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Published: July 16th 2015
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We woke up this morning ready to start hitchhiking again. It took a while before we were done with breakfast and finding a cafe for a toilet but once we found a good hitchhiking spot it didn't take long to get a ride out of Dubrovnik. The guy was a friendly Balkan guy that didn't speak English but understood what we wanted. The drove like a madman through the mountain roads of Croatia with Balkan music on full volume. We had a good laugh with him for about a 10 minute ride. He dropped us of at a perfect place near an airport with only one road going into Montenegro. After an hour waiting we got a ride from a friendly Albanian guy who could speak a little bit English and German and we could drive with him all the way to Tirana in Albania.
I was a bit unsure about going into Albania becasue we have been warned about it multiple times on our trip. Aparently a hitchhiker had been killed by an Albanian street gang just a few days before. The guy who took us (Dylaver) asured us that that was an exceptional thing and that the whole
country was in shock over it. All throughout the ride in Montenegro and Albania (which took surprisingly long through the beautiful mountain roads) Dylaver was explaining us all kinds of things about Albania. Initially we started to feel more at ease about going to Albania and we also got curious. He was proudly explaining that Albanians value freedom for everyone and that even though the country is poor there exists a harmony there. It is pretty clear that Dylaver is proud of his country but eventually his stories became more and more unbelievable. He explained us that Albania is actually the center of the world, that the language is superior (it has more characters so it has to be) and that the first humans came from Albania (after all, the seasons last exactly 3 months in Albania (?)) and that hospitality is something that is very important in Albanian culture. We'd have to see those things for ourselves, but so far this first Albanian that we met sure was very friendly and hospitable. He offered us to stay at his mothers house who also very hospitable and friendly, even though we had no way of communicating. So suddenly we had
a place to stay for the night. She was incredibly friendly and seemed really happy to host 2 young strangers. In the morning she was awake at 7 to make us breakfast and apparently it is custom in the country that couples eat from the same plate as a sign of respect. When we left the next day, she packet lots of fruit and vegetables for us to eat and even gave a shirt to Yakamoz as a gift. Dylaver said that he was not surprized because that is Albanian hospitality after all! So far he has not been wrong.
Thijs
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