Balkans: update

In my last blog, I quickly scrawled that our travel plans changed somewhat suddenly and we returned home. Thankfully, modern medicine and excellent hospital care have seen our daughter recover well from a nasty bacterial infection.

Travel is full of firsts and this was our first time dealing with illness on the home front whilst overseas. I can tell you that it’s an extremely easy decision to fly home. An avalanche of phone calls, messages and video links just doesn’t cut it.

The experience left its mark though, with off the Richter scale empathy for those whose families live afar and are forced to adopt measures to tide them over family crises. Our friends have money put aside for a return overseas airfare … just in case. We were lucky; our travel insurance kicked in, but travel insurance can’t be called upon for every single unpredictable scenario.

We’ve resumed our trip, appreciating that change is definitely the constant when you travel. I’ve rejigged our itinerary using my go-to sites: Skyscanner, booking.com, rome2rio, flixbus and maninseat61. Voila! I now have flights into Sofia Bulgaria, a hotel room for three nights and bus tickets to take us onto Bucharest Romania.

All’s good.