Day 14

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The next day Dylaver showed us the way to the centrum and pointed us to the bus station. We figured we might as well take a bus to Durrës and start from there as it costs only 1 euro per person to go there. When walking around and while sitting in the bus we were amazed at the chaos of the Albanian traffic. Everyone just seems to think about themselves and rules don´t seem to exist in the Albanian traffic jungle. As Dylaver put it: A lion in the jungle doesn´t need traffic lights so why do we?

After an excruciating 40 minutes in an over-full hot minibus that felt more like an oven, we arived like baked potatoes in Durrës. This city is by far the weirdest city I have ever been to. Apparently people in Durrës are not used to seeing many travellers because everyone jumped on us to try and sell us hotel rooms and taxi rides. Everywhere we went people stared at us in a very rude and obvious way. We never felt threatened by this but it was definitely uncomfortable. We walked around in Durrës a bit and ate some ridiculously cheap food. Although the people on the street made us feel somewhat uneasy, some people we talked to for advice where really friendly and helpful.

When we figured out where on the road to Vlorë we could start hitchhiking we made our sign and stood there for not even a minute and already had 3 taxi offers. We still don´t know if the taxi drivers were pretending or not, but from their reactions it seemed like we were doing something unthinkable. We stood quite close to a place where people were waiting for public transportation and their stares felt quite uncomfortable. The taxi drivers stayed close by in case we changed our minds and decided to want a taxi anyway. We were hoping we could get a ride out of there fast and we were happy when someone stopped after a few minutes. We could see the discussion starting in the group of people waiting for the bus and the disbelief in the eyes of the taxi drivers when we got in the car. One thing is sure: we are not planning to get back to Durrës any time soon.

We were relieved to see that Vlorë, our next stop was a bit less deranged and it felt like a somewhat more quiet and touristic place, although I´m quite sure that we were the only foreign tourists walking around there. Vlorë is located next to the sea and we were longing for a refreshing swim. We found a quiet and "in-order" beach restaurant place where we took a swim. There were almost no people around and it felt good after a hectic place like Durrës, so we decided to stay there a bit longer and eat there. We were unsure if we had enough money on us to eat out, but for just 13 euro´s we ate two really delicious pizza´s, with appetizer and beer. We felt so comfortable at the place that we decided not to look around for a place to put out tent and to sleep on the beach chairs under the open sky.

Thijs

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