The End of the Road

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Albania is a country which has intrigued me for a long time. Like Belarus, I felt that I had to step off the backpackers trail and go there just because it was a place that had interested me for so long. As in previous blogs, I apologise for me brief and perhaps inaccurate history but again I feel it necessary to understand a little before you read on.

After centuries of Ottoman rule Albania managed to gain a certain amount of autonomy as a principality in 1918 until it was invaded by Italy at the start of World War II, it emerged from the war as a communist state under the command of Enver Hoxha who remained in power until 1985. Albania initially aligned itself with the USSR and then realigned itself with China before deciding to go it alone, leaving the country isolated from the capitalist west and the communist east and resulting in one of the most repressive and paranoid regimes of the 20th century. It became a police state, even shouting profanity at a woman could result in arrest, and was led by a government that was constantly paranoid of attack. Hoxha built bunkers around the country with the command that locals should arm themselves and man them when the attacking forces came; of course nobody ever did attack. When Hoxha died in 1985 he was replaced by Ramiz Alia who attempted to run the country in the same vain but due to the imminent downfall of European communism, pressure from Europe and America and the anger of Albanian people he agreed to allow other parties to enter the political process and despite winning the 1991 election, his party was defeated in another election the following year. However, that is not where Albania's troubles ended, they were only just beginning. The country had been isolated from the world for nearly half a century and by throwing open it's borders was now vulnerable to the evils of the outside world. Crime, which was practically non existent in Hoxha's days, rose dramatically from drugs and human trafficking to violence and corruption; the Italian Mafia across the Adriatic had found some very willing students and organised crime is still very much a problem. On top of this the population began to invest in pyramid schemes, people were ploughing their life savings on the promise of a hefty return that never came. These schemes collapsed and the Albanian people lost what is believed to be over one billion pounds of their hard earned cash. The economy plummeted and the country was poorer than ever. This led to riots during which army bases and police stations were looted for weapons. The streets became a dangerous place, the population heavily armed and many cities coming under the control of armed civilians, even US military advisors left the country through fear. In 1998, a new government was elected and begun to regain control. Arms were collected (some with the incentive of a cash for guns programme) and the country slowly returned to stability. In the same year, increasing unrest in Kosovo and Serbian military aggression towards Ethnic Albanians there forced half a million across the border into Albania, which was hardly in a position to take them. That said, the country has now settled and, aided by international development programmes, is making progress.

This history is hardly one that makes most people want to jump up and shout "lets go on holiday to Albania!", and I must admit that I was apprehensive as Albania is another country to have a very bad press in the UK. Firstly there is talk of blood feuds, which still exist in some northern areas, where it is acceptable by tribal law to seek retribution if one of your male family members is murdered by killing the murderer of one of his family members. Also, the British press is constantly reminding us that Albanian gangs are prominent in drugs and guns trades in the UK as well as pretty much running the vice and human trafficking scene. But it's important to have an open mind and I've noticed so much recently how wrong you can be when you judge a country. After all, there are many places in the world which has given us prominent international gangs yet we still travel to places such as Russia, Jamaica and the USA (and indeed the UK) so it was time to open my mind, leave my prejudices at the door and get to the last stop on my trip though Europe, the Albanian capital of Tirana.

I had initially intended to spend one more day in Montenegro before heading to Albania, stopping off further down the coast. There are presently no international buses or trains from the north and the journey has to be done by Furgons, independent minibuses, which don't have a published schedule. As it was though, I woke up at 6am without being able to get back to sleep. The old man who was accommodating me in Kotor had made me move rooms to make way for a family and my new bed was surrounded by incredibly damp walls. I woke up wheezing heavily, as if somebody was sitting on my chest, and decided to just get up and see if I could make it to Tirana in one day.

At the bus station there was a girl sitting next to a backpack and reading the lonely planet, taking a wild guess that she was a backpacker I said ‘hi‘. She was Swedish but lived in the UK, as if to prove how small the world really is she lived in the same East London street that I used to work in. She was heading down to Bar, where I needed to change furgon, so my mood was lifted by small talk about London for the 90 minute journey. At Bar I quickly changed furgon with the aid of the helpful driver and it was still before 10am by the time I approached the town of Ulcinj near to the Albanian border, the day was looking promising. As we pulled into the bus station the little girl directly behind me threw up. Certain she had been sick all over me, I looked back and luckily (well, luckily for me) she had been sick all over the back of my seat and it had splashed back and hit her in the face. I handed her mum my roll of toilet tissue and got out just as the awful smell was making me feel wretch.

Ulcinj, a beach resort town, is not pretty but is incredibly friendly. I had no idea were to go for my bus across the Albanian border so asked some men who were standing by minibuses on a street corner. None of them spoke English but tried their best to understand my questions anyway. Intrigued by the scene, a man who was walking passed said "where you from buddy?", I answered and he stood in contemplation for a few seconds before saying "aaaaah Britain, where you going buddy?"
"Tirana"
"aaaaah.... you need to take a bus to Shkodra which leaves from old bus station but it is long long walk away. Instead you go down this street here and then that street there and wait on the south west corner and you see red bus come at one o'clock. Maybe he come before one, maybe after one. You just stop him."
So, I basically had to stand on a random street corner where there was no bus stop and hail a red furgon that may come at one, maybe earlier, maybe later. Then still I had to work out how to get to Tirana. That’s nice and easy then!

The man wished me luck and said goodbye, I went off and sat in a welcoming cafe for a couple of hours before heading to the street corner but thought I'd call in at a tourist information centre I'd seen first. The woman told me that I could do what the man had said but it would be much easier if I just walked to the Old Bus Station where the furgon departed from. She gave me directions and it turned out what the man had classed as a "long long walk" was less than one mile. I approached the Old Bus Station, which is now a ramshackle market and parade of cafes, and saw the red furgon with Shkodra written in the window and sat down and waited. As I was sitting, the little girl from the furgon to Ulcinj, her face encrusted with dry sick, came up with her mother who was begging around the area. Her mum stuck out her hand and said something in Serbian, I just did what I always do with beggers... smile and shrug my shoulders. She was about to go away and then realised who I was. She pointed to her kid's face and then to me as if to say "Hey, you're that guy from the furgon. My kid was nearly sick all over you, that makes us friends now. Give me money". Unfortunately, I didn't know the Serbian for "Listen bitch. I have hardly slept, I am stressed because I have got now idea how to get to Tirana, I have already given you some tissues which resulted in the breaking of an egg that I was quite sentimental about and if it wasn't for sheer luck I'd be covered in your daughter's sick right now so please… kindly fuck off" so instead I just shrugged again. She gave me a look of death and went on to hassle somebody else.

The bus left on schedule at 1pm. It would take me to Shkodra where I would then be able to get a furgon to Tirana. As we crossed the border, a man on the bus noticed I was British and asked if I was going to Tirana. When I answered yes he told me he was going there too and would help me. Not soon after the border the bus pulled into a place which provided me with a culture shock. I have never travelled outside of Europe and have only really seen poverty that's relative to what I know. The town we were approaching was definitely the poorest place I've ever seen, shacks lined the street and the road was barely passable. Rubbish was just dumped randomly and any building I could see looked like it was a ruin. I thought to myself how lucky it was that I didn't need to change here but as I thought this the man who offered to help me turned round and said "okay, this is Shkodra we get off now". Oh shit! Actually, from what I have heard from people since, Shkodra is actually quite a pleasant city, it just seems that this was a particularly poor and run down suburb that was deceptive of what the place was really like. Luckily for my nerve, there was a Tirana bound furgon waiting which we hopped straight onto. The man was called Anton and was an Archaeology Student at Tirana University. He looked tough but was gentle mannered and friendly. He asked me why I was visiting his city with genuine interest and told me that he would take me to where my hostel was. The journey to Tirana took another couple of hours and was on a new road which passed through pretty countryside backed by dramatic mountains. Anton sat and spoke about his country and sometimes interrupted himself to give me safety tips. He pointed to a bare mountain side and told me how when the economy crashed people chopped down all the trees for firewood before stating "don't look too much at girls in Tirana, Albanian men are very jealous. And they like to fight with knives" and then moved on to tell me about how bad the roads are in the country, how nobody can move around easily and how this was one of a few new roads. He was educating me about the country's recent history and then asked me "How is the reputation of Albanians in your country?", I tried to be polite and say it was okay but then he exclaimed "You have many Albanian criminals there! My cousin lives in London but he is an economist". A Mercedes flew past on the wrong side of the road, "In Albania, it's very cheap to buy cars, you know why? They are stolen in Western Europe and sold here for maybe one third of the cost", Anton seemed quite proud of his country's more shady aspects. He moved back to telling me more about the country. He spoke about how in 1997 people just went crazy. He told how military bases were looted and everyone had guns. People would fight on the street with them and get absorbed by the power that being armed can bring. He said that before the government collected back the arms it was not unusual to see a farmer driving down the street in a tank or teenagers shooting at cows with heavy artillery. I wasn't sure if I should take what he was saying with a pinch of salt but it was pretty crazy stuff.

Eventually, countryside gave way to city and suburbs that looked as scary as where we had changed buses in Shkodra. Anton explained that everyone was so poor as there was no work, very few factories in the country, he said that the only way to make money was to trade goods or get into crime. Tirana's population was getting bigger year on year as people moved to a city that couldn't really accommodate them. The bus pulled into the station and Anton helped me get onto a city bus (city bus = an experiment to see how many people can be crammed into a tiny space). I didn't have any of the local currency yet but Anton was more than happy to buy me a ticket. Tirana's city centre was entirely different to the areas that surrounded it. It looked like it could be anywhere although a little more run down, an island of nice buildings, people dressed in suits and omnipresent police officers... it seemed somewhat deceptive of what the rest of the city was like. Anton took me to the street where the backpacker hostel was, we couldn't find it so he took me to an internet cafe owned by his friend who let me check my email for free. With that, Anton directed me a few doors down, shook my hand and said goodbye. He didn't want anything other than to help a stranger in his country.

The journey was only 150 miles but it had taken 11 hours. I was tired and satisfied myself with chatting to the other people in the hostel, a middle aged French guy called Patrick who had recently travelled by land from France to China and back via Central Asia and Siberia and an American called Justin who had recently left the US army after serving in Kosovo and Iraq. We sat and told travel stories (I have quite a few of them now) and took an early night.

After a fantastic sleep I headed out to see what Tirana had to offer. The city was entirely alive, people buzzed about everywhere and cars jostled about constantly honking their horns. I walked down to the Ishm River which looked more like a sewage duct than anything else. Despite having a nice piece of green either side, the shallow brown stream flowed past discarded rubbish. I headed to Skenderberg Square right in the city centre, where there is a statue of the national hero Skenderberg who fought off the Turks in the 15th century as well as a mosque which somehow managed to survive the communist period. The traffic was dazzling, the square essentially a several lane roundabout, crossing the road became a game of just walking and letting the cars avoid you. Countless old men carrying wads of cash were exchanging Albanian Lek and a street off the square leading to a market was packed by people selling goods from the back of their cars. There were several men with top of the range mobile phones laid out over sheets of newspaper. I know it's wrong to judge but I couldn't help wondering if they were sourced from the same place as the country’s cars. South of Skenderberg Square, I walked down a wide boulevard that was once the setting of extravagant parades in the communist area, at one side of his street stands the Pyramid, which was formerly the Enver Hoxha museum. The dramatic structure was the most expensive building ever built in Albania and erected at a time when the people were suffering and the government could definitely have better spent the cash elsewhere. It is now a disco and conference centre which I found quite ironic, atheist communist governments all over Europe converted churches into discos or offices, it was nice to see that the same had been done to the shrine to a former communist dictator. I strolled back towards the hostel past the Kolonat fast food restaurant. I heard that Albania is the only country in Europe without MacDonalds (although I don't remember seeing any in Bosnia) but Kolonat is almost identical. The logo is pretty much plagiarised although with a pointed 'M' and the menu is practically the same, anyone who's seen the film Coming to America will probably have an idea of what I'm talking about. This street led back into Ruga Elbasaint, the street of Embassies, where the hostel was located, a posh avenue of gated communities, Embassies and ex-pat drinking holes. Such places as the Route 66 bar and Big Supermarket which stocks all the western goods at western prices must seem a world away from what most citizens of the city know. It was fair to say that there wasn't too much to do in the city and the history museum and clock tower seemed to be constantly closed, the fun was just walking around and taking it all in.

Back at the hostel I bumped a Spanish guy called Xavi had just arrived, he was travelling overland from Barcelona to Calcutta. We chatted with Justin and I invited them to come along to meet the Canadian woman who I met in Kotor. So the three of us, quite possibly the entire backpacking population of Tirana, headed to the Taiwan complex set by the river on the edge of a city centre park. It was posh and pricey, with fountains and big screen TV, beer cost more than back home it was definitely where those who have money come. We met the girl I met in Kotor, who worked for the UN with victims of land mines and then bumped into her colleague who worked clearing land mines up by the Kosovo border. The two had lived in the city for the past 3 years but had remarkably little to say. They just seemed to work, go to Taiwan for an expensive meal and drink in a few ex-pat bars. After dinner I headed to Blloku with Justin, the trendy area that until 1992 was only open to those associated with the government, where we sat and drank more expensive beer. The conversation was great, Justin was incredibly interesting and had a very open minded and balanced view of the world which had grown during his time in the military. He most definitely wasn't the classic squaddie.

The next day I took it easy again. It would be easy to think that I was becoming really boring, just sitting and reading all day (I've moved onto some Sherlock Holmes stories). I strolled down to the market in the afternoon to look at the stalls and just to take another look around the city. It would be fair to say that I was on edge a little, I couldn't relax and let go of my preconceptions of the place. It was clear to see that the citizens of the city were friendly and open. People I came across in shops and bars were always accommodating and locals seemed to be easy going. Yet I couldn't quite open my mind enough to enjoy it, I had been made sceptical by what had been implanted in my brain about the country over the past few years and despite the fact that this part of the city was very safe, I just couldn't chill out. It was my loss and I just hope that I can learn from it and as I go to more places like this on my trip I can enjoy them more and take them for what they are rather than what I conceive them to be.

At evening we all chatted and took it easy on the hostel balcony. Justin and Patrick had left so it was me, Xabi, and a Canadian guy and a Swiss girl who had just arrived. Another Swiss woman who was friends with the hostel owners had heard that it was Xabi's birthday and turned up with a cake and we all sat, ate and talked until the early hours. It was a nice end to my European trip and all that was left to take my flight the next day. The hostel owner had arranged a taxi for me at a local price, the driver spoke no English but spent the 45 minute journey to Mother Teresa InternationalAirport speaking to me with body language whilst he straddled two lanes of the dual carriageway and honked his horn at everyone in sight. As we arrived he refused to take a tip and shook my hand, another genuinely nice person.

In just over 7 weeks I had travelled from Scandanavia to Albania, I was proud to have done it all by road and grateful that I had missed my flight in Warsaw. There is a certain satisfaction to be found in looking at a map and realising how far you've come over land, if I could arrange my trip again I would do it without any aeroplanes, just go overland the whole way in what surely would be an amazing road trip. Unfortunately though, I had other plans and a plane to take for an overnight transit in Munich. Sitting in the jet was strange, I wasn't comfortable in such formal and businesslike surroundings, to be offered drinks and bite size chocolate as I flew in just over an hour to a place that I passed near to three weeks earlier. As we touched down the cabin crew thanked us over the Tannoy stating that it had been a pleasure to have us as their guests on board. It made me cringe, this corporate bullshit that's spouted because somebody in an office has written it into the crew guidebook. For the first time, I was glad of all the indifferent, brash or sometimes openly rude service I'd been given over the past few weeks. Why? because it was honest. The hotel staff in Belarus had treated us with contempt because they didn't like us, people in Riga treated us like dirt because they thought we were just more Brits on a drinking holiday. All this was real feelings, no fakeness unlike what was being shown here. I very much doubted that the staff genuinely did enjoy having us as their guests and therefore their statement was empty, it meant nothing. In some of the countries I'd been to recently the feelings were true, many people were rude but when somebody was nice to you it was heartfelt and made you very happy. It was because they wanted to be nice, not because they'd lose their job if they weren't. I wondered if this was why we are all so paranoid in the UK, because we never really know when people are being sincere or if they are bitching behind our backs.

It was all beginning to make a little more sense now, life I mean.

And so I was back in the world I knew so well, I had never been to Germany before but I felt at home. Eight Euros for a sandwich and drink, service with a smile! I think I would rather have the old lady who would shove me my reasonably priced and tasty pastry over a grubby counter without even making eye contact, making no attempt to hide the fact she was in a bad mood. I don't have to be here long tough, tomorrow I take to the sky for a new adventure... to Asia.

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Photos

Tirana
The Ishm River

Tirana
Can You Spot The Odd One Out?

Tirana
Skenderberg Square

Tirana
Skenderberg Statue

Tirana
Taiwan

Tirana
The Former Enver Hoxha Museum

Tirana
Another View of the Ishm River

Tirana
Crossing the Road in Skenderberg Square, Mosque in the Background

Comments

[Kevin]

Such an enthralling story
Even though you were on edge, the experience sounded well worthwhile. Just a country in transition

[Mum]

24th April 2006
Absolutely brilliant Andrew, so well described and written. You cope admirably in all these different situations and you will never forget these wonderful experiences. Keep up the good work and the education of Mother!

[Dijana]

Great page !
Andy, I just send you an email with a very simple question..In the meantime I've read your travellog about Albania, it is amazing, thanks for that ! Really looking forward to go there :-D Dijana

[Nicky]

Great blog - you write so clearly and honestly. I also like your photos and brief historical background. Keep it up!

[Milan]

So, now I spent my whole afternoon reading your blog... Just couldn´t stop :-) For me, there is something very special in the way you write, see things. something honest I guess, and unspoiled. Thanks for sharing that with us!

[Stephen]

Andrew Thanks so much for sharing your blog details and photos with me. It's not often one sees an Albanian flag on a T Shirt in the middle of your Morrisons store in suburbia! Your journal evokes memories of the trips I made to Albania in the early 1990s. Having seen a lot of the country and stayed with families, I can appreciate your interest in it. A great experience it seems, just as it always was for me. A fascinating read, and I wish you lots of luck for the future. Falemenderit - I may have misspelt, but in other words, thank you. Great to meet you, Stephen

[Thomas]

Good job.
I dont normally leave comments on journals or any other work on the internet but i just wanted to say you write superbly and it was a pleasure to read. 10/10

[Nila]

Thank you
I am from Albania and i just wanted to thank you for being so open minded and without prejudices. It makes us feel so good when we hear someone judges us from what he really sees and not what he hears. So once more thank you and i wish to you all the very best in your life and may you have many more nice experiences in exploring the world and trying to give it in the purest way . Greetings from ALBANIA