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So I've quickly come to find out that Rome2Rio is terrible when it comes to Eastern Europe and the Balkans.

Here's some examples:

  • When trying to go from Levoča (Slovakia) to Lviv (Ukraine), R2R suggested an insane series of 5 trains, or a series of 4 buses (that included a bus that only runs monthly.) There was, in fact, a single direct train as well as a direct bus. - See Question.
  • When trying to go from Dubrovnik (Croatia) to Trebinje (Bosnia), R2R is telling me the only way is a 7-hour, 2-bus odyssey via Montenegro. I know for a fact there's a 45-minute daily direct bus.

Furthermore, when looking at suggested bus routes that it gave me in Slovenia, I found that R2R was linking to schedules that were 4 years old.

So I've given up with Rome2Rio in this part of the world. Are there any route planning websites that are reasonably up-to-date for this region? Or is it still a matter of "use google" and "Site X is great for Croatia, Site Y works for Czech/Slovakia" etc?

There is a question about Rome2Rio alternatives here: Are there other sites such as Rome2Rio?. That question offers three alternatives:

  • GoEuro.com - No route found between Dubrovnik and Trebinje
  • Waymate.de - Unable to find Trebinje as a destination
  • RouteRank.com - No route found between Dubrovnik and Trebinje

So Rome2Rio is already a superior choice to these three since it did suggest a [terrible] route to get between these places.

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  • I haven't experienced anywhere where rome2rio is complete enough to be useful. I consider it a fun toy but never use it for any serious planning purposes. Trains may be included in HAFAS, in which case you can use bahn.de. HAFAS is quite complete near Germany but gets less complete farther out, and buses are only included in some countries. I expect there exists no reliable international travel planning site as there are too many different independent bus companies to take into account.
    – gerrit
    Nov 14, 2016 at 11:03
  • I liked using R2R as a planning tool as far as knowing that there's a direct bus route, for example, between city A and city B, or if there's some transit hub that I should be routing myself through instead. In that regard it was relatively accurate in the Baltic states, and also the UK.
    – Roddy of the Frozen Peas
    Nov 14, 2016 at 14:52
  • A rome2rio developer used to hang aroung on TSE. Contact them with this issue and they'll probably get it solved hastily.
    – JoErNanO ♦
    Nov 15, 2016 at 0:36
  • I doubt it's something r2r could fix in any sort of rapid fashion. I mean, I'll be sure to reach out but I kind of need alternatives in a more timely fashion. (I don't plan on cooling my heels in Bosnia while they fix their site....)
    – Roddy of the Frozen Peas
    Nov 15, 2016 at 7:26

1 Answer 1

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No, there is no such universal website. The simple reason is that far from everything is computerized and even if it is, the infrastructure is often so primitive it's not linked to any search engines. In your specific case you've got two options:

  1. Estimate the driving time on Google Maps and plan to grab a taxi instead of a bus.

  2. Use GetByBus to find the schedule of this particular bus. However it in turn fails to find the Levoča to Lviv route, which shows it's far from universal.

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  • As far as I can tell, get by bus is a Croatian site. It's entirely accurate for routes that go through Croatia, but otherwise of rapidly diminishing use thst further away you go.
    – Roddy of the Frozen Peas
    Nov 15, 2016 at 8:07
  • BalkanViator.com seems to be a decent alternative for the Balkan states in the meantime.
    – Roddy of the Frozen Peas
    Nov 15, 2016 at 8:08
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    I was going to suggest Balkanviator. It's not exhaustive, but it displays many routes Getbybus doesn't, and I've found it especially better for local/lower-traffic routes (the tradeoff is that it's just a database, while Getbybus has some useful commentary/suggestions for some routes). My setup has been Balkanviator + bahn.de + Getbybus + Google search for "[place A] to [place B]"
    – Urbana
    Nov 15, 2016 at 8:29

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