Shock and fear in Tirana

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The overnight bus from Thessaloniki wasn't the most comfortable I've ever had. Mid-night border crossing is not exactly the loveliest thing in the world as for some reason it seems that they always arrange the border to be at the perfect point to wake you up just when you were starting to have some real sleep. On the other hand, the assistant conductor had to be one of the most beautiful woman I've seen in a long time and she spoke french so I was not in the worst of company to spend a night without sleep. I had heard bad things about Albania's border officials. Apparently I'd get ripped off and they would attempt to get bribes out of me but none of that happened. I paid the 10 euros entrance fee (with a recipe) and they stamped me in. At 15 to 6, I was dropped somewhere in a city that I could only assume to be Tirana. It took me more than an hour to realize where I was (indeed it was Tirana) and to head to the cheapest hotel.

The lady at the reception looked like she hadn't changed clothes since the fall of communism and at first she didn't want to give me a room for 1000 lei which was the price that was written on her desk and insisted on 1500 but after a while I managed to get the price down. I collapsed on the bed for a few hours, finally getting some comfortable sleep. When I woke up I had a surprise. The woman at the desk had changed to one that seemed to have clothes that do not belong in a museum but I prefered the communist babushka because this one was insisting again on me paying 1500 lei now. I argued that I had already agreed to 1000 and after a few minutes of futile arguing she said "No problem, share room, No problem.". She loved to say no problem, everytime I'd enter the hotel that's how she greeted me. A bit wierd but hey, we're in Albania. I didn't care too much about sharing my room so I agreed to that and paid, I couldn't be bothered to pick up my bags.

I wandered for the street a bit, looking for the Macedonian embassy to prepare my visa. After a few hours of searching I found it only to realize that the visa would cost 53 euros, something I was not ready to pay. At around 1PM I decided to head back to my room to have a little nap.

And then IT happened.

Amid greetings of "no problem" by the receptionist I entered the room to find a 40 something albanian trucker sleeping on the door next to mine. I wasn't feeling too keen on the nap now so I lay on my bed and took my guidebook. The guy woke up and started trying to talk to me but he didn't speak much english. He took my guidebook from my hand while I was trying to explain that it was about Albania and Tirana. He got really excited and said: "Ahhh, Albania". Right after saying that, he took me by the back of the head, pushed me toward him and went for the full-blown kiss. I said "no" and tried to push away but the guy was mightily strong. I finally managed to turn the cheek so that he had to settle for a kiss on the cheek. He tried to keep me close by holding my head but I managed to get away by pushing him, take my bags and leave the room. This wasn't just some friendly italian kiss that you do between friends, and even if it was it's not something you do when you both are sitting in a bed in a closed room. I guess "wanting to experience new cultures" doesn't extend that far for me.

I angrily asked the receptionists what this guy was doing in my room. After saying no problem 3 times she told me through some sign that he was some sort of night trucker who was just using the room for the day. I felt like I was sold like the backpackers in "hostel" to some trucker who might have heard that all western men were gay or something.

I went out in the street again and only re-entered long after dinner. I walked around taking in the communist buildings, the new hip area of Blloku and the National Museum which has a really cool mural (see picture) in front as well as some much less hip area close to the train station.

Apart from the incident above, my first impressions of Albania was mostly positive. The poverty isn't that bad, maybe it is if you never left western europe but it is nothing compared to what I've seen in India or China. The majority of the people appear to be doing alright, albeit they might have to buy jeans that were fashionable last year instead of the latest craze in London. Of course the economy has been booming for the past 5 years so I have no doubt that things were much worse before. However, it is obvious that there is very high unemployment because the coffee shops are full the whole day and the customers just don't change; they're the same one that you see when you pass by at 8AM and a few hours later in the afternoon. Also the report about the roads being horrible has been a bit exagerated although it is true that there are several sewer holes without cover. What's up with that? It doesn't cost much and it is such a danger.

Also I knew that even if Albania is mostly muslim (but there's a sizeable minority of catholics, Mother Theresa was albanian) they're fairly liberal when it comes to women I didn't know that in practice this meant that women were dressed exactly like in every other european countries, complete with tight jeans, miniskirt and a few layers of makeup. They even seem to want to overdo it.

One thing I really like about Tirana is the fast food stalls which serves pretty good doner or hambuger for very low prices. After Greece it was a welcome change. I had a few conversation with albanians at the fast food stalls I stopped at, they were all very friendly and eager to practice their english. Thankfully none tried to kiss me. When the conversation turned to albanian girls (as it invariably does), all 3 men I talked to used the term "golddigger". Apparently albanian girls will only go out with you if you have a good car and cellphone. If you're a foreigner they'll be all over you.

While I was in an internet cafe I realized that there was a Youth Hostel in Tirana so I decided to move there tomorrow (or tonight if the trucker was still there). Thankfully my room was empty when I came back after dinner but even though my door was locked I had nightmares about an albanian trucker raping me in my bed while saying "Ahhhh, Albania". Not nice.

The next day I decided to move to the hostel after checking it out. The receptionist was very nice although she was slightly confused when I asked if there were any truckers in the dorm. Thankfully there were none; only a couple: Julie, a french canadian girl and Ian a british bloke. Both english teacher who have been teaching for a long time, Julie has been on the road for more than 5 years now (teaching in Indonesia, Russia, Georgia and Poland) and was looking for her next assignment but before that she had decided to travel for a bit.

I really liked them so when we realized we were both heading to Durres as a day trip, we decided to team up. We went to the bus station - which is the train station's parking lot. It is as chaotic as anything you'd see in India. But at least we got on a van pretty quickly and within an hour we were in Durres. On the way we had the chance to see some Albanian countryside. One unique feature of Albania is that it is full of small bunkers. They're literaly everywhere. You just have to look a little but it's almost 100% certain that anywhere you are on a road you'll be able to spot at least one bunker somewhere. Enver Hoxha, the insane communist dictator (one has to understand that I do not use the combinantion of insane and communist dictator often, I use it only for a select few and Hoxha is on the list), decided that all the imperialists in the world were out to get Albania so he ordered the people to build bunkers everywhere to protect the motherland. So now they're stuck with these useless building everywhere that have no uses.

Durres is a lovely coastal town with a Roman amphiteater, a nice coastal strip looking on the Adriatic, a mosque and a few other things of interest. Unfortunately I lost most of my pictures of that day. We wandered around town and the roman ruins for most of the day. The people were lovely, the cats were a bit scared of us and the kids wanted some of Ian's pringles. The museum was very interesting and the woman there spoke nearly perfect french and was trying to immigrate to Canada (unfortunately she had chosen Toronto as the city she wanted to move in, she would have had much greater chances of getting in had she chosen Montreal given that her french is good). We had some delicious pastry also. Hmm european pastry, how I missed them.

We went back to Tirana by the train. It took 90 minutes for 53km and it felt even slower. It probably dated from the italian occupation and hadn't been repaired much since. The toilet window was broken so that you were fully exposed to the crowd when you wanted to use the loo. Lovely. Most of the other windows were also broken. But at 50 cents for an hour and a half, who am I to complain.

We spent the rest of the evening chilling out at the guesthouse. I cooked my own meal for the first time in months (Ramen noodles and sandwhiches do not count) along with a albanian wine we bought at a supermarket for about 3$ which was good.

Julie and Ian left early the next day for south Albania but my bus was leaving at 6PM so I spent the day chilling in one of the city's many cafe (there's a very big italian influence (pretty much everyone speaks the language) so the coffees are delicious) and walking for hours in that city. One thing I noticed while walking is that many old buildings have new funny paint jobs which I really liked (see pictures). Also after it was brought up to me by Ian, I realized that the streets were choked full of cars with EU plates, apparently Albania is one of the largest market for stolen car and there is no law against it (or it isn't enforced) so they don't even bother to change their plate. Apparently once a minister in the albanian government went to Greece for a meeting but was arrested at the border because his car had been stolen in Germany.

After marvelling at the beautiful sunset in front of the town's main mosque, I went to bus stand and got into a bus I was told was going to Prishtina, the capital of Kosovo. There was another backpacker on the bus, an american of filipino origin named Ruddel. Pretty much every filipinos I met on this trip were cool and Ruddel was no exception.

The bus trip started out alright but at some point the driver took our ticket. A few hours later, as me and Ruddell were well asleep he told us to get out and get our luggage and that we'd continue on another bus that would bring us to Tirana. In our state of semi-consciousness we forgot to ask for our tickets. Things started well on the bus as people moved around to give us 2 seats together and a friendly albanian who had lived in London for 6 years chatted with us. He was the stereotype of the frat boy, one of the first thing he asked us was if we had popped some albanian cherry. Funny guy.

A few hours later, after we had crossed into Kosovo (a breakaway province of Serbia populated by Albanians), the conductor asked us for 5 euros extra. He hadn't asked for anything previously and we had assumed that we didn't have to pay for anything since we had paid for and asked for a ticket to Prishtina. But this guy wasn't having any of it. The worst was that we had no idea who had screwed us. Was it this guy who had been paid by our first bus driver and was just trying to squeeze some more money from the stupid tourists or was it the first bus driver who had transfered us telling the other driver that we had to pay an extra? There was no way to know. But I was just too angry at being ripped off, and angry at myself for being stupid enough to have given away my ticket. After some fairly tense arguing over 15 minutes he finally told the driver to stop in the middle of the Kosovar countryside at 4AM. Ruddel had been ready to pay for a long time and was relieved when I just threw the money at the conductor. He was less happy when I said: "Well we know it now, all Albanians are fucking thieves and liar". Of course I didn't really mean it, but some albanian somewhere had screwed me and I was really angry. It might not be the smartest thing to say in a bus full of Albanians in the middle of a province where people are killed for saying a word in the wrong language. But hey, I lived to tell the tale.

I was leaving Albania with very mixed feeling. I had 2 bad experiences but the rest was lovely.

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Photos

Albanian bunkers
These are EVERYWHERE in Albania. Communist crackpot Enver Hoxha thought imperialist powers wanted to invade Albania so, on sound maoist principles, he ordered the constructions of thousands of those. Totally useless.

Beautiful mural at National history museum
Showing Albanians victorious from the Illyrians times to the present. Beautiful but hardly historically accurate.

Mosque at sunset
Beautiful art.

Painting
Beautiful art.

Pyramid
Built by the daughter-in-law of the insane dictator Hoxha.

Stolen car from Germany
You see bunch of those all the time. Albania is one of the biggest market for stolen car in Europe. There are basically no law against owning stolen car so the owners dont even bother to change the plates.

Train station
On the way to Tirana from Durres

Tirana museum of art
The museum was closed but these guys took that painting out to take a picture so I joined in.

Tirana's new paint job
They repainted several building in order to make the city more attractive and they succeeded in my opinion.

Comments

[Adriana]

AAAHHH!!
Vic- I LOVE the paint job they've done on the buildings too, it's very happy looking.. I gotta say though- Your trucker experience is hilarious!!(from this point of view of course) I'm glad you made it out there ok though-cause then I wouldn't be laughing. Keep your wits up there!!!

[Andrew]

Funny
Hi. What an interesting story. Ive read several stories of foreigners who have visited Albania but if I had to chose, yours is in the top 5 list. So funny. Im sorry u had to have those two experiences though, and Im glad u enjoyed the rest... hopefully if u ever decide to visit it again in the future, the place will have more to offer to foreigners, especially regarding information, transport and accomodation.