Tirana & The North

I took the minibus from Ohrid on a cool and quiet early morning, happily on my way to Albania where I would meet Emma the next day. My quiet morning was of course disturbed, this was a public bus for goodness’ sake, what else was I to expect? The old man had begun breathing like a man worried that the usually reliable atmospheric oxygen in the bus was running out. He didn’t seem concerned by his own laboured breathing nevertheless, his pulmonary apparatus was clearly not functioning correctly. While he was making an awful lot of disgusting noises to accompany his inconsiderately greedy breathing, I was put at ease by the assumption that the man was in need of some sort of minor medical attention. A medical condition is a worthy excuse, it is more than you can expect from a public bus. An environment where one may assume that most noisy passengers are just a heedless and discourteous villains in the minibus soundscape. When we reached the Albanian border he stood up, as if his internal programming had been triggered with a flick of a switch. He then moved and stood next to me in the tiny aisle of the bus, gripping the seats with vigour, sighing repeatedly and, strangest of all, saying, “Aye, aye, aye” on repeat. Confused, tired and wondering how many sandwiches short of a picnic the man was, I decided to turn up the volume on my earphones, turn away and enjoy my first glimpses of Albania.  

Pomegranate trees sprouted their bulbous fruit everywhere I looked. Between a couple of small villages, I spotted a man stood up on a rickety wooden trailer careering down the road, the trailer was tied to a horse and the Albanian Evel Knievel was keeping balance with the help of a pitchfork. The villages were simple farming communities and at this time of the year conical haystacks could be seen in every field. Along the road men gathered to chat and smoke, in one village in particular, everyone seemed to be wearing burgundy. I hope somewhere in that town is a suit shop selling jackets and trousers of indistinguishable shades of burgundy and that in their local dialect they have 100 words for these indiscernible hues. I would like that. While these men smoked, people worked the fields with scythes; their pastoral home was bisected on land by the motorway and in the air huge humming pylons stretched wires into the morning haze.    

Tirana

I was dropped at an ugly bus station, and I had a decent walk to get to the hostel. Perfect; I would have plenty of time to get a feel for the place, to see whether everyone was right about how rubbish the city is (they’re usually wrong). My first impressions were overwhelmingly positive. The city was lively, colourful and full of cafes and restaurants. Antique shops seemed as plentiful as the bike repair shops because apparently Albanians are an odd hybrid of Fiona Bruce and Chris Froome. Perhaps more importantly, there were fresh fruit stalls and bakeries everywhere. The bakers seemed to scurry inside Tirana’s hodgepodge of mismatched architecture, hidden away, but the undeniable smells of warm bread would always betray their location. Meanwhile, the fruit stalls allowed their produce to almost overflow onto the street bringing colour and vibrancy to the concrete. When Emma arrived in Tirana, we left straight away for Shkodër, so our exploration of the capital would have to wait until the end of our Albanian trip. 

After two weeks in Albania, Tirana was a special part of our trip for me. It was about having alone time with Emma. We weren’t in a guesthouse or hostel; we had an entire flat to ourselves and had time to luxuriate in each other’s company. While Emma was scrolling TikTok or the equally endless array of eye-catching online clothes items, I was sat beside her reading a book given to me two weeks earlier (by a man who will soon feature in the post as we wade against the chronological tide and into the past). Accordingly, this book by Maria Stepanova, was a frighteningly astute intellectual’s musings on the nature of memory, especially in the modern day. In the quiet of the flat, as I toiled through some of the more impenetrable prose and revelled in the occasional pages of accessibility, I found myself wanting to write about where I was. To acquire a love for the beautiful simplicity of the ordinary. To put pen to paper instead of relying on the photos or ‘post memory’ as she puts it (a phrase that inspired in me a sense of Orwellian unease). Without an appreciation for the simple unrefined realities, our brains veer into false narratives, historicity makes way for romanticism and a cropped, edited parallel version of the past slides into view. Something that never was becomes truth. I looked up from the page and decided to avert this, aiming to capture that very moment.  

Hastily strewn Birkenstocks lay wherever they landed, and Emma’s bag was wedged into the corner of the sofa, clothes being plucked from it when needed and worn clothes being tossed into it with the flick of a toe. My bag had made it into the large bedroom, but clothes had still found their way onto a strange orange chair that sat like an unfortunate plastic reproduction of its lost wicker counterpart. Getting in from the heat of an Albanian afternoon, Emma took off her dress and soon appeared lying on the sofa wearing an oversized t-shirt and soft fabric shorts. We blared music when we weren’t sitting still. Emma continued her rendition of Nickelback’s timeless classic ‘Rockstar’ while on the toilet, her purposefully loud and out of tune cover reaching me down the corridor and bringing a smile to my face. From the sofa, ragged books faced us, leaning to the left on the dark wooden bookcase which had the hallmark emptiness of an uninhabited flat. This fact was solidified on closer inspection of the books: manuals, guides and old novels; those that had been thought of as disposable literature lining the shelves. Outside, the sounds of traffic were almost reassuring in their consistency; there weren’t the endless horns and sirens of many capital cities, this was a steady drone of tires on tarmac, insect-like moped engines and revving trucks registering as growls above the rest.   

Outside in the city, Emma and I did nothing but walk, eat, talk and relax. For that, Tirana is excellent. There is a good sprinkling of parks, an almost insane number of cafes and restaurants and an immutable spring in the step of the Albanian people. The city is vibrant, buildings were being constructed left right and centre, while old buildings got revamped for the modern day. For example, one of the main sights of Tirana, the Pyramid (built as a museum celebrating the life of Enver Hoxha the communist authoritarian ruler of Albania post WW2) was now being remade into an IT centre for the young people of the country.  

The Mountains

The Journey To Theth

As I said before, after Emma had arrived, we hopped on a few different buses to get on our way to Shkodër in the north. We made it there late into the evening and before settling into the hostel for the night we went for some food at a recommended restaurant called Puri. It was small, bare and harshly lit inside, but we sat out on the pavement next to a group of local men. Despite appearances, the food was amazing (Emma had some meatballs with a mustardy sauce while I had rice, beans and meat. The waiter was incredibly friendly, and he even gave us an extra main course for free (he knew we could put away the calories). After dinner we sorted out our bus to Theth, the gorgeous mountain town in the Albanian Alps. It would be a very early morning departure, a fact that threatened to send Emma into a deep despairing depression. But thankfully, there were loads of dogs running about the hostel at any given time, something that distracted Emma from her usual propensity for sleep.  

The minibus to Theth was a bright orange beauty with two bikini clad models stuck onto the paintwork at the front. At the wheel was a chain-smoking driver who pulled over a few times to pick up some mates. Once we got out of town and into the mountains, the morning drizzle had turned to lashing rain, striking the winding single lane road with such a scouring force as to try and erase all proof of human intervention in the mountains. The windscreen and windows were all steamed up but even so mountains appeared beside us, climbing into the air in defiance of the heaven-borne onslaught. Their backbones of contorted rock were naked but resolute against the storm that sought to engulf them and tear them down.  

Deano and Doug

When we got to Theth, the rain had not eased but we were forced out of the bus and into the deluge. We were soon soaked to the bone, but I was maniacally happy. Being sodden to my usually despicable core gives me a childish carelessness and I was soon mounting walls and splashing in puddles. The roads were gravel and ran like rivers, we reached the guesthouse at the far end of the village not long after and were shown to paradise. The guesthouse had a tin-roofed stone outhouse with long tables, benches and most importantly, a roaring log fire. In front of the fire was a big fat, loping dog. This little rectangular room would become more of a home to us than our cold bedroom.

Despite the rain, we had to leave and get lunch, so on went the sodden shoes and we headed for another guesthouse that also ran a small traditional restaurant. All the paths were so high with water that it poured over the tops of our shoes and every set of steps was a waterfall. The huge mountains either side of this remote valley sheltered the curling smoke of precipitation on their slopes, the peaks of the mountains seemed to float above, their otherwise unmovable mass of rock passing in and out of existence like enormous omniscient beings watching us scurry in the dirt below them. From the constantly evolving cloudscape waterfalls raged forth from every side, their white streaks funnelling water to where we needed no more. Once we got inside, our lunch was fantastic, with dips, cheeses, meat and bread but it also came with the entertainment of watching two little fluffy puppies run around happily while we ate. 

In the evening, I settled into the outhouse and tackled the complex balancing act that is efficiently drying shoes next to a hot stove. I stared up at the rough-cut tree trunks and golden bamboo stems lying across the ceiling as the rain grew heavier. The thunderous noise of the rain was almost malicious in its earthly persecution, but the ebb and flow of the white noise was also meditative, the waves of sound marking the transient nature of the clouds beyond the roof. As I sat there, taken back to the rainy days of my childhood inside tents and camper vans on the suitably rainy days of an English holiday, I lay still and admired the roof. I studied the imperfections in the bamboo’s famous uniformity, the variations in colour and the fibrous frays along its long length. 

After a home cooked dinner, Emma and I got talking to another couple, Tom and Mak. Tom was a Brit from Bath, while Mak was a Singaporean and they were both documentary film makers. They were amazing company, and it was so nice to have a fundamentally different conversation than the standard hostel travel chat. They were thoughtful, intelligent and engaging without the usual pretentiousness of many travellers.

We were in Theth to do the day hike over the mountain pass to the town of Valbona and the next day was supposed to be our hiking day. However, after talking to the guesthouse owner she said that it would be a very stupid idea, so we postponed it for one day and instead had an explore around the town. Emma wasn’t feeling very jovial in our endlessly rainy new home and so the idea of a recreational walk didn’t really hit home as the best plan I’ve ever come up with. But my Golden Retriever-esque energy for a soaking-wet-to-the-point-of-inconvenience adventure was just enough for her to begrudgingly accompany me on what would turn out to be a great little day out.  

First, we headed for a waterfall just outside of the village. We crossed a decidedly irate river, passed a couple with a very cute dog in tow and clambered up a narrow, forested path to the waterfall’s base. It was absolute insanity. Waves of spray billowed out of the base like bedsheets blowing in a gale. The power of the water eddied the air into whirling arms of vapour that circled, tumbled and danced in the downdraught. Above, the water struck a rogue boulder wedged into the path of the torrent and it sent water droplets arcing into the air, forming canopies of mountain-borne mist. After admiring the sheer power of the water from a boulder, I decided I wanted to get closer. At close quarters I was being drenched. It was like having bucket after bucket of freezing cold water thrown onto me, soaking me to the bone. The wind only driving the water deeper into my clothing.  

As we walked back the sun showed its cowardly face for the first time and we watched it trace its colourful brush across the autumnal slopes of mountainside that had moments ago been hidden beneath cloud. Back in the village a local man walked up to us and I said, “Good day,” in Albanian (thanks to Rita for teaching me this in Kosovo), this inspired him to start trying to chat to us, mainly in Italian. His name was Deano and, before we knew it, we were pushing his small car through his field hoping to jump start it. Unfortunately, it didn’t work but Deano said we should go to a Guesthouse up the road for lunch and say his name (or at least that’s what I thought he said). We got there and it looked empty, so we just went back to where we knew had good food and puppies.  

Having seen the sun and knowing we had to make the hike on the next day, rain or shine, we didn’t concern ourselves too much with the possible dangers and instead went through the village to gather snacks for the hike. Snickers and pringles (the essentials) and a couple of other things in the bag, we decided to go a different route back to the guesthouse, a route I had found on Maps.me. On the way to the edge of the village we met Doug (at least that is what we named him). This playful little puppy came running over to us on his short little legs and Emma quickly decided he should be ours. We kept walking and Doug kept following. Sometimes he would race ahead and then potter back to make sure we were still coming and sometimes he would have to bound over obstacles to keep up with us. Emma was getting worried about leading him away from the side of the village he knew but I was just happy to have little Doug along for our little adventure. We reached a waterfall and river that we had to cross, but little Doug, as much as he searched, couldn’t get across because of his diminutive appendages. So, Emma scooped up our semi-wild canine friend and we kept going to the church. When we got there Emma almost walked Doug all the way back up the village to get him home but we parted ways with Doug for the final time while he pottered about. That night the electricity was off throughout the guesthouse, so we sat in the radiating warmth of the stove until dinner which we ate by candlelight chatting away to some excitable English girls. The next morning, we said bye to Tom and Mak before setting off on our hike. As a goodbye Tom gave me a book his best friend had given him, and he hadn’t even read it yet. That book inspired my reflections on memory in Tirana. A book that works its way into how you think is a special thing.  

Valbonafide Beauty

After an early, cold and showerless start, we set off for the trail with the chatty girls from the night before (because they were a bit nervous about the hike and wanted some company). However, once they had seen the absolute torque we were packing in the old limbs south of the corporeal border, they told us to go ahead and not to wait for them. This was what we were waiting to hear, Emma and I weren’t particularly interested in having a sociable chat while climbing over a 1000 metres in elevation up a mountainside. Instead, we powered through the pouring rain, muddy tracks and ethereal misty woodland. It was steep and the constant effort of climbing with my big bag was straining my hamstrings, but we had a mountain café to aim for as a place to rest so we just kept grinding until we reached it.  

The wooden, open sided café had a large fireplace with a pile of smouldering embers which was kicking out a lot of heat. That residual warmth was perhaps was the only thing keeping the thick rolling cloud from our bench. We ordered some tea and a slice of Fli/Flia each (an Albanian dish of crepe-like pancakes layered on top of one another with syrupy nuts on top) and quickly demolished the food. It was the perfect hiking snack and we were in heaven. We quickly scooted over to the fire with our tea to warm ourselves slightly before continuing upwards. We still had 350 metres of elevation to climb and had already completed 800 metres. We moved from muddy deciduous woodlands which hosted a restless mist and into sparse pine trees rising from bare, dark outcrops of rock. We were feeling a little disappointed in the lack of views, as we had heard that they were stunning especially from the pass, but we were still having fun so there were no regrets. As we got closer to the pass the wind was blasting across the increasingly bleak mountainside, having been funnelled into rocky hovels and depressions. Emma went ahead into the wind while I brought up the rear, taking a video of the conditions around us, but at the top Emma swung around and beckoned me to hurry. 

The views over the pass were insane; the clouds had disappeared and what lay in front of us was a huge sweeping alpine vista, the perfect reward for our toil. We could see the long wide valley we would soon be walking down, with bare and jagged peaks rising at its far end to seemingly hem in the snaking river that carved its way along the length. First, we followed narrow tracks along the rocky mountainside, stopping to take in the ever-changing views. Clouds rushed over the mountaintops to our left only to dissipate in front of our eyes. We worked our way through a tube of Pringles while perched on a rock, admiring the serenity of the scene (well, as much serenity as you can get while you’re crunching your way through a tube of Pringles at a rate of knots).

The downhill walking was fun and we loved jogging/sliding down the rocky slopes. Into the forest, which was dotted with abandoned farm buildings in the lower reaches, the mountains were hidden from us but, in places, the trees parted and we were treated to views framed by bright autumn colours. At the riverside we were nearly at our guesthouse for the night (Hyrmet Demushi), or at least we thought we were. According to Booking.com, the guesthouse was in the woods but there didn’t seem to be any path to get into them, only a hand painted sign stuck into the rocky alluvial deposits amongst the widening river channels. We had unwittingly started the Hyrmet Demushi trials. First, we backtracked through a patch of pathless forest until we reached the river once again, there we crossed and searched the other bank for signs of human habitation. Eventually, we spotted a red arrow and after crossing a final sweep of the broken river’s course we entered the woodland. In a clearing was a collection of buildings and all was quiet apart from some chickens clucking away in the distance. The final trial was announcing our arrival because no one seemed to be around. Nevertheless, soon the father of the owner turned up and he showed us to our room in a squat stone building. Our room was freezing cold and had that dampness in the air that is inevitable from an old stone building. Luckily, close by there was a warm, single room, prefab building where we could relax by a fire all night. In there we ate dinner, got a fright when the owners brother attempted to murder a fox that had come to the chicken coop for its dinner, chatted to a friendly Dutch couple and played with a kitten. Staying up as late as we could manage (mainly to dry my sodden shoes near the fire) we skulked back to the room in the dark and tried to get some sleep.  

Sunset Beers to Distract from Mortal Peril

The next day we were heading back to Shkodër but, because we were on the other side of the pass and because of unforeseen factors, we had a long journey ahead of us. First of all, we were offered a lift to a road which was a godsend because neither of us really wanted to complete the Hyrmet Demushi trial by river again. The lift was a little out of the ordinary because we ended up in an enormous, white, Russian truck which had a metal dashboard with large red and green buttons and switches. This truck was driven by the owner’s father who only had one hand, but his skill at the wheel was soon evident when we started to traverse the big drops and rocks of the river.  

Once he dropped us off we took a minibus to a small mountain town where we had some time to pass in the rain. But not before being told that we wouldn’t be able to take the ferry across the large Lake Koman (the quickest and most picturesque way to Shkodër). Instead, we would be taking buses around the huge reservoir which would take all day. On our final bus we even crossed into Kosovo, through Prizren and then back into Albania. We had told the bus driver’s assistant that we were trying to get to Shkodër and he said he would drop us off at the place to get another final bus. Once we got off however, the road seemed pretty quiet, there was no sign of buses coming our way and so I decided to try and chat to some men who were also hanging around in the same place. They told me clearly, despite the lack of a shared language, that there were no buses from here. This confirmed our suspicions, so we begrudgingly began walking to the main highway, which wasn’t far but meant walking on the hard shoulder of an on-ramp which is not the best place to be as a fragile pedestrian. After walking either side of the crash barrier for ten minutes, we finally reached a place we could wait for a bus to pass and flag it down. However, it was late, there were only 40 minutes until sunset and the bus could come any time in the next hour. In fact, I was certain I had seen a bus heading north (to Shkodër) while we were on the on-ramp. This meant we would be waiting for another hour, some of which would be in the dark (not considered a good idea when stuck on a random Albanian motorway in the middle of nowhere). So, after persuading Emma it was in our best interest to hitch a ride, I stuck out my thumb. Emma had never hitchhiked before and had, in fact, been warned strongly against it. Nevertheless, a car pulled in very quickly, two friendly looking young guys picked us up and we were on our way. They didn’t speak any English, and my Albanian stretched to ‘tasty’ and ‘thank you’, however they made themselves understood when they asked within five minutes if we smoke weed. After we had said no, they then asked if we wanted a beer. As much as I wanted an ice-cold bevvy, I wasn’t sure right then and there was the time to wet the whistle, so we declined (but they saw the desire in our dehydrated eyes and pulled in and bought us a beer each anyway). The driver and his friend sunk their beers at an impressive speed, while we sipped ours and enjoyed the adrenaline surging terror of watching their driving. It was both impressive and crazy how recklessly they sped, overtook and tailgated but, much like in Morocco, the fear of their driving methods was somewhat drowned out by the tinnitus inducing music being played. We arrived in Shkodër as the sun set and they dropped us in the centre of town and were gone. Faleminderit, lads. 

Shkodër

Back in Shkodër in time for my birthday, neither of us wanted to spend two nights in a hostel. Sociable James and Emma were long dead, if they ever existed, instead we were feeling fancy. So, we went with the understated but incredible Intown Guesthouse. It was without a doubt the cleanest, most beautiful and most welcoming accommodation we stayed in during our trip in Albania. The place only had a handful of double, ensuite rooms. Out the back was a beautiful garden, with tables, chairs and a hammock. The best bit about the place though was the owner. He was incredibly helpful and friendly and went out of his way to make sure we had choices for everything from food, to places to see, all within different price ranges. He was keen to make my birthday, the best it could be in Shkodër.  

Emma and I decided on a day of cycling. The guesthouse owner suggested a few museums around the city but we had already spied the castle and wanted to look along the shore of Lake Skadar which is bisected by the Albanian/Montenegrin border close by. The bike hire company he organised for us was great, but the bikes were not suited for our adventurous spirits. Nonetheless, we persevered (I was used to bikes being too small for these monstrously out of proportion legs of mine from our cycling in Hualien, Taiwan). 

After leaving the old town where the guesthouse was situated, we easily cruised through the streets and towards the castle which was up a steep hill (as castles tend to be). This caused much anguish in my bunched-up knees but we conquered the hill and then walked up the cobblestone path to the castle gate. Rozafa castle was incredibly impressive and has a long history (back as far as the 9^th century BC), we spent a while walking around the old walls and sitting taking in the expansive views of the Buna and Drin rivers carving their way through the vast floodplain from the mountains to the east, on their final approach to the Adriatic sea in the west. After spotting some girls, who had come up to the castle for an extremely cringeworthy photoshoot (pouting, dramatic look over the shoulder, sticking out the bum etc.) we decided to get back on our bikes and head for lunch. We had been told about a fish restaurant very close to the Montenegrin border and so that’s where we headed.

First, we crossed a bridge, whose wooden surface was riddled with holes big enough to ensnare a bike tire and send one, or both of us to a very uncomfortable landing. Nevertheless, the crossing of the river meant the start of the adventure, and we made it across unscathed. On our way along the lakeside, old men had parked their bikes on the pavement while they hopped the fence (or more likely stepped over it with all the creaks and complaints of a deteriorating body) and were busy picking pomegranates by the lake shore. As we continued, we passed by hotels and houses until the road got narrower and were free to swerve and glide through the turns taking in the dramatic views of the mountains to my left, that made no distinction of nationality, no indication of border, there was only the beautiful continuity of nature. At the final village before Montenegro, we stopped and were ready for some food and wine. We had two large glasses of incredibly tasty and fresh local white wine each which came in at the staggering price of £4.50 in total. For food, fish. Lots of fish. I had the stranger of the two choices, choosing a popular local dish of grilled carp which was very tasty and very similar to pork in texture and, even more weirdly, in taste. As we cycled back, a bit buzzed from the wine, I couldn’t help but giggle at the most “alpha” Albanian photoshoot happening at the roadside. There was a tall man with a shaved head but full black beard, wearing an all-black ensemble (think Albanian mafia chic) and he was leaning slightly on his black Mercedes. This is already a pretty stereotypically Albanian scene but there’s more. He had a cigarette nonchalantly hanging from his mouth and was staring menacingly at the camera held by his dolled-up girlfriend/date who seemed all too happy to indulge his narcissistic whims.

Nearly back at the hole-riddled bridge, a group of Germans overtook us on their far superior bikes and told us to go and have a look at an abandoned building which stood at the end of a long concrete jetty into the lake. We wandered around its strange concrete shell for a while, enjoying the photographic simplicity of the building’s skeleton and then I spotted a random man in the building with us, who had arrived unannounced and we thought it was probably time to go.

We finished my birthday with a visit to a posh Italian restaurant where we continued the boozy theme with more amazing white wine, but this time accompanied with freshly made pasta. We ate, chatted and had a great time luxuriating in the warm Albanian evening. Following the pasta with crepes from a dessert restaurant/bar and some horrible red wine at a Spanish bar in the old town later that night. We almost felt like irresponsible 20 somethings for once, that was until it hit around 11pm and the energy drained from us, and our standard old person operating procedures kicked in. Bed was calling. 

Final Thoughts  

Yes, it rained enough to have Noah’s ancestors itching to do some deforestation. Yes, I’m certain Doug has found another couple to hang out with now. But, and it’s a big but, the north of Albania was a complete and utter highlight. From that first excited look at Valbona’s mountains to the Gen-Z blight of shockingly poor and unironic photoshoots at historical sites, I just had a really good time. Not even the day commemorating my indomitable march towards death could distract me from the fact that the north of Albania is just good clean fun.