Road Metrics

I might be one of the few Croatians who regularly travel between Osijek and Kutina, a city not exactly known for being a tourism hotspot. Since my wife’s family lives there, I’m semi-regularly driving towards Kutina and trying to work out an amusing route while doing so. This time around, the route I chose is one of the best I could’ve wished for because it’s an ideal combination of straights, curves, a hairpin corner, and low traffic. Basically, it’s what dreams are made of.

We started in Kutina, driving east towards Lipik, a very famous Croatian spa town with close ties to 19th century nobility and health tourism. The road between Kutina and Lipik is moderately twisty and takes you through many very small villages that sometimes just have a few houses on the side of the road, and is a great warmup for what’s to come. After leaving Lipik and Pakrac you’ll be greeted with some of the best fast roads you can find for miles – the Požega-Slavonia county is known for its hills and mountains, so that’s no surprise. What does come as a surprise is the quality of asphalt, which I did not expect. After around half an hour, you’ll come to the outskirts of Požega, the region’s capital, but we won’t go near it yet.

The villages and towns north of Požega are known for their wines. Kutjevo Winery, for example, is the oldes continuously operating winery in Croatia, founded in 1232.

Driving it in the fall makes the most out of the scenery, since most of the leaves on the trees will change to browns and golds, making October the ideal month to explore this hidden gem of a route. Out of all the routes I’ve driven in Croatia, this one might be the most interesting due to the amount of things to do on it. There’s dozens of villages and several notable towns on the route, and they offer a very wide range of things to do, eat and drink. Don’t sleep on this one!