Day 23 and the long awaited Albania

It must have looked rather comical as we walked through the NARROW cobblestone streets, S2 pushing his bike with one front pannier, one rear pannier, a huge green duffle bag across the back rack that I held with one hand as I carried the Albet Heijn grocery bag, our food supply, and my purse in the other hand, while NS bumped along with her backpack and her standard 3 bags (map bag, cord bag, and toiletries bag).  We were headed to the car.  

This old town section of Ohrid was indeed picturesque, and absolutely captivating to those people from Wyoming who know wide open spaces.  Imagine no place to park on a stone path that is wide enough for about a car and a half, where any slightly wider spot is taken by a parked car.  Our car was safely in a real parking lot, atop a small hill, near a constructed overhang, seemingly built to provide more parking.

Based on his experience of parking yesterday, S2 opted to leave the bike OFF the car and follow me down the teeny, tiny streets to avoid the low hanging wires and the other low clearance places.  Thus, with me driving, slowly and deftly, he followed on the bike, until I got stopped by a car making a delivery.  It is all part of the Meditterean lifestyle.  We can't be in a hurry, there isn't enough room to be in a hurry.  I just had to wait until the delivery was finished before I could proceed.

What a great bright, sunny day!  Perfect for the latest adventure!

For years, Albania was the place no one could go.  Their border was sealed tight, and I remember stories that they only had phone connections with Greece.  They didn't want or need anyone else.  Mother Theresa might be the most famous Albanian.  When she decided to devote her life to others, she asked to go to the poorest place in the world, her own country being among the places with  'the least' of many things.

In 2006, we took the kids to Croatia.  We flew in to Zagreb from Moscow.  We spent the first night at a youth hostel.  It was a far cry from the lovely youth hostels of my first European experience in 1983.  The reviews on Trip Advisor talked about Kosovoan refugees taking up a whole floor.  I can't say that I felt it wasn't safe, but I can say it wasn't the first European youth hostel experience I wanted for my children.

Our room had 4 sets of bunk beds.  We claimed our 4 beds at one end of the room. KO lay down on the bed, and started reading the graffiti on the bottom of the bed above him.  "Know anything about Albania? Email me at ...."  It has become the measure of absurdity in our family.  Whenever we are staying in a dodgy hotel, or eating at an uninspiring restaurant, or are uncertain about how to proceed, one of the children announces, "know anything about Albania?"

Today was the day we went to Albania.  It was less than an hour outside of Ohrid that we took our place in line to leave Macedonia.  It's always a bit confusing that we have to go through immigration and customs to LEAVE one country, travel between 'no-one's land' to the next immigration and customs set up, and go through the same thing again.  On this trip, we are typically asked if we have any cigarettes or alcohol, and if all we have in the back are clothes.  This was no different...apart from being in Albania at the end of it all.

What do I know about Albania now?  

1.  Mountains - it is REALLY mountainous!  They must have some of the best road engineers in the world that are planning, designing and building incredibly smooth, easy to drive, roads up and down mountains.

2.  Car washes - if you want to get your car washed, go to Albania.  They must have more car washes per capita than any other country.  I'm not talking about high school fund raisers.  I'm talking about hoses connected to water taps at gas stations, restaurant parking lots, auto repair places, shoot, at any wide spot in the road.  I kid you note, during one 2-km stretch I bet I saw 25 car washes.  Consequently, the one Albanian word I remember is 'lavash'.

3.  Pill boxes - during their paranoid Communist time, they built something like 40,000 small, concrete enforced and covered, fortifications, with horizontal slits big enough for a gun to stick out.  My best explanation is they look like the top of a Dalex (for Dr. Who fans, who I'm finding more of as I get older).  Some were decorated with colors (now fading) and I swear one had 'Tattoo' painted across the top, and appeared to be someone's shop.

4.  Shopping Mall - Yes, Eastgate shopping mall is alive and well in Tirana.  Suddenly, all the mystique of Albania is gone.

5.  Overhead Electric lines - be careful!  They may not know about optic cables here yet.  In some places it looked like each individual apartment's connected line was making sure the building did not fall down.

6.  Road signs - they put them up BEFORE the road is finished.  Thus, our Tirana by-pass experience ended quite abruptly, literally, as in the next section of construction will have to remove several high rise apartment buildings.  AND, the road sign that pointed to our destination in Montenegro, Prague and Berlin (1907 kms) took us eventually to a dirt path.

We wanted to get through Albania and Montenegro today, so we kept moving, stopping to spend the equivalent of 8 euros (leftover Macedonian money that we changed at the border) on food .. At a supermarket and a road side fruit stall (best grapes I ever had).

Next border crossing:  We had to weave our way through MANY parked semi-trucks to find the exit point for cars.  At one point we were dutifully waiting behind a semi, the only vehicle in the lines of parked traffic, going the same direction as us.  The local, in the car behind us, communicating impatience with the car horn.  

And with that, we were through Albania.

Next up, Montenegro.  Check it out on a map ... It is not that big and also very mountainous.  Carmen seemed the happiest she had been in days, although, I was never quite sure if she would be taking us over the winding mountain roads, or through the long tunnels.  It was extremely dramatic to come out of one of those tunnels and find ourselves face-to-face, so to speak, with the Adriatic Sea.

There was no mistake, we were looking at all things Mediterranean - the sea, the air, the houses and hotels, the food at the road side stalls, the flowering plants that line the roadways, just growing wild!  A big difference for me, were this incredibly high mountains jutting out of the sea, making the road really cling to the side of the mountain, requiring extra concentration and certainty of where and when to pull off, because you were either going to plunge down (if you went left) or climb an incredibly steep drive (if you turned right).  Add to this, a HUGE dark cloud gathering on these mountains, and we knew our idea of getting to Croatia today had to be abandoned.

Not a problem, we needed to learn more about Montenegro anyway.  As I checked The Kangaroo Hotel for an room (no luck), the skies opened up and it began raining, not cats and dogs, but lions and tigers and bears (oh my) and there might have been a giraffe or 12 as well.  We were trying to navigate these narrow roads, full of tourists without umbrellas and cars wanting to get to destinations quickly, while the city's drainage system, or lack thereof, was showing just how effectively it did not work.  Despite the umbrella, I found nothing after more than 5 inquiries (again, a country putting up, signs to something, I this case, hotels, before they are finished), I was totally drenched, and the rising waters had me nervous about the potential damage to the car's engine.  S2, the driver, seemed in total shock, and I decided we had to get out of this town, despite this storm and the impending darkness.

We ended up in an apartment in the old town part of Kotor.  For me, it was a relief to see my family safe, dry, and warm.  I knew the morning would probably bring a "where are we?" In more ways than one.

That incredibly sunny morning seemed a long time ago.