Balkan Holidays

Balkan Holidays

Holidays in the Balkans are often an idea for people. Many tourists visit the Balkans because they want to see beaches, or the mountains or the historic cities, and different cultures of the region. There are varies varities of Balkan culture. With a rich history for the region. Many want to vist the area to see the culture, the entertainment, the sports or historic events of the area. Some may want a luxury or cheap vacation in the region.

The Balkans is the historical name of a geographic region of southeastern Europe. The region takes its name from the Balkan Mountains, which run through the centre of Bulgaria into eastern Serbia. The ancient Greek name for the Balkan Peninsula was the "Peninsula of Haemus”.

The Balkans are adjoined by water on three sides: the Black Sea to the east and branches of the Mediterranean Sea to the south and west (including the Adriatic, Ionian, Aegean, and Marmara seas).

The identity of the Balkans is dominated by its geographical position; historically the area was known as a crossroads of various cultures. It has been a juncture between the Latin and Greek bodies of the Roman Empire, the destination of a massive influx of pagan Slavs, an area where Orthodox and Catholic Christianity met, as well as the meeting point between Islam and Christianity.

The Balkans today is a very diverse ethno-linguistic region, being home to multiple Slavic, Romance, and Turkic languages, as well as Greek, Albanian, and others. Through its history many other ethnic groups with their own languages lived in the area, among them Thracians, Illyrians, Romans, Pechenegs, Cumans, Avars, Celts, Germans, and various Germanic tribes.

Possibly the historical event that left the biggest mark on the collective memories of the peoples of the Balkans was the expansion and later fall of the Ottoman Empire. Many people in the Balkans and Carpathians place their greatest folk heroes in the era of either the onslaught or the retreat of the Ottoman Empire. For Croats, Nikola Šubic' Zrinski and Petar Kružic', for Serbs, Miloš Obilic', for Albanians, Skanderbeg, for ethnic Macedonians, Nikola Karev, for Bosniaks, Husein Gradašc(evic' for Bulgarians, Vasil Levski, and for Moldovans, Stefan Cel Mare.

The region takes its name from the Balkan mountain range in Bulgaria (from the Turkish balkan meaning "a chain of wooded mountains"). The name is still preserved in Central Asia where there exist the Balkan Mountains and the Balkan Province of Turkmenistan. On a larger scale, one long continuous chain of mountains crosses the region in the form of a reversed letter S, from the Carpathians south to the Balkan range proper, before it marches away east into Anatolian Turkey. On the west coast, an offshoot of the Dinaric Alps follows the coast south through Dalmatia and Albania, crosses Greece and continues into the sea in the form of various islands. The word was based on Turkish balakan 'stone, cliff', which confirms the pure 'technical' meaning of the term. The mountain range that runs across Bulgaria from west to east (Stara Planina) is still commonly known as the Balkan Mountains.

In pre-classical and classical antiquity, this region was home to Greeks, Illyrians, Paeonians, Thracians, Dacians and other ancient groups. Later the Roman Empire conquered most of the region and spread Roman culture and the Latin language but significant parts still remained under classical Greek influence. During the Middle Ages, the Balkans became the stage for a series of wars between the Byzantine, Bulgarian and Serbian Empires.

By the end of the 16th century, the Ottoman Empire became the controlling force in the region, although it was centered around Anatolia. In the past 550 years, because of the frequent Ottoman wars in Europe fought in and around the Balkans, and the comparative Ottoman isolation from the mainstream of economic advance (reflecting the shift of Europe's commercial and political centre of gravity towards the Atlantic), the Balkans has been the least developed part of Europe.

The Balkan nations began to regain their independence in the 19th century (Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria, Montenegro), and in 1912-1913 a Balkan League reduced Turkey's territory to its present extent in the Balkan Wars. The First World War was sparked in 1914 by the assassination in Sarajevo (the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina) of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria.

The northern border of the Balkan peninsula is usually considered to be the line formed by the Danube, Sava and Kupa rivers and a segment connecting the spring of the Kupa with the Kvarner Bay.

Some other definitions of the northern border of the Balkans have been proposed:

the line Danube - Sava - Krka River - Postojnska Vrata - Vipava River - Soc(a
the line Danube - Sava - Ljubljansko Polje - Idrijca - Soc(a
the line Dniester - Timis,oara - Zagreb - Triglav
the line Trieste - Odessa (Trieste-Odessa line)
the line Bay of Trieste - Ljubljana - Sava - Danube

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