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Published: April 16th 2011
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With the Kosova Constitution Day holiday, Deb, Jane, Cate, and I decided to be adventurous, rent a car, and drive to Budva, Montenegro for some sun, sand, and seafood. Since all the vehicles here, or the majority at any rate, are manual instead of automatic, this gave us pause, but, luckily for us, Cate is an expert stick-shift driver. We cruised out of Prishtina right after school on Friday the 8th and headed south. We made it through Kosova fine, but ran into trouble almost as soon as we entered Albania. Imagine that you are going on a road trip. You have your map, snacks, clothes for the weekend. Your car is full or friends and laughter. Every time the road turns or splits or divides you see, as you would expect, road signs telling you where to go and maybe even how far it is from where you are now. In Albania, this is not the case. Road signs are limited to say the least, nonexistent might even describe them better. We came to our first divide. The sign (one of the few we saw) pointed to Tirana, to which we knew we didn't want to go, so of course
we didn't turn. A half hour later, after getting thoroughly lost in Kukes and asking directions from petrol station workers - none of whom spoke English, only Italian and Albanian - we were on the road to Tirana and the turn-off that would lead to Shkoder and eventually Montenegro. Albania driving did not really improve for us during the weekend. We mostly saw bunkers - where it seems that money that should have been spent on road signs was used - that a former leader of Albania built everywhere to protect the people from nuclear attacks. There are estimates between 60,000 and 700,000 of these bunkers spread across the country. Some poor farmers have 7 or 8 cutting right across their fields. Many that we saw had been turned into chicken coops or had hay piled atop them or had trees sprouting from them. We stayed the night in Shkoder at a very cheap hotel - about 12 euros total for dinner, a room, and breakfast per person - and were glad to be heading on to Montenegro on Saturday morning. Unfortunately, getting out of Shkoder proved to be just as tricky as getting to it. One of the main
routes was under construction the entire way to the border, and of course, this was the only route that we could find. Thankfully, the driving got slightly easier once we entered Montenegro, though we still felt there was a lack of road signs.
Once we navigated our way down to the coast, the view was spectacular. We stopped briefly in Petrovac to stretch our legs and wander on the shore. We found many interesting rocks and sea glass. We then continued on to Sveti Stefan. What was once a monastery, and has become a hotel, was on a slight strip of land and looked very picturesque. Unfortunately, they were remodeling and we were "forbidden" to go out to it as we were not guests. To be a guest you have to be mega rich since one night during the off-season is a mere 600 and some odd euros. We ate lunch at a restaurant that overlooked the sea and the monastery/hotel. The food was excellent and the view could not be matched. After lunch, we continued on to Budva, managed, with some help from the Tourist Information office to find out apartment/hotel that we were staying in, and then we
walked down to the shore and the old town. While it was peaceful enough in the off-season, it would be horribly crowded during season since Budva has a beautiful coastline and probably near a mile of beach, and, of course, restaurants aplenty all along it. We admired the scenery, especially since it was trash free, and wandered into the old town. With very Venetian-like streets, it was easy to get turned around, but it was quite small and all walled in. I saw my first sports store in months and was horribly disappointed when they had no shoes in my side. As evening closed in, we made our way back across the beach and uphill to our lodgings where we had a delightful picnic type dinner before crawling, exhausted, into bed.
The next day was another lazy one which we spent along the shore and in the old town. We breakfasted at the Old Fisherman's Pub before heading into the old town. We found the Budva museum, which had wonderful specimens of ancient Roman glass, pottery, and jewelry. After the museum, we climbed up on the city walls which, unfortunately, smelled of urine as people had used the turrets as
water closets. We also saw the library within the old city's citadel. It had some very interesting, and depressing, titles - such as "A Boy Scout in the Balkans" and "An English Girl in Serbia". I feel they would have been very interesting reads. We ate lunch at one of the beachside restaurants and had excellent shrimp and some questionable fish. We ended the day again with a picnic dinner at our hotel.
After two peaceful and relaxing days in Budva, our drive the next day was anything but. In Shkoder, lack of roadsigns once again proved our downfall. 35 kilometers later we made it to the A1 and were headed out of Albania. Then we found that Kosova is nearly as lacking in roadsigns as Albania and once again resorted to asking petrol station workers, who, thankfully, mostly spoke English. Long after our expected time, we arrived back in Prishtina, dropped off the car, found dinner, and made our ways home to prepare for school the next day.
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