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Beautiful Scenery
This was at our lunch stop Dax warned us. Efore going into Albania what crazy things we would see.... Well, here's what I saw!
• Creepy dolls hanging from half finished buildings to keep away evil spirits. Some were hand made, but a few were stuffed animals that seemed to be hanging because of some nefarious crime. I even saw a donkey kong doll lol
• So many donkeys! Donkeys walking alone, donkeys walking alone with stuff on their backs, donkeys tied up, donkeys in road, donkeys being ridden,... Donkeys!!
• Woman walking with a scythe with a 2.5 foot long blade!
• Goat crossings and little boys driving them
• Cars on the second floor of unfinished buildings with no explicable way for them to have gotten ho there
• Slaughtered goat on the side of the highway
• Cow tied up outside of a butcher shop
• Uncountable unfinished buildings. Just concrete frames
• Worst drivers ever! They cut people off all nimbly bimbl with no turn signals and barely any space. Pedestrians just cross!
• Boys playing with tire tread
• People just hanging out in random places....with no obvious reason why
Those are all things seen driving in and out
of Albania. The first big thing we saw thouggh were bunkers. There used to be 400k but now there are way less. Most have been converted to restaurants, storage or pens for animals. We got to climb on one, but I was in flip flops so didn't try it.
Once we got to the capital, Tirana, Dax showed us the mausoleum of e ruler Hoxha (you can read more about him in the history entry). His daunted had designed it, thinking she was a great architect. Wrong. It is a giant pyramid that was later converted into a museum until that wes discarded. Nw it's just covered in grafitti and people climb all over it. Someone had painted a giant rainbow rollerblade ( what?!) so I got a pic of me trying to put my foot in it. When we were going back to the bus, a little gypsy kid appeared and held on to our tour guides arm and shirt. It was funny at first until more apperaed and then we hustled back to the bus. Our driver yelled at them in Albania. Later we made him an award lol. The gypsy kids didn't steal anything, just
very handsy wi their begging. When we were off the bus later we ran into another gypsy kid, but he was selling stuff. He was pretty funny though because I had made a sign that said "no!" and he said yes! He kept hassling us, so I hissed at him and he hissed right back. Touché.
We stayed in a really nice hotel that night and I got a double bed all to myself! We were just outside the city slightly on a mountain. I think it was because the city was a little sketchy. On the way to the hotel, I finally figured out what an Albanian word was. We saw the word Shitet a lot, which is kinda hilarious for obvious reasons. I figured out it means "for sale." after that discovery, everyone started yelng out things that were Shitet. Even the older couple which was pretty funny.
After Albania, we crossed into Montenegro. We stayed in a coastal town called Budva. It had an old city that we walked to. Inside the walls were mostly souvenir shops. I collect the currency of the countries I go to, and I totally found an awesome souvenir! Yugoslavian
money! It isn't even a country anymore! And it is the gusiness book of records for largest note. 500. Billion lol. E girls and I played at the beach for awhile and went back to meet the group. Before we left, the driver borrowed the hostel owners s ooteer and let me come for a ride with him. So fun! Why doesn't America have more scooters? We met back at the hostel free the quick ride and we went to a beach side bar. Coming into the country, Dax told us that montenegrans are the tallest people besides the Dutch. Accurate. The place we were at had a live band. It was 2 guys and a girl playing piano, accordion and singing. In front of them, the monteneggrans had made a dance circle and they were all very tall. The band was playing gyspy. Music which is our drivers favorite type. He was out there dancing a storm. He even showed us sone dances, there was also a very easy dance I managed to figure out how to do myself. One fo the girls on my tour was mostly pretty quiet, but she loves to dance. She kept run ing
into the Dane circle with the locals, it was hilarious, but I'm not sure how the locals felt about us there. Me and 3 girls eventually left because we were tired and I think thelocals wwere tired of us breaking into their circle and dancing what I'm sure was weird to them.
The next day we drove thru Bosnia! I'm not exactly sure what I expected, but it certainly wasn't what I got. The only thing I've Evers really heard about Bosnia was how it was war torn, so I was kinda expecti ruins and smoke I guess. Where we drove through was absolutely gorgeous. We drove along the coastline that the Croatians had given them so they could have a port. When we stopped for has and food, the locals were really nice. They swapped me some euros for their local money for my collection. I tried a pastry thing, but I didn't like it too much....
Then on to Croatia! I'll put that in a sep entry. Phew... So much has happened on my trip so far, and I'm only like a quarter of a way through it! Thanks for reading, but please leave comments so
I know people actually are reading! It takes a lot of time and effort and oney to write and upload these.
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karie
non-member comment
love it
I really love the fact that you take the time to write thes e. and that you put so much information into them as being a person who is never been overseas I think it's really neat to be able to see the pictures and learn information to maybe plan a trip over there one day. :-)