It's weird to think that I'm in Macedonia.
Especially since I'm starting this post from a very modern Italian cafe with "hit me baby one more time" playing in the background.
I know nothing about Macedonia. Just like I knew nothing about Croatia, Montenegro or Albania. Every moment is surprising and exciting and bewildering.
Whirlwind adventures are difficult to write about. Especially when in the middle of the whirlwind and feeling completely lost and confuzzled about everything all the time.
After Tessa had napped off Shkoder fatigue and I'd written my bloggy blog, we gratefully left our respective beasts beside our bunk bed and tromped off into Tirana.
Capital city of nowhere.
Albania is the strangest place I've ever been. Perhaps because it's one of those places hardly anyone from America visits/knows about/has heard of ever.
I asked a friend from Washington what he knew of Albania, and his one sentence response was, 'they have a f*cking terrifying flag."
Which is true.
Food in Albania is extraordinarily cheap (except for ice cream). Tessa can (and does... daily) purchase massive helpings of burek for a whopping 30 leke.
30 leke is about 30 US cents.
It would be the understatement of this trip to say that Tessa is pleased about this.
Tirana is chaotic and loud and ice cream costs 500 leke a scoop. People are squashed into buses like Albanian sardines and pedestrians cross roads whenever strikes their fancy.
We quickly learned that only tourists wait for the blinking green man. Everyone else seems to get a sort of thrill out of dodging in and out of traffic.
This is not a thrill that comes naturally to me. I would rather wait for the blinking green man and then not worry about colliding with a motorcycle carrying two or three people (or a bus carrying about 273), but this is also not an option. Drivers use the green walking man to left turn straight into you.
Internet in Albania is something that must be sought after the way toilets are sought after in Venice.
You get really excited whenever you happen to chance upon it.
The owner of the hostel had given us a map with different tourist attraction points. One was supposed to be a pyramid you could climb and see the surrounding mountains from the top. Even though Tessa and I have had more than our fill of mountains lately, we ventured in the general direction of the pyramid.
And came across this.
"What is that?"
"I think that's the pyramid."
"what?"
"It's Albania."
The pyramid had no stairs and we weren't keen on running up the sides, mountains or no mountains.
We did, however, find a lovely park and scampered about on stone chairs.
Tessa also chanced upon a unicorn balloon. We promptly dubbed him Rupert, but Rupert was flighty by nature and was swept away by the next breeze.
Tessa and I returned to the hostel and spent some time researching how to hitchhike out of Albania. I wrote. She read. We went to bed and felt very thankful for the roof over our heads.
Hostel breakfasts are miserable affairs for people with a gluten intolerance. Welcome to bread, things to put on bread and a sad, lonely hard-boiled egg.
I drank coffee and slipped an extra egg into my pocket on the way out the door.
"What's happening to me?" I moaned as we dodged vendors, begging children and bicyclists. "First I brazenly walked into a National Park and now I steal eggs?"
We boarded a bus near the clock tower bound for TEG, Albania's largest shopping mall. In this country, you don't pay the bus driver up front. Instead, a fellow comes around later to collect your change and write you your ticket on his little ticket pad.
Everyone else was charged for their journey, but we either got the "welcome to Albania" price or the ticket chap just couldn't be bothered to communicate in English to the two hippies with dirty backpacks sitting in the back of the bus.
"IT HAS A HUGE CARREFOUR!" Tessa exclaimed as we approached our destination.
"WIN! Let's go see how much cheese costs in Albanian Carrefours!"
It's interesting to discover the things that make you feel like home after having spent so long on the move.
Carrefour. I see a Carrefour and I think of my wonderful time with Baris in Nice or with the Pernots in Toulon. I think of cheap Camembert picnics with Miguel in Paris and I get all nostalgic and start pining for boudon noir and the smell of fresh baked baguette (just because I can't eat freshly baked baguette doesn't mean I don't get to like the smell).
We browsed the Carrefour and discovered that Camembert is significantly more expensive in Albania.
So I bought peanuts and apples. And Tessa bought a candy.
Backpacker food.
We left Carrefour, walked around the roundabout (in which there stood a dairy cow, grazing contentedly and people watching) and quickly discovered that even though Albania has an abundance of cardboard (and other varieties of waste) strewn about, most of the cardboard is far too manky for hitching material.
We've got standards.
"Should we just try without and see what happens?"
"Sure, let me just put my fruit away."
I turned around approximately six seconds later and discovered that a driver had already stopped and was waiting for us.
"Elbasan?" Tessa asked through the open window.
The man nodded and we climbed in.
He spoke no English. Only Montenegrin and Italian. I was able to use the smattering of Italian I'd picked up from Giuseppe to communicate the general trajectory of our adventure and that we planned to sleep outside because, "Mi piache dormire fuori perche... ummm.... etoile? bella."
Maybe he understands the French word for star. Who knows.
He understood something though (or perhaps just took pity on me), because he chuckled, nodded and exclaimed "brava!"
As Italians do.
Our Italian speaking friend dropped us off at Elbasan and "Ciao, ciao!" waved goodbye.
"Grazie! Grazie mille!" I heaved my bag from the car and shut the back door.
People stopped what they were doing and stared. We tried not to stare back.
We did stop and gawk at a gigantic, wooden horse in the middle of town with a manky doll creepily nailed to its chest.
"Where are we?"
"Nowhere."
We walked along the train tracks of Albania's abandoned train (after communism ended in 1991, most folks went bonkers and bought cars) and made it to the other side of town in what my aching back assumed was 57 hours, but my iPhone annoying informed me was only about 45 minutes.
We held up our sign and a car stopped.
This is how hitchhiking works in Albania. You walk to a place where cars could be going where you're going.
You smile.
You hold up your sign.
And people immediately slam on their brakes to take you where you want to go.
I wish every country could be as easy and friendly as this.
"Where are you going?" the two men in the car asked us.
"Pogradec," Tessa replied. "Where are you going?"
"Anywhere. We're just out to get a coffee. We can take you to Librazhd"
They took us to a gorgeous cafe by the Shkumbini river first. Bought us cappuccino and shared their stories and their Saturday afternoon.
What spectacular people. This is why hitchhiking and courchsurfing are amazing ways to move about the world. How else would we get to meet people like this?
The doctor and the pharmacist dropped us off at the bus stop in Librazhd .
The bus to Pogradec had just left, so we scampered (or wished we could scamper... actual scampering is not possible with our beasts) up the road and --
-- and immediately got a ride to Pogradec. With a fascinating snail farmer/car mechanic/wine importer. On the way, we witnessed a car accident wherein a driver crashed into a parked car for no reason whatsoever.
Tessa and I have also discovered that Albanians do not have a designated side of the road on which to drive. They drive on the side of the road that happens to have fewer potholes than the other side.
They also drive on the side of the road that has less sheep and more hitchhikers. So it's easier for them to stop.
Pogradec.
You are a stunning little city, with your sandy beaches and quaint old town.
But you have no decent burek.
It would be the understatement of this trip to say that Tessa is not pleased about this.
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| Why couldn't Shkoder have had beaches like this? |
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| I enjoy taking picture of boats. Prepare yourselves for a barrage of boat pictures. They will probably all look the same. |
Tessa enjoys hugging goats. Especially when they are brown and fuzzy and belong to Albanian grandmas who aren't looking.
We popped into a small shop on our way to our prospective nest.
"How much for the melon?"
"110."
"Do you have cheap wine?"
"Chips?"
"No. Not expensive wine."
"Oh. 800 leke."
"No, that's too expensive."
The daughter of the shopkeeper abruptly turned around and rummaged in the back of the shop. She emerged with an orange juice bottle that was almost certainly not filled with orange juice.
"YES!" Tessa and I exclaimed simultaneously.
We paid for our picnic, walked up a hill, climbed over a fence and spread out Judy.
This. You can't pay enough for a view like this.
We rummaged through our change and discovered that we still had 355 leke between the two of us.
"We're going to Macedonia tomorrow, and they have their own currency. So we should probably just spend it now. That's what, two and a half euros? what do you want me to get for two and a half euros?"
"Yogurt, peanuts and chocolate. If there's any money left, cheese and sausage."
Tessa returned forty minutes later with a burgeoning bag of groceries. It nearly looked like I'd sent Giuseppe off to do the shopping.
"Wanna know what two and a half euros gets you in Albania?" Tessa jubilantly opened the bag. "Peanuts, cheese, chocolate and yogurt."
"Two and a half euros gets you a feast!"
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| My death shoes aren't allowed on Judy. |
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| The perfect place to spend the longest day of the year. |
Our morning picnic.
I didn't have a spoon, so I used Betty (the pink pocket knife) to cut a plastic bottle into a sort of spoon shape.
And now we're in Macedonia.
We're not exactly sure how. Or why. Or what this place is anyway.
But we're here. We sat at a bus stop (after climbing a knobby hill that made my back and bum feel like they were going to explode into a million pieces and then melt back together just so they could explode again) until a taxi driver offered to take us to Ohrid for next to nothing.
Hey there, Macedonia...?
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