We weren’t too sure what to expect from Albania. Lonely
Planet said it was one of the top ten places to visit this year but they also
said that about Tunisia. Albania was cut off from the rest of the world for
almost 50 years under the paranoid dictator Enver Hoxha and then basically run
by organised crime for the following 10 years till some relative normality
arrived in the early 2000’s. Our first real taste of Albania was sitting on the
edge of a roundabout in Shrokdra fresh off the bus from Montenegro. While most
of the cars were going round the roundabout in the right direction, motorbikes,
bicycles and pedestrians all took the shortest route across. It was rather
chaotic but it all worked. Organised chaos – a fairly good description for
Albania as a whole.
Arriving in the capital Tirana we were dumped on a street
corner with no idea of where we were. We tried looking at the map in our guide
book but with no street signs or landmarks around this proved difficult. Next
off we tried asking passersby but speaking no Albanian this proved difficult
too. We finally found someone who spoke some English but actually wasn’t much
help as he was baffled by our map (I don’t think Albanians have seen many
maps). He did ask a taxi driver if he could take us to our hostel but the taxi
driver had no idea where the hostels street was so no help either. Finally we
just asked what direction the centre of town was and started walking in the
hope we would find ourselves. It ended up being quite a long walk, in the heat,
with heavy packs, across ripped up streets, in chaotic traffic, but we
eventually made it.
We spent a day wandering around Tirana. The centre of the
city is quite a mess as Skanderberg square and surrounding streets are being rejuvenated.
All the pavements have been dug up so pedestrians had to walk on the street in
amongst the traffic. We managed to navigate our way around the construction and
traffic into the National Museum. Possibly the quietest museum I’ve ever been
to, apart from a couple of other tourists and several chain smoking ladies
supervising each floor we were by ourselves. We wandered our way up through the
floors progressing through Albania history only to find it end in 1945. All
displays and references to the Enver Hoxha years have been removed which is a
little disappointing for curious tourists but fairly understandable given the
general publics’ embarrassment of the period. We continued to wander the city
finding discarded communist statues in a carpark, a flash cafe where we sat out
a thunderstorm and the revolving restaurant which had seen better days but
still offered fine views and was a good escape from the chaos several falls
below.
The next morning we were off to the train station to catch
the train to Vlora. Taking the train was not the fastest or nicest way to
travel to our intended destination. In fact the taxi driver tried to tell us
that the bus to Vlora didn’t leave from the train station – obviously not
considering we might actually want to take a train, but I had heard a lot about
Albanian trains being an experience in themselves and was keen to take at least
one while in Albania. At first sight the Tirana train station didn’t inspire
much confidence. Hand written departure board, Grass growing between the
cracks, and a couple of smashed up carriages. We bought our tickets ($3 for a 7
hour trip) and headed down the platform to the train that looked like it might
actually work and boarded the better looking of the two carriages (ie only half
its windows were smashed). We found an empty cabin but were almost immediately joined
by the curious locals all wanting to know where we were from and why we were
visiting Albania and where we were going. Soon after we were adopted and looked
after for the rest of the train trip by Tomor who as far as we could work out
was a travelling salesman. Although he spoke no English and us no Albanian
through pictionary and sign language we managed to learn a lot about each
other. He found it hard to comprehend we were from the other side of the world
but was extremely happy and proud when we got him to teach us a few basic
Albanian words (he preceded to test us on them for the remainder of the trip). At
Rrogozhine we had to switch trains to the one going down a branch line to
Vlora. We were aware of this beforehand but as Rrogozhine approached it seemed
half the train came to make sure we knew, got off and got on the correct train.
The branch line train to Vlora was much quieter and we were secretly relieved
to be free of all the attention as we waved goodbye to our friends from the
other train.
There were plenty of interesting sights from the train. At
one point while leaning out the window with Tomor taking in the view we past
some people walking a large dog, but then I realised it wasn’t a dog but a bear
being walked on a chain and with no muzzle! At another point we rounded a bend
to find a flock of sheep on the line, luckily the train didn’t travel very fast
at the best of times and the shepherd got them out of way in time. Once we
passed through a thunderstorm which wouldn’t normally be a problem for a train
but as there was a lack of windows and the roof was by no means water proof the
carriage flooded, but this wasn’t a problem as the water soon poured out
through the holes in the floor.
From Vlora we were heading down to the Ionian coast. We had
been told about a place by the backpackers in Tirana where you camp in gardens
by the beach with all the equipment etc provided by the owners. It was about a 5 km walk from Dhermi (the nearest
bus stop) but it sounded really good so we decided to go for it. After getting
off the bus we set off with our big packs in the hot sun and got there about an
hour later only to find that the place wasn’t open yet and was nothing more
than an overgrown garden with a couple of shacks. Neither of us were thrilled
about having to walk back to Dhermi (especially Dusk who was already suffering
from a cold) so we decided to hitch. After a couple of cars had gone by we got
picked up by an older couple doing a food delivery run in their van. We piled
in the back in amongst crates of tomatoes, milk cartons, loaves of bread and
various other food items that were handed out as they made their deliveries
along the road. It wasn’t very comfortable but pretty unique and we weren’t
complaining.
We managed to find a basic but good hotel right on the beach
in Dhermi and the hotel manager even spoke perfect English from his time
working with Americans in Afganistan. Dhermi is still a fairly small village but has
become popular with Albania’s rich so is changing very quickly. There were only
a few other tourists and holiday makers around while we were there but judging
by the number of beach bars and beach chairs being set up for the summer season
it can obviously get rather busy. We
spent a couple of relaxing days just sitting around and swimming. The beach has
perfectly rounded white pebbles and a nice clear water but just beyond the beach are the ever present
concrete bunkers (generally filled with rubbish) and the shell of the old
communist leaders resort which is now just a big eyesore.
Travelling anywhere in Albania is never really straight
forward and generally involves a couple of furgon (minivan) rides, a bus and a
taxi transfer for even relatively short distances. However the great thing
about travelling in Albania is that if you want to get anywhere you only have
to tell someone (eg the hotel manager but sometimes even (as we did) just
someone having a coffee in cafe) your desired destination then he will take you
a taxi and tell the taxi driver who will take you to the furgon and tell the
furgon driver who will then take you to the bus and tell the bus driver and so
on till you reach your destination all without further input from you. Simple!
Berat was our next destination. It is a UNESCO world heritage
town. The old part of the town is made up of narrow streets and white plaster
buildings rising up a hillside so it almost looks like one large building with
many windows. On top of the hill sits the remains of an old castle and people
still live within the confines of the walls. The backpackers we stayed at ran a
day tour from Berat to the surrounding area. It was a pretty interesting day
out. We started by visiting an ancient monastery which was virtually the only
religious building not damaged or destroyed in communist times as it was the
place where Skanderberg (Albania’s national hero – note Skanderberg square
referred to earlier) was married. Next
stop was one of the 700,000 concrete bunkers dotting the Albanian landscape but
this one was Mums bunker. Mum turned out to be a crazy old lady who along with
her husband spent most of her time sitting in the bunker tending to a few
chickens and a cow. She was pretty happy to see us but that may have had
something to do with the raki (grape liquor) that the tour guides gave her. At
one point her husband accidentally split some raki and received a fair old
roasting from her for it. She tried to get the boys to cut her field using a
blunt old sickle but got frustrated by our poor technique and decided to teach
us how to dance Albanian style instead. We then moved on from the bunker to an
ancient roman city that was one of the most important of the time till an
earthquake diverted the river and cut the city off from sea access.
After a very sandy lunch by the beach we headed inland to
check out more bunkers. Along with thousands of bunkers Albania has plenty of
other unused military installations. Most of the hillsides around this area are
littered with old tunnels, gun placements and tank shelters. We headed off to
explore some of these but as it was a new tour the guides were exploring just
as much as us. We basically just drove around on the lookout for promising
looking concrete structures and when found went in exploring them. We found one
very extensive system with hundreds of metres of tunnels running right through
an entire hill. It was good fun wandering around seeing what we came to and at
one point we came out into a room occupied by an old Albanian man who started
yelling at us so we made a hasty retreat. Final stop was a winery which we
weren’t really expecting much from as Albania is not exactly known for its wine
but it turned out to be a really nice place, have some half decent wine and a
cute little kitten so probably the highlight of the trip for the girls.
It was time to leave Albania and head to Macedonia. Again it
wasn’t a straight forward trip. The bus we thought we could catch no longer ran
so we had to wait around for a later bus and just hope that would get us to the
next point in time to catch a furgon to the border. When the bus did turn up it
was a beat up old minivan that travelled about 40 km/h and stopped every few
minutes to pick up and drop off people. It was possibly one of the worst bus
trips we have ever had. It took over 3 hours to travel less than 100 km, was
hot and stuffy, crammed full of people (at one point there were 17 people plus
luggage squeezed into the 12 seater bus) and when the radio worked it played
bad Albanian folk music. We were actually pretty happy to leave Albania after
that trip.