our heavy bags into the backseat and take off. My vertebrae were thankful.

Groceries: Similarly, since we weren’t carrying everything by hand, we could carry around a tote of grocery staples like oil, flour, salt, sugar, instant coffee, butter, and snacks to each destination. This meant we cooked a lot more and attempted more complicated dishes (hey, leek fritters!) since we weren’t rebuying ingredients in each location.

Extremely chill rental agents: I had read MANY horror stories on the blogosphere about crooked rental agents, overzealously attributing each hair-sized scratch to the customer and charging exorbitant and fake fees and fine. I was PREPARED for this malarkey, clutching my phone with Google Translate at the ready. However, our pickup and dropoff agents for both of our rentals were laughably casual. Each time, I experienced no upsell on insurance or upgrades, and upon return the car received a quick glance before telling us everything was okay. In Poland, we literally handed the keys over to a guy in a random hotel parking lot because the agent the day before said “I have a guy, take the car to him.” We used Sixt and Enterprise, and couldn’t have been more pleased with the customer service experience.

CONS

Parking in European cities: I do not, I repeat do NOT, understand how Europeans deal with this. Parking was, every time, without fail, incredibly confusing and stressful. We booked Air BnBs with dedicated parking spots, but this often meant inching into spaces with little room on the sides while being carefully watched by the proprietor and curious pedestrians–and everyone knows parking with an audience is more fun. In Sarajevo, we had to drive up ONTO onto a busy sidewalk into a courtyard parking area to access the garage. I thought I would have a heart attack.

Driving through tiny towns: I avoided parking in tiny towns whenever possible (which meant we didn’t see the sea organ in Zadar, opting for a McDonalds with a spacious parking lot instead. Whoops.), but sometimes driving through them was unavoidable. The size of the road would suddenly constrict and become impossibly narrow, the pedestrians would multiply and spill off the sidewalk into the road, scooters would start appearing like obnoxious mosquitos buzzing around, and the angles and steepness of the streets made me feel like I was driving around Mt. Everest. I think one corner I drove three times in Sarajevo had an angle that was about 20 degrees, on a slope.

Less than desirable locations for accommodations: Because we had to book places with parking spots, we ended up with more expensive and less desirable Air BnBs in some spots. This was most apparent In Dubrovnik, where we ended up staying a miserable half hour hike from Old Town just to ensure a parking spot. Without a car, I would have never booked that place.  

The other drivers: Oh boy. I found that my fellow drivers in the Balkans weren’t necessarily honkers, but they were the worst tailgaters I’ve ever experienced. From Sarajevo to Dubrovnik to Zagreb, from highways to country roads, no matter how fast I was going, it was never enough. I would always find someone right behind me, practically kissing the bumper I was so careful to keep scratch free. At best it was a cultural experience, at worst it was a constant annoyance.

Driving as a woman: I’m going to chalk this up to a cultural experience, but I noticed right away that there were very few female drivers in the Balkans. City, rural, it didn’t matter, I just didn’t see women behind the wheel. Since we saved a ton of money by renting a stickshift and not adding a second driver, I did all of the driving. I hate to engage in gendered language, but the drivers also seemed more aggressive, particularly in the Serbian Republika Srpska section of Bosnia, where I didn’t see a single other female driver. Driving there was the only time I felt threatened and a little unsafe. I was gripping that steering wheel hard! I also noticed that whenever we met someone (like the Air BnB owners), they commented on the fact that I was driving instead of Ben. Annoying. 

One lane wonders: It was rare to find a road that was more than one lane, even on the highways. This resulted in the excessive tailgating I mentioned above, and also angry Croatians, Bosnians, and Serbians roaring around me at every chance. We also occasionally got stuck behind a tractor or other farm vehicle, and I had to veer into the other lane to speed around them, resulting in some white knuckle driving and gunning the not-powerful engine of our Opel Corsica.  

Tolls: I naively never even considered this, but the tolls in Croatia from Dubrovnik to Istria were shockingly expensive and destroyed any imaginative “savings” I used to justify the car rental in the first place. Driving the 500 miles from Dubrovnik to Rovinj to Zagreb (a similar distance to the Denver–>Salt Lake drive), we racked up $82 in tolls in about six hours. Ouch.

Gas prices: Of course, the gas prices in Europe are much higher, but since we were renting a tiny car we figured this wouldn’t be too bad. Well, that was dumb. Half a tank cost about $50 each time, not including the delightful snacks I found at Eastern European gas stations.

Global warming: The reason that gas prices and toll prices are so high in Europe is such a good one: the governments are making driving more costly in the face of the ever looming threat of global warming. The very day we were driving hundreds of miles from Dubrovnik to Rovinj, the devastating U.N. report was released about global warming. While our president didn’t seem to GAF about that, Ben and I both felt extremely guilty for needlessly expelling carbon into the air when we could have been taking a more eco-friendly train. Especially in a continent when the public transit is incredible, renting a car is a needless expense both to the wallet and the planet.

Constant worry: I don’t have kids, yet that rental car felt like an unwelcome infant in our family. I was constantly worried about it. Was it getting scratched? When I maneuvered into an impossible parking space, was I ripping things out from under it? Was it getting broken into this minute? Is that it’s car alarm? I hated worrying about the car when I should have been worrying about where to find the next delicious street food.