Yesterday in Albania everybody got married. Or at least if they weren’t already married then they must be now. And I’m equally certain that married or not, every Albanian must have been a guest to at least one wedding. Or at least that’s what it seemed, because I have never seen so many weddings!
I woke up in my communist style room at the Hotel Razaden, first by the mosque wailers at 4-bloody-AM, then again I stirred around 8 or 9am, woken by excessive honking of horns which I initially just put down to the regular morning traffic snarls around Shkodra. I gulped down my free hotel brekkie – first time I’d had eggs in a while, quite tasty – and hit the road, intent on getting to Tirana as quickly as possible. But the traffic chaos continued to erupt around me and seeing a proper Albanian city in the daylight for the first time, I realised just how comically absurd everything was. I’ve already touched on the traffic numerous times, but it still continues to amaze me just how it all works in Albania. The whole road system always looks like it is just coping with traffic levels far over the intended capacity. A mixture of cars, buses, motorbikes, bicycles and horse-drawn carts fight their way along. At most intersections, there are no traffic lights – they have policemen directing the traffic. But by far the most outrageous aspect was the numerous wedding processions clogging up the roads wherever they went.
The typical convoy started with a convertible car with a camera man filming the wedding from the backseat. Directly behind followed some swanky car containing the bride and groom, and finally as many cars behind that as needed to transport the rest of the wedding party and possibly all the family, or for all I know every single one of the guests too. All the cars were highly decorated with colourful streamers, balloons, bow ties and flags. In fact the decorations put to shame anything I’d ever seen previously that purported to be a wedding car.The convoys ran from a handful of cars, to dozens of cars all in a line, and the drivers didn’t so much honk their horns, as sit on them constantly whilst the passengers hung out the tops and sides, waving banners and flags and generally wildly celebrating on the way to the actual wedding ceremony or such. Now this was clearly what had woken me up, and on the road between Shkodra and Tirana, I saw no less than about 50 such convoys. I also passed two wedding receptions, and one photo shoot by chance, and thinking back, I recall that the main banquet room at the Hotel Razaden had been decked out for a wedding – no doubt one of the many parties that I saw today was heading there as I cycled out of the city.
I noticed another peculiar habit on the roads – bus and van drivers tend to drive with the doors open. I’m guessing that this is to help ventilation, and the first time I saw it I thought it must be a mistake or a broken door, but apparently this is common practice in the Balkans. Well I was immensely enjoying the chaos, but eventually it died down and my mind eventually drifted back to my surroundings and the long, straight roads ahead. Just on the outskirts of Shkodra, I passed the old wooden bridge again, which in daylight didn’t look any more stable than at night when I’d cycled over it in fear of my life. I started to notice little things about the country of Albania which I hadn’t noticed before. I’d already touched on the obvious poverty everywhere, but in daylight another aspect was evident. The Albanians clearly have a long way to go in terms of environmental responsibility. The country is an absolute rubbish tip and some parts of it absolutely stink too. Everywhere you go, there are hundreds of plastic bottles, bags, piles of rubble, wood, scrap metal, unused building materials, and general household waste strewn all over the place. It’s such a shame, and it’s going to take a big effort to clean it all up, and a major change of attitude and culture for the Albanians. Twice already I’ve noticed people just throwing their litter on the ground where they stand. If it had been in Australia, I would have taken them to task and possibly even got into an argument. Here, there is no point and it’s not my fight to have unfortunately, no matter how wrong I think it is. The Albanians just wouldn’t get it because they don’t really know better and probably don’t yet care. If only they knew what they were doing to the place.
I’ve crossed several rivers that were virtually run dry. Possibly this is a seasonal thing, but even the trickles of water that were still flowing, you wouldn’t go near the water (I suddenly wondered where all the tap water was coming from). I’ve seen firsthand the black sludge that seeps into the streams from oil wells in the centre of the country, polluting the waterways in a bad way. In the worst cases, the rivers stop flowing all together and the water and oil curdles into a pool of slimy, black goo. But even in places where there is the possibility of cleaner water, you still can’t escape that the river is basically doubling as the local rubbish dump. Sometimes the stench is so bad you need to hold your breath. In contrast, there are some parts of Albania that are very clean, normally urban areas that are frequently used in towns and so forth. But you still need to stumble over broken footpaths and piles of rubbish and dodge the stray dogs and cats to get to these places. And the Albanians also have a fetish for washing their cars. Everywhere you go, I’ve never seen so many petrol stations along the sides of the road, and each one has something called a “Lavazh” which I basically figured out is the word for ‘car wash’. They have very good pressure hoses, and every one of them seems to be in use all the time, and if they aren’t washing the cars, then the kids are playing with them to cool down. So there definitely is a part of the culture that wants to be clean and well ordered, but from either a financial perspective or a cultural one, or possibly both, the vast majority of the country and any property that is not privately owned, is left to deteriorate and rot away.
Anyway, the cycle to Tirana was extremely quick but in my mind it played out quite slowly. I took barely 4 hours to cycle the flat 100km on straight, boring roads to Tirana, and got their in very good time. They were converting the old road into a brand new highway, what looked like six lanes wide (three in each direction) however there were as yet no line markings on any of it, so once again it was an interesting experience cycling along a highway where cars pretty much drove where they felt like it. There was plenty of room for everyone however and I felt completely safe. On the odd occasion, the road construction stopped dramatically and the cars had to traverse some pretty hairy unfinished bits of the construction site and onto the opposite road into temporary lanes. And for reasons unknown, they still had left parts of the old road that were in urgent need of repair, and the potholes and road surfaces were so shocking that it almost made me want to ride on cobblestones again. Yes, that bad. But only in some places, I have to say, if the Australian government had as much get-up-and-go as the Albanians show in road construction, then the Pacific Highway duplication would have been finished 10 years ago!
Long suffering Bessie, my workhorse, has really been struggling. Unfortunately the repair job in Sarajevo lasted only three days and now the problem has not only returned but is clearly getting worse. I can’t now use the lowest 3 gears without the wobble of the chainset causing a very annoying rubbing of the chain on the derailleur, which is a crap sound to be cycling to. (Sorry for the tech jargon there, but if you know anything about bikes, you’ll know what I mean). The bottom bracket clearly needs replacing as a whole, not just a service or a fix. I always knew this but was hoping that the repair in Sarajevo would at least last me until Athens. I am honestly not sure if it will or not, and I don’t want to run the risk of having a completely unusable bike. So on my crippled bike, I rolled into Tirana and found the Tirana Backpackers Hostel. The guys who run the joint were very helpful and pointed me in the direction of the markets where I’d find all the bike mechanics. It was worth a shot to see if they could do anything to help, but once again, I would have put money on the fact that they didn’t have the right part. I mean, it is the poorest country in Europe, the chances were slim at best. But in anycase it was Sunday and the markets wouldn’t be open until the next day, so I figured I’d relax at the hostel and cruise around town for a little while.
Now to be honest, I’m not sure if I like Tirana more than I like Shkodra. I probably would normally except that my mind is pre-occupied with the impending disaster of getting my bike fixed. In any case, the Albanians obviously knew I was coming as the entire central square has been dug up and turned into a big clay pit, covered in scaffolding and fencing. The only part remaining is the horse statue in the middle. I think that there must be something that happens everytime my passport is scanned by a border control officer. Something is flagged in the system and all of a sudden roadwork and construction crews around the country go to work in overtime, demolishing old towns, laying tram tracks, and covering their most sacred touristic sites with as much scaffolding as they can muster. Surely there is a conspiracy?
Apart from the main square, there isn’t really that much to see in Tirana. The river that divides the town is more like a storm water canal, and it’s also full of rubbish. People rave on about the colourful apartment buildings, and how the Albanians have transformed the bleak, Soviet concrete towers into colourful works of art. I found it mildly amusing but there’s still way too much unfinished construction, demolition and rubble around the place, and the few scattered colourful buildings aren’t enough to offset the feeling that you are still living in basically a glorified slum. In fact it’s not a feeling, it’s a reality. A good slogan for the construction companies building the modern housing blocks going up all over the city would be “Tirana – building tomorrow’s slums, today.” But what is the story with all the construction that is just left unfinished? At first it was a bit of a novelty but after seeing it all over the countryside (and it’s also quite prevalent in most of the Balkan states) I did come to a realisation that left a bitter taste in my mouth. It wasn’t enough that the country was polluted enough, but all the construction materials – lying either in unused stacks, or in piles of rubble – really did add to the shitfight that was destroying the place. Mankind really does know how to destroy the planet, and in Albania they were doing it with professional expertise. Thank God most of the countries of the world have managed to turn their way around and be more environmentally friendly, because if we hadn’t made the changes we have over the past couple of decades, I’d hate to see what state the planet was in. Cycling through Western Europe, you see a bit of rubbish but it doesn’t really bother you. Systems are in place to tidy up after people, and they have proper recycling and generally people give two hoots about the place they live in. Well, I reckon the person who starts “Clean Up Albania Day” has got their hands full. If every Albanian spent several days a year cleaning up their surrounds, it would still take years and years to get it presentable.
Anyway, there wasn’t much more to do around the town, so I headed back to the hostel, which had a cool vibe to it. Possibly it was the cleanest place in all of Albania! I cooked up dinner using some leftover pasta I’d been carrying around for about a week (what you do when you don’t have a kitchen to cook it in) and sat back to watch a movie. IT was one of Johnny Depp’s first films, “Arizona Dream” and fair dinkum I was totally confused and with all the flying fish and the bizarre acting scenes and everything on screen, I was wondering if I wasn’t on some kind of acid trip. But in anycase the hostel was showing the film on a big projector in the courtyard of the beer garden and it was a good way to unwind after a stinking hot day and chill out whilst drinking the local Tirana Beer, which incidentally comes in 2L plastic bottles at the supermarket. About midnight I headed to my bed to find somebody else sleeping in it (why do people do that?) so headed downstairs to find another place to crash, which I did in an unused dorm room.
I went to bed with mixed feelings swirling around in my head. On one hand, I was a day ahead of schedule, and really didn’t have far to go to get to Greece, and Corfu where I could kick back for four days and drink and relax on the beach resort / party island. On the other, I was feeling completely handicapped and missing the freedom to just get on with the job. I had no idea if Bessie would last even another day or a week or two weeks. Certainly if things can’t be fixed in Tirana or Athens then I’m going to seriously have to reconsider my travelling plans to Egypt. I mean, I’ll get there somehow, at the worst case I could just jump on a bus here in Tirana for 25€ and end up in Athens tomorrow. And I’d have a couple of weeks to kill while my bike was hopefully being fixed. But I don’t want to alter my schedule if possible. There are a lot of cool sights still to see. But it’s funny that when I first started this trip, I would kill to take a train to skip over a day or two’s riding. Now that I’ve been on the road for 2 months, I’m so used to going everywhere by bike, that the idea of not being able to, and having to rely on public transport again, totally frightens me. Give me back my freedom please! Give me back my legs!
Come the morning, I headed straight to the bicycle market. One thing interesting about the layout of the cities that I’ve been coming across, is that whole districts are dedicated to one thing only. It might be a particular trade or type of goods market, but if ever you are looking for something, chances are you will find dozens, if not hundreds of shops selling exactly the same thing all within walking distance of each other. For example, it’s not uncommon to see all the fruit and veg markets in one place obviously. But it goes much further. Cycling into Tirana, there was one stretch of road that went on for nearly 10km and there was nothing but furniture shops for the whole length. The Albanian answer to Ikea and Harvey Norman and hundreds of other shops all lined up next to each other selling variations of the same thing. The same thing went for travel agents – I’ve never seen so many in one city before, let alone the possibly 100’s of travel agent shopfronts that I found to the western part of central Tirana.
Naturally the same thing went for bicycles. The ‘bike market’ was located at the back of the fresh food market to the north of Tirana. You would not find a bike shop anywhere else in the city, but come here and there is a whole street full of new and used bicycle shops, repair centres and mechanics wandering around. Vendors without shopfronts sit in the gutters or on the footpaths selling accessories and other junk that you wouldn’t event be able to give away in Australia, yet here in Albania it’s like somebody discovered grandpa’s back shed and emptied out the contents of the toolbox, storage cupboard and all the screws and nails and fastners that were kept in two and four litre ice cream containers. One man’s junk is another man’s treasure.
Well, despite the dozens of mechanics that probably could have helped me perform at least a temporary fix, unfortunately another problem came up. Somewhere along the way, whether that was in Sarajevo, or one of the mechanics in Tirana, somebody had stripped the screw head of one of the bolts that was holding the crank arm (pedal thing) onto the bottom bracket. Which meant that there was no easy way to get it out. And until I could get it out, there was no way to even get to the part that really did need to be fixed. So now I have two problems to deal with. In a nutshell, Bessie is going to have to wait until I get to Athens to be properly fixed, and I just hope that I can find a reliable mechanic who can speak decent English, to help me get the job done. I’ve arranged with Hannah back in London to bring out the correct Shimano part with her when she comes to visit me in Athens in 12 days. Meanwhile, I’m going to have to travel by bike as little as possible in fear of wearing it out beyond repair. At present it’s still very cyclable but there’s no telling how long it will last unfortunately.
So today I hung around the hostel for a few hours killing time, and decided to jump on the train to get myself half-way down the coast. It’s such a shame really because I’m going to be skipping over some very easy terrain (very ironic, I couldn’t perhaps have skipped over some of those bloody hills instead?) and I’m also going to be missing out on one of the UNESCO sites I wanted to visit, the old Ottoman style town in Berat. But on the upside, I’m now sitting on a train enjoying (and suffering) through a typically dodgy Eastern European train journey. Ask any Albanian about the train timetable and they’ll probably look at you funny as if they didn’t even know Albania had a train system at all. In it’s heyday back in the 1960’s – 1990’s, the Albanian railways carried up to 60% of passenger cargo around the country. Today it is just 1%. The rolling stock consists of around 50 engines, of which only about 15 of them still are operating and the rest are cannibalised for spare parts as needed. The carriages are old Italian railway carriages, most have broken windows, slashed seats and are in pretty poor condition, but at least they are clean. I read an interesting story on the Internet about how in the recent James Bond movie “Casino Royale” there is a scene where Daniel Craig is on a sleek, modern train and the caption comes up on screen suggesting he is travelling through “Montenegro”. When the film was screened in Balkan cinemas, the audiences simply burst out laughing!
The decline in railways has been unprecedented in Albania, since the collapse of the soviet rule in the country, there has been no investment into the infrastructure. A core group of staff keep the railways running, and nobody seems to mind that they are basically doing it as a hobby and for minimum wage because “what else would they do?” There was some speculation about a major EU investment but it seems to have fallen through for now, but it’s still on the cards. IF I had been able to cycle to Vlore, I would have beaten the train by about an hour, as the trains cannot travelfaster than about 30-40km/h. Grass grows along the tracks and the station platforms look abandoned as does most of the ‘in service’ rolling stock. It’s quite an adventure really.
Taking a bike onboard the train to Vlore from Tirana was obviously a new concept to the railway staff. The train conductor seemed to have no problem with it, but behind the scenes I had an interesting “debate” with the female ticket inspector who wouldn’t back down for a bit of baksheesh for taking the bike onboard. None of the other staff seemed to mind and were infact helpful, and I think even another Albanian passenger that I’d befriended in an interesting non-English cultural exchange, looked on in disgust as she tried to get 500 Leke out of me. I made her work for it on principle, because I knew she wasn’t entitled to it and it was twice the price of my adult ticket to Vlore, but in the end, what’s 500 Leke? I’ll tell you what. It’s the equivalent of about £3, or $5 AUD. I could have used it to purchase five kebabs in this country, but in the end it’s not really a lot of money so I gave it to her. Maybe she’ll use it to shout her family a couple of pizzas or something.
And so with all the drama about getting onboard, and getting tickets sorted, I’m now sitting here as the train slowly chugs through the countryside. Train travel is every bit as amusing as cycling on the roads. Sometimes the train pulls up and you need to look hard to even realise we have actually stopped at a train station. People walk all over the tracks everywhere we go and the whistle on the train is constantly sounding. It’s actually quite annoying! Cars that have had to stop at a level crossing sneer at the train with disgust and wave their arms in theatrical motions, as if to say to the train driver “why do you even bother running the train service!?” The window in my carriage has been shattered in the past, probably by kids pelting stones at the window. There’s no glass there to stop the smoke fumes from wafting in every time we pass one of the numerous burn offs that people have started to get rid of the mounds of rubbish piled up along the train lines. On top of that, I’ve rarely been annoyed by so many flies that seem to get into the cabin and can’t find a way out.
Looking out my window, nothing changes from what I’ve already seen in the rest of Albania. Leaving Tirana, I couldn’t help but notice dozens more of those little mushroom shaped bunkers built by the insane dictator who ruled the country no less than 20 years ago. There will be hundreds more still that I’ll see along the route I’m taking south, and thousands more that I won’t see. As far as the train line stretches, there is nothing but more concrete tower blocks, the majority of which stand unfinished and blight the landscape along with huge piles of more rubbish. Where on earth it all came from is a good question. And why are there so many unfinished construction projects? Did the builders go to war and die, leaving unfinished business? Did they just get bored, or stop due to running out of money? I’ve been told it’s a combination of all three, among other excuses. Even buildings that are used or lived in, are rarely ever finished. The majority have steel rods sticking out the roof where a planned second story was never built. Some towers and homes at first appear abandoned and incomplete, but then you notice that the top leve is actually occupied, where the levels underneath are just empty concrete shells. It’s totally insane. If I was in government, I would seriously look at a law that blocked any new development until the situation was in hand. The country is an absolute shambles and so much of their limited money is wasted in unfinished projects.
Anyway, I sound like I’m totally hammering Albania. I still am thoroughly enjoying and appreciating the trip south. I asked for different, and that’s exactly what I got! Not everything is a ‘good’ different, but this is what travelling is about. For the most part the people are genuinely nice. I even noticed on the train a couple of the locals wobbling their head from side to side in agreement. I’d heard that the locals, for some reason, shake their heads when they mean yes, and nod when they mean no. It’s utterly confusing because especially when you add a verbal ‘yes ‘ or ‘no’ to it, the message is instantly confused. Looking back, I’ve seen it in numerous situations, such as when asked if I want sauce on a kebab.
Anyway, I’m in Albania for a few more days yet, before setting foot in Greece. I’ll try for one more update before I cross over into Corfu. It is after all, an extraordinarily interesting country to write about!
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Poor old Bessie!!! Are you bringing her home with you??