The paper discusses different approaches to foreign culture in the works of four Balkan writers: Ismail Kadare, Milorad Pavi, Yordan Radichkov and Jadranka Vladova in the context of the works of the English traveller, Edith Durham. It studies the specific function of travel and exploration and the use of different languages (dictionaries) as a reflection of the intercultural (non)translatability. Providing an early, nonfictional Western perspective on the Balkans, Durham's accounts could contextualise the message of Kadare's "The File on H". Similarly to Kadare, Radichkov and Pavi regard the encounter between two cultures as a syncopal dialogue. In contrast to Radichkov, Kadare and Pavi, Vladova believes that the foreign is not strange, and that the imbalance in the dialogue between east and west could be avoided. The dictionary, a tool of intercultural discourse, structures Pavic's "Dictionary of the Khazars", a reservoir of reshaped pieces of past knowledge which question Balkan cultural identities. The Balkan intercultural narrative has gradually changed from an exploration that questions the (non)translatability of cultures to an intercultural dialogue, in which the classical image of the traveller has been replaced by e-mail writers, whose virtual voices make them ideal interlocutors in a globalising world. (Contains 2 notes.)