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I don't want to sound alarmist, to exaggerate the risks of something or to teach you guys to suck eggs but... yeah, history plays a part in that corner of Europe and it's mostly recent history, i.e. within living memory. There's still bullet holes in the walls and minefields (kindly marked by USAID maps by the way!). My first trip to the Balkans was with an Italian-plated van for a basketball tournament in Zagreb where we got utterly thrashed (as normal). Our van was keyed thoroughly and it wasn't the other teams, it happened downtown in a fairly leafy part of town. As you drive through Bosnia an easy way to gauge in which canton you're in is to look at the street signs: those in Cyrillic will be crossed out in the Croatian or Bosniak areas, viceversa for Srpska. Personally, I wouldn't drive an Albanian-plated car into Serbia, or viceversa for that matter. I don't mean to say you risk your life, God forbid, but if you can avoid unnecessary attention... why not?

Itinerary-wise, I wouldn't try to drive up from Albania: too many frontiers, you're mixing EU and non-EU countries, just too much hassle. My last trip started off in Hungary and then we drove into Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and back. If I were you I'd fly into, say, Austria and from there go down to Slovenia (Ljubljana is beautiful), Sarajevo, Mostar and Croatia. On the latter I know Dubrovnik gets great press, I found it a bit 'meh', but surely better than Zara/Zadar. There's plenty to do and see on that coast, though. Zagreb, on the other hand, was quite an interesting discovery!

Albania is nice and on the up, but crossing there into Kosovo and thence into Serbia is not something I'd do right now. Of Macedonia I only know Skopje which, though perfectly acceptable, is not someplace I'd go out of my way for; Belgrade is interesting and very lively although I'd consider it as part of another tour, one of Bulgaria and Romania. As for Montenegro... Never been there, so can't say.