| Albania:
A bumpy ride
By Luke Brown - 1997
"No problem," the taxi driver said, "it's safe."
He glanced into his car as if to say, as long as if you're with
me. He grinned; we smiled; he chuckled; we didn't.
We were four fellow tourists
who had met a few days earlier in Macedonia: Michele, Nick, Roger
and myself. The place: fifty paces or so into Albania from the border
with Macedonia, Lake Ohrid to the right and the bullet-ridden "Welcome
to Albania" sign over our shoulders. The time: August, 1997.
The reason: choose your cliche.
A few minutes earlier
we had had our passports checked by the pleasant Albanian border
officials in their dilapidated shack (by contrast, the Macedonian
facility was a villa) and handed over our nominal visa fee. The
sounds of the Spice Girls over their radio blared in the background,
almost loud enough for the bored Finnish UN troops, who were stationed
up the road and around a bend, to hear. We began our trudge down
towards the town of Pogradec, a few kilometres in the distance,
when our taxi driver drove up to meet us.
One's first impression
of Albania is that of a huge junkyard imitating a country. Rusted,
stripped and bashed cars littered the steep embankment that separated
the dusty road we were driving on, and the shores of Lake Ohrid
below. Buildings in Pogradec were dusty, crumbling and punctured
with bullet holes; the streets pot-holed; the pavements strewn with
rubbish.
We paid the driver in
US dollars. He scratched his beard, adjusted his sunglasses and
wished us well. We were directed by one of the ubiquitous armed
policemen that were standing on almost every corner, to the bank,
to cash in our travellers cheques. As we waited in the queue, I
couldn't help notice piles of the local currency, the lek, taking
up space in a dusty backroom. If one had the urge to rob this particular
bank of its backroom contents, a large get-away car parked right
outside, plus a lot of guns, would be required. This isn't a problem
in Albania, as there are thousands and thousands of guns freely
being traded around the country and cars are easily stolen. The
question would be, why bother? Earlier in the year, the country
had collapsed even further from just being a post-communist mess,
into complete disarray as its various pyramid investment schemes
brought about total chaos. People rioted, looting was rife, guns
were stolen from an armory and any semblance of order disappeared.
With our stock of US
dollars (the authoritative currency in Albania) replenished, we
had lunch at a nearby restaurant, and a family home with a spare
room converted into a paying guestroom was recommended to us. $10
a night for the four of us was the asking price. That afternoon
we wondered around town, it resembling a ghost town with inhabitants.
Anonymity was not an option. We brought in the evening on the edge
of the lake, dodging an assortment of dirty needles and used condoms
on the ground, much to the amusement of the local kids. We showed
them how to skim stones across the water; they quickly turned to
skimming dead fish instead. The rest of the evening was spent sipping
beers and eating fried fish on the roof of the house, a coolish
breeze some respite for the warm environs.
The next morning we decided to head out for the capital, Tirana.
No buses were available, so we instead endeavoured to hail a mini-bus
taxi that was willing to go all the way to Tirana. A couple of hours
later we succeeded thanks largely to a bored, but enthusiastic,
bunch of kids. After bargaining the driver down from US$100 to US$30
for the four of us, we hopped in and off we went. Now my guidebook
said that when travelling in Albania, you must not, under any circumstances,
get into a vehicle with three or more excitable young men as they
could tend to get carried away. This didn't seem to be a problem
though, as our mini-bus only had a driver. However, after about
four hundred metres into our journey, the taxi stopped and two excitable
young men got into the mini-bus. The taxi resumed its journey and
the seemingly calm driver then proceeded to get very excited and
drive like a madman. Steep hills, sandy curves, sharp bends and
gut-rattling bumps were all the same to our driver. He only stopped
for the occasional police roadblock. After a while the steep hills,
sharp drops off the road down into the valleys below and the view
of my feet, were all pretty much the same to me as well.
We rolled into Tirana
hours later and were dropped off at the United States embassy so
that Roger could check in. We soon discovered why our driver was
in such a rush; a mother and daughter had been murdered on the same
route yesterday, the victims of an armed hold-up.
Arriving in the centre
of Tirana, on the lookout for a place to stay that night, we walked
along the side of the madcap speedway that passes for a city road
circle. Beyond it I saw a small amusement park area. Within seemed
to be some kind of bumper-car circuit. Revenge will be sweet tonight
I chuckled.
Author: Luke Brown
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