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The first rule of Albania is there are no rules.
I arrived in Budva, Montenegro and my fears about the place were realised. It has a beautiful old town but it's very small. In amongst everything else is a sprawling series of beach bars packed full of rich Russian and Serbian holiday makers on yachts. I'm sure in the future it will become quite a big party destination but at the moment it is packed with bar after bar playing Balkan turbo folk over the top of each other.
The long and short of it is I spent a few hours wedged between other holiday makers (I had sun cream up so I could slide into the tiny space left on the beach) and booked a seat to Albania for the next day.
As I said, the first rule of Albania is there are no rules. I absolutely love it!
We crossed the border and the first task was to dodge head on traffic whilst overtaking a man sat on top of a 6ft pile of hay on a cart pulled by a donkey. I quickly found out there are two ways to travel in Albania: donkey or Mercedes saloons.
Secondly, the road system is absolutely mental. The speed limit is whatever the vehicle in front of you can do, be that donkey or Mercedes. If you don't like that speed, the overtaking rules are can you make it before the on coming car hits you? That could be a straight or hill top bend.
Finally there is one rule for pedestrians and cars. Red light does not mean stop... It means do you have the balls to go! This was excellently demonstrated by the guide who got off the bus, stepped into the road, a Mercedes ran over her foot and she shook it off whilst punching the car's wing mirror.
This is an awesome country.
How would you get a 4ft box back to your house from town on your bike? You might balance it on the handle bars or strap it to the rack on the back. In Albania, you gaffer tape it to your back around your chest and off you go.
Next brilliant things in this country are the roads, stalls and buildings.
The roads are pretty good for a mile or so and then pot holes hit and then the roads are littered with cars with broken suspension. They are really trying to improve the roads infastructure but don't have the money or the skills base.
There is one brilliant road from Skhoder
to Tirana but it isn't finished and about half way you have to slow from whatever the driver was doing (roughly 100 miles per hour at this stage) and hang a 90 degree left onto a dirt track which then takes you onto the other side of the road which you share with the on coming traffic.
You drive along the wrong side of the road and you can watch them build the next bit. This is well built but about three feet higher than the last section and this has gone on for miles.
Every now and then, they solve this with a Tarmac ramp. This causes the drivers to break hard - you can't see these ramps coming until about 100 metres - to avoid losing their front bumper. It is a sheer feet of human ingenuity and problem solving.
The roadside stalls that adourn a lot of Eastern European are also highly thought out. One Albanian sets up a roadside stall selling melons. He does well and starts to make a little money. The next Albanian sees this, thinks he's onto something and sets up a melon stall right next to the first one. This goes on and on and on until there are 15 melon stalls and no more melons to sell. They all sell at the same price harking back to the country's communist days.
Then someone thinks of something else to sell and the cycle starts again.
This idea comes out in the buildings too. Someone builds a new kind of building and then the next person copies it. However, they rarely have the money to finish them so just stop and live in whatever they have finished.
There is one building in Tirana that the builders modelled on a similar building with a tiled mozaic pattern on part of the outside. They decided to do their one with a mozaic over all of the outside to top the last one. They got excited and did the mozaic first, ran out of money and don't have outside walls on the 1st floor or windows on the subsequent three other floors. The building looks beautiful but no one can live in it. Now ambitious stall holders have used the shade on the ground floor to set up 15 identical furniture stalls.
I visited Skhoder, the second city, and Tirana, the capital. Both cities were packed full of happy people using everything they can to make a living.
They were also packed with surprises like when the bus was held up by a herd of goats being driven through the main route into Skhoder.
I had lunch in Tirana with a Russian family on the top of a high rise building. We got into the lift and were about to ask which of the 20 stories the restaurant was on, when - being Albania - there was the option of 0 or 1. 0 being the floor we were on and 1 being the rooftop!
Only in Albania.
I certainly will be coming back to investigate more of the country. They even have two rivers that flow next to each other, 40 metres apart at one point and they flow in opposite directions. One goes to the sea, one goes to the mountains.
That one fact sums up the country. The first rule of Albania is there are no rules.
- comments
C.Donald Sounds like your ideal world :-)
Dawnie Amazing! Can't wait to get the full adventure when you return XXX
Claire Haha this is A-MA-ZING. I totally agree that this is the county for me lol. :P looking forward to the next update. xx