Going back to Macedonia from Albania.
zondag 14 oktober 2007
Discovering Albania
...And then we decided to go inside Albania. On foot, what else...?
It takes something of 3 kms to reach the border from Sveti Naum, at the south end of lake Ohrid. The Macedonian border is painless. The border guard just looks amazed when he sees two funny Belgians whit a big smile on their face, something like 'huh, we know that we are indeed the first to cross your border post ON FOOT.' He just stamps our passports, a funny Macedonian exit stamp whit a little car shown on it (when we entered the country via Gevgelia by train it was a funny little train that was shown on the stamps). It seems like they haven't stamps for people like us, on foot. So, we cross into no man's land.
After some 100m the relatively well-kept asphalt of FYROM ends and the road turns into...well, how shall I put it...something like 'This has always been a quickly asphalted road in the past, and we haven't any time to put a new layer on it.' Some 100m further we finally reach the Albanian border office. Hum...Office, it has more to do with a quickly thrown caravan and two prefab containers and of course, an Albanian flag. The border guard looks like we must be far beyond crazy to WALK inside his country. (To understate that he even put my entry stamp in my passport upside down). After a few minutes - the time we need to explain that we need a one-day visa - we fled inside Albania. Haven't we forgotten something? Yes, we need a taxi to take us to Pogradec, the biggest Albanian town on the shores of lake Ohrid...and we need it quick because it starts pooring!
The border guard transforms into a friendly fellow, and with a movie star move he takes his mobile phone and calls one of his...friends. Immediatly we see an old Mercedes Benz (only Mercedes Benz in Albania) showing up on the road. For a price that is not expensive but also not very cheap he offers us to take us to Pogradec. By know, it is raining heavier, and we decide to take the offer.
The Mercedes Benz is a funny experience. The temperature regulator seems to be broken, turning the vehicle into a mobile sauna. Soon the windows are getting foggy, and my girlfriend seems to care why I am turning that red. A hell of a ride inside Albania. Beside the road we see bunkers, newly constructed houses (probably built with mony earned inside the EU) and... bunkers, BUNKERS. A leftover from the communist Hoxha years. The man himself was kind of paranoid, the fear that foreign powers wanted to take Albania was too big and so he decided to cover the Albanian landscape with little, conical-shaped bunkers. (There is a story that Hoxha himself invited several bunker constructors so he could have a wide choice of various types. After he chose one, he forced the constructer of the winning type to lock himself up inside one while a tank was shooting at the construction. If the bunker was going to survive - and the poor constructor inside it too - , he would take that one and cover Albania with it. So happened.) (I don't know if this story is true, but it is indeed a funny story)
But shall we return to Pogradec? Yes, I know you people are waiting...
In Pogradec we had to negotiate to change some of our Macedonian denars into Albanian lek . Well, it wasn't really negotiating but more trying to explain that we had to change money. It took a while, but it worked. And we even managed to let the man return three hours later to take us back to the border.
So, now it was really raining and the streets of Pogradec - most of them not asphalted very well - were turning into giant floodzones. The muddy ones were transforming into wild mountain rivers. Funny. We were getting wet and the morale was dropping. Time for a hot drink!
We entered a café and were amazed by the many looks that we received. It was like the social talks of the (unically) male café-population dropped and th world became quiet, not knowing if they should laugh or just keep gazing at us. After 5 minutes however, we were accepted, and ordered some coffee to celebrate that we made it to Albania.
When we left it was still raining, and we spread our time between eating an energy-boosting pita (really a fat-making one), and hopping from shelter to shelter. We managed to buy an umbrella, so the rest of the day could be dryer. We also bought some saucages and bread for our dinner. And then, right, we fled into another café.
And there they were really friendly. They immediatly filled two bottles with boiling hot water from their espresse machine to warm up our hands. We drank something like three hot teas and thanked our hosts for their hospitality. It was a peaceful café, hosting a (almost unically) male population (again), but it seemed that the owner of the café was a woman. The Albanians a the table near us looked and laughed friendly at us. They were a drunk. You shouldn't underestimate the power of fresh rakija (something like slivovica) in the early afternoon...!
It was time to leave. We thanked our hosts, offered some extra money for the hot-water bottles (which they refilled three times or so to ensure the water was HOT enough), but they refused, and nothing on earth could change their minds. I began to believe that I had found the meaning of the word 'hospitality'. Something we don't know (anymore) in the west. While returning to our taximan, there was a funny Albanian (probably the local fool) who wanted to guess which country we came from. He decided that my girlfriend was from the UK and I was from Germany. And after that, he hugged my girlfriend...and gave a kiss on my cheek. I began to believe that balkan people really loved me...
Our taximan was just on time. We drove back to the border. And finally...it stopped raining and there was even a tiny sun that was breaking through the clouds. We crossed borders again, received our stamps, and got back into Macedonia. That was quite a journey.
In the evining, at sunset, I looked at Pogradec and decided that Albania was a funny country, with friendly and honest people. That's not the image we have in Western Europa.
Albania is a weird country. But indeed, a country that needs further exploration...
It takes something of 3 kms to reach the border from Sveti Naum, at the south end of lake Ohrid. The Macedonian border is painless. The border guard just looks amazed when he sees two funny Belgians whit a big smile on their face, something like 'huh, we know that we are indeed the first to cross your border post ON FOOT.' He just stamps our passports, a funny Macedonian exit stamp whit a little car shown on it (when we entered the country via Gevgelia by train it was a funny little train that was shown on the stamps). It seems like they haven't stamps for people like us, on foot. So, we cross into no man's land.
After some 100m the relatively well-kept asphalt of FYROM ends and the road turns into...well, how shall I put it...something like 'This has always been a quickly asphalted road in the past, and we haven't any time to put a new layer on it.' Some 100m further we finally reach the Albanian border office. Hum...Office, it has more to do with a quickly thrown caravan and two prefab containers and of course, an Albanian flag. The border guard looks like we must be far beyond crazy to WALK inside his country. (To understate that he even put my entry stamp in my passport upside down). After a few minutes - the time we need to explain that we need a one-day visa - we fled inside Albania. Haven't we forgotten something? Yes, we need a taxi to take us to Pogradec, the biggest Albanian town on the shores of lake Ohrid...and we need it quick because it starts pooring!
The border guard transforms into a friendly fellow, and with a movie star move he takes his mobile phone and calls one of his...friends. Immediatly we see an old Mercedes Benz (only Mercedes Benz in Albania) showing up on the road. For a price that is not expensive but also not very cheap he offers us to take us to Pogradec. By know, it is raining heavier, and we decide to take the offer.
The Mercedes Benz is a funny experience. The temperature regulator seems to be broken, turning the vehicle into a mobile sauna. Soon the windows are getting foggy, and my girlfriend seems to care why I am turning that red. A hell of a ride inside Albania. Beside the road we see bunkers, newly constructed houses (probably built with mony earned inside the EU) and... bunkers, BUNKERS. A leftover from the communist Hoxha years. The man himself was kind of paranoid, the fear that foreign powers wanted to take Albania was too big and so he decided to cover the Albanian landscape with little, conical-shaped bunkers. (There is a story that Hoxha himself invited several bunker constructors so he could have a wide choice of various types. After he chose one, he forced the constructer of the winning type to lock himself up inside one while a tank was shooting at the construction. If the bunker was going to survive - and the poor constructor inside it too - , he would take that one and cover Albania with it. So happened.) (I don't know if this story is true, but it is indeed a funny story)
But shall we return to Pogradec? Yes, I know you people are waiting...
In Pogradec we had to negotiate to change some of our Macedonian denars into Albanian lek . Well, it wasn't really negotiating but more trying to explain that we had to change money. It took a while, but it worked. And we even managed to let the man return three hours later to take us back to the border.
So, now it was really raining and the streets of Pogradec - most of them not asphalted very well - were turning into giant floodzones. The muddy ones were transforming into wild mountain rivers. Funny. We were getting wet and the morale was dropping. Time for a hot drink!
We entered a café and were amazed by the many looks that we received. It was like the social talks of the (unically) male café-population dropped and th world became quiet, not knowing if they should laugh or just keep gazing at us. After 5 minutes however, we were accepted, and ordered some coffee to celebrate that we made it to Albania.
When we left it was still raining, and we spread our time between eating an energy-boosting pita (really a fat-making one), and hopping from shelter to shelter. We managed to buy an umbrella, so the rest of the day could be dryer. We also bought some saucages and bread for our dinner. And then, right, we fled into another café.
And there they were really friendly. They immediatly filled two bottles with boiling hot water from their espresse machine to warm up our hands. We drank something like three hot teas and thanked our hosts for their hospitality. It was a peaceful café, hosting a (almost unically) male population (again), but it seemed that the owner of the café was a woman. The Albanians a the table near us looked and laughed friendly at us. They were a drunk. You shouldn't underestimate the power of fresh rakija (something like slivovica) in the early afternoon...!
It was time to leave. We thanked our hosts, offered some extra money for the hot-water bottles (which they refilled three times or so to ensure the water was HOT enough), but they refused, and nothing on earth could change their minds. I began to believe that I had found the meaning of the word 'hospitality'. Something we don't know (anymore) in the west. While returning to our taximan, there was a funny Albanian (probably the local fool) who wanted to guess which country we came from. He decided that my girlfriend was from the UK and I was from Germany. And after that, he hugged my girlfriend...and gave a kiss on my cheek. I began to believe that balkan people really loved me...
Our taximan was just on time. We drove back to the border. And finally...it stopped raining and there was even a tiny sun that was breaking through the clouds. We crossed borders again, received our stamps, and got back into Macedonia. That was quite a journey.
In the evining, at sunset, I looked at Pogradec and decided that Albania was a funny country, with friendly and honest people. That's not the image we have in Western Europa.
Albania is a weird country. But indeed, a country that needs further exploration...
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