An update from Dermot

So here I go, long time since I wrote for Jeanette’s/our blog. I tend to just bang up a few sentences and pics on Facebook, its easy and quick. What really spurred me on to this post was a blog about Albanian drivers on the blog of a friend of Jeanette’s. After we left Austria and through Slovenia we sort of moved down in the status of wealth in Europe’s eastern ex-soviet/ communist block countries. In order of national wealth it sort of goes down from about, Croatia, Bosnia I Herzegovina, Montenegro and now Albania. There is still a large amount of nationalist racism in Europe even though almost none of them can really claim even a smidgeon of purity of race given their thousands of years of screwing each other, usually by war. On our trip in 2016 when we were riding from country to country the people in the neighbouring country we were leaving from very often warned us of the perils of the next country full of thieves and vagabonds. We did not come across any problems. We have just spent four days in Albania. And for myself coming from a country that has had a fair bit of racism piled onto it from its neighbours I always hold my judgements.

So far in our 4 days in Albania we have discovered that the people are so very friendly. Our 1st night in Albania at a farm stay pressed that home particularly well. We got taken around the small farm by Ahmed and were looked after to the extreme by his daughter in law Saida. And Ahmed’s wife who cooked our food just exuded beauty and serenity in her 60+th year, plus she seemed to have a very close daughter relationship with Saida her daughter in law who is about 2 weeks from giving birth. 

So really that was just the intro for us to Albania. Next our ride to Lezhe was sort of a transition stage, nothing too exciting, just down a big wide valley to a city where we got a hotel for the night. This was a small (cheap) clean hotel with a very friendly owner & staff. It’s a very busy little town/city because it’s close to the Adriatic Sea and beaches.

Heading off to work with chainsaw and rakes onboard

Then this little aside to an example of the assistance we have been afforded so far.

As we were riding out of town in the morning on a very busy road. We were concerned about crossing the oncoming traffic to do a turn across it with a huge stream of vehicles behind us. Lo and behold up pops a tiny little police woman (my guess, way less than 5’ 0”) who stops all traffic to wave us across with a smile. My comment to Jeanette was, that she is soooo tiny that I would like to put her in my back pocket and spring her out when we needed her. But of course we have not required her so far. Later that day we ended up on the main road from the north to Albania’s capital city, Tirana. This turned out to be a busy, busy two lane road, one for each direction with a narrow shoulder. Whilst we were trying to get off this road the traffic was extremely patient with us. The traffic was backed up because of road works further on so often we were going faster than the traffic but not always. There were a few impatient nutters going down the inside on the dirt. We did eventually get off this arterial road into Tirana and went past the national Mother Theresa airport along another quite busy road. Although we spent quite a bit of time on busy roads we were not hassled or feel anything like as scared as we would in traffic like this on Australian roads, which brings me to my original reason for writing this post.

Just a minor challenge getting onto the road

Albania has had an horrific recent past, in a different yet still terrifying way than war torn Bosnia i Herzegovina. This country was totally locked off from the rest of the world as North Korea is right now, along with brutal oppression by the ruling dictator’s secret police. Apparently your family, down 3 levels would be persecuted for your even remote political dissent. Just think there were only 3,000 cars in the country in 1991 when they started to come out of the vile dictator’s iron grip. It probably then took another 10 years for most of them to be even able to think about buying a beaten up wreck from the west, let alone a good 2nd hand car. So here we have now today a country of 3 million people alongside wealthy Europe with the ability to go to Germany (luxury car capital of the world car). Hence there is a huge amount of Mercs of all vintages on the roads here. This obviously helps Germany and the rest of Europe very well as a disposal ground for their worn out cars. And of course for their spare parts businesses which are a lucrative aspect of the motor industry. The good thing about this is that although there is a certain (huge) amount of ill-discipline on the roads, we think it is well counteracted by a large amount of patience.

The entrance to a six story bunker built by Hoxha to protect the country from Russian or Chinese invasion

Two socialists fighting for equality

But I suppose if I were expecting the drivers of such a developing country & culture to behave like the uber regulated, rude, impatient and aggressive Australian driver I might find it hard to get around in my hire car in Albania.

So far this is working for us. I hope I don’t have to eat my words in the next few days while we are still here with these kind Albanians.