Archives

All posts for the month August, 2013

After a night in Shkodra we were off to Tirana, Albania’s capital, for a couple of days. Before we left, though, we made a quick trip up to Rozafa Castle, a big old thing looming over the city that was already an important site when the Romans captured it in the second century BC. It was the site of the Siege of Shkodra in 1478, the subject of a worldwide best seller in the 16th century that’s just recently been translated into English and is available now on my Kindle!

View of Bojana River and Shkodra from Rozafa Castle

View of Bojana River and Shkodra from Rozafa Castle

After the stop we were finally ready to drive to Tirana. What we were not ready for, though, was the incredible, driving rain storm. We’d stopped at a hilltop restaurant on the way out of the city for coffee, but it turned into a longer wait as the storm blew in and the electricity went out. Realizing that it wasn’t going to just pass, we took off anyway, but it just poured all the way down to Tirana; what should have been a 90-minute drive took probably twice that long. Basically, up to that point every drive we took in Albania was doomed.

Once we landed in Tirana, the highlight was meals with Rezart’s parents and sister Sidrita. We stayed at Rezart’s apartment, which is in the building next door to his parents’ place. So while we napped and explored the city, mom Resi and Sidrita cooked both nights we were there. The meals were, simply, amazing. Stuffed eggplant to die for. Veal so tender it fell off the bone. A yogurt casserole unlike anything we’d ever had that you just had to taste to believe. Spinach one night in a pastry crust that I couldn’t get enough of so the next night they made it with a meat filling. The single best honeydew melon I’ve ever tasted, as though it had honestly been dipped in honey. Fresh figs. Really fresh. The funny thing is, the food was so good we never took pictures, we just didn’t think of it until we were stuffed.

Dinner with Rezart and his charming parents

Dinner with Rezart and his charming parents Resi and Arian

After dinner

After dinner with Sidrita, Resi, and Arian

I could get used to that, though my diet would sure take a beating. On top of the great food, I should add, Rezart’s family was great fun. His sister lives in Frankfurt, Germany with her husband, but was visiting on holiday. Like Rezart she’s fluent in English (they both were high school exchange students in beautiful Houston, Ohio), and handled translation for us older folks. You’d have been amused listening to the conversation of me trying to explain to Rezart’s dad what the Federal Reserve Bank was and why it’s structured the way it is…

After the quick two-night stop in Tirana, it was down to Dhërmi, a small beach town in southern Albania. For the first time, a drive in Albania was pretty much uneventful – mostly divided highway, no bad weather, just … driving. Until we got near the beach, at least, when the views were spectacular.

View from the road, with Rezart's car Skunderbeg seen in the corner

View from the road, with Rezart’s car Skanderbeg seen in the corner

On the road to Dhërmi

On the road to Dhërmi

The same spot on the road, I just like the picture of Mark and the sea and the shadow

The same spot on the road, I just like the picture of Mark and the sea and the shadow

A fun story about our hotel. For the first time on this adventure, we got to the hotel and they said they didn’t have a record of our reservation. We’d made the reservation on Booking.com, and fairly soon thereafter received an email from the hotel that there was a problem with our credit card and they’d canceled the reservation. So we re-entered the credit card info, the reservation went through, and we got a confirmation number. Still, the hotel said they didn’t have a reservation for us and they had no extra rooms. So we drove around for an hour or two until we found another hotel with rooms (we’re still traveling with Rezart) for three nights.

Amusingly, today Mark got an email from Booking.com saying the hotel reported us as no-shows and so they were going to charge our credit card for the night’s stay. Amusing, right?

The beach near Dhërmi

The beach near Dhërmi is spectacular

After a detour through Kosovo, we finally made it into Northern Albania and Valbona National Park. This was a place of rugged mountains, crystal clear rivers, and the most delicious blackberries ever.

It was not, however, a place with Internet. Thus you did not hear from us until we’d left the mountains and driven on to Shkodra in Northwestern Albania, a place that is remarkably close to the border with Montenegro. On a map, Shkodra looks like a short hop from Valbona National Park, but this was so not the case.

Jim's sunrise view as he started his morning run

Jim’s sunrise view as he started his morning run

Hiking the beautiful mountains of Valbona National Park

Hiking the beautiful mountains of Valbona National Park

Taking a blackberry break

Taking a blackberry break

Cooling off in the crystal clear -- but very, very cool -- mountain waters

Cooling off in the crystal clear — but very, very cool — mountain waters

Rezart shows us how to play a çiftelia at dinner

Rezart shows us how to play a çiftelia at dinner

As we left the park we inquired about the best routs for Shkodra, and to our amazement, the consensus was that we needed to head back east into Kosovo and make a huge spiral-shaped loop back into Albania and around to Shkodra. So we got to visit another Kosovar town and have another nice lunch there before completing a long day of travel and ending up remarkably close to where we were in Montenegro three days ago.

Not that it wasn’t an interesting day of travel. Our route was quite the hodgepodge blend of neat paved roads, dusty gravel paths with cows and chickens to dodge, the sparkling new central national highway built to link Kosovo to the Albanian coast, and the deadly final crowded stretch filled with maniacs trying to pass other cars at risk of crashing headlong into us. It’s a relief to be settled into Shkodra for the night.

The sometimes arduous journey from Albania back to Kosovo and back to Albania

The sometimes arduous journey from Albania back to Kosovo and back to Albania

The view from our room in Shkodra

The view from our room in Shkodra

We’ve known all along that traveling like this would require some flexibility, the willingness to change plans when things don’t work. Yesterday that meant changing gears and going to Kosovo instead of Albania.

First, though, a farewell to Dubrovnik. I haven’t written here for several days, not because I was too busy but rather because I was un-busy, whatever the right word should be. My day quickly fit into a pretty comfortable pattern: up early for a run, breakfast, down to the rocky beach for hours of reading and swimming, lunch, walking into the old town, dinner, sleep. That’s not a bad way to go.

My morning view - only my Kindle between me and the sea

My morning view – a beach chair on the rocks above the sea, with only my Kindle in between 

A little swimming

A little “swimming”

And then a walk into Dubrovnik

And then a walk into Dubrovnik

OK, but five or six days of that is enough. (Well, really it’s not, but it was time to move on anyway.) As Mark wrote, it was across the Montenegran border into Budva to meet Rezart. The plan was to drive to to Valbona National Park up in northern Albania for a day or two of hiking in the mountains. If you ask Google Maps for a driving route from Budva to Valbona, it sends you down the Adriatic coast into Albania, then north through Albania to the park. Rezart wanted to drive through Montenegro, though; he’s driven through Albania plenty but had never been in Montenegro. It’s supposed to be a beautiful mountainous country, so we quickly agreed. Google will give you a route from Budva to Plav in northern Montenegro and then from Plav across the border south into Albania and the park. Sounds reasonable, though perhaps it would have been wise (plot alert!) to question the apparently secondary roads out of Plav or even question whether there would be an open border crossing.

But with a car full of gas and innocence, we headed out from Budva. The route was more gorgeous than we could have hoped for. We were along the coast for a little while, and that was every bit as beautiful as you’d expect. As we turned north, then, we got into the mountains. It was just beautiful. We stopped in the capital city of Podgorica for a coffee break, and continued through the winding mountains to Plav. It made you think, “Wow, I really need to spend more time in Montenegro,” something that’s not occurred to most people.

Mark and Rezart in Podgorica

Mark and Rezart in Podgorica

A canyon en route to Plav

A canyon en route to Plav; you can see the tunnel and our road cut through the rocks on the right

Montenegran mountains

Montenegran mountains

So all is good. We get to Plav somewhat later than expected because the roads were so windy, but no problem. Once we leave Plav, though, it’s clear we’re on a really secondary road, much smaller than anything we’ve seen so far. And it starts going from secondary to … worse. Pavement gives out occasionally. Major pot holes. Can this really be the road to an international border crossing? After maybe 30 or 45 minutes, we get to a spot where there’s barely a wooden bridge across a creek. This can’t be right.

Our narrow road south of Plav

Our narrow road south of Plav

Can this be the route to the Albanian border?

Can this be the route to the Albanian border?

Fortunately a car of locals pulled up in back of us. “No, you can’t take this into Albania; they closed that border crossing years ago.” Back we go to Plav. By now the rain has quit, the sun’s back out, and while we don’t have any idea how we’re going to get to Valbona, you have to appreciate the sheer beauty.

Back through Montenegran villages towards Plav

Back through the lush Montenegran country towards Plav

Basically, there’s no easy route to the park; there are no roads across the mountain into Albania. Here, though, is where familiarity with a little geography comes in handy. Rezart suggests maybe we should go east into Kosovo and then south into Albania. Really? Can we do that? Can we go into Kosovo without a visa? And what the hell is Kosovo exactly, anyway? I know there was a war there a few years ago, but is it a country now? A region?

Well, it’s complicated. Kosovo was a part of Yugoslavia, and then was a part of Serbia when Yugoslavia broke up. But the people are mostly ethnically Albanians and, like Albanians, mostly Moslem. So they tried to break away from Serbia. Serbia fought to keep them. The U.S. intervened on the part of Kosovo and, when Kosovo appeared to succeed, recognized their independence. Not everyone though – particularly the Serbs and their Slavic allies like Russia – has recognized it as an independent country. So if you look at Google Maps again, you’ll see a dotted line between Serbia and Kosovo. Kosovars control the apparatus of government on the ground (our passports have Kosovo stamps), and the IMF and World Bank recognizes it as an independent country, but the U.N. does not yet. Like I said, complicated.

The good news, though, is that since the U.S. was Kosovo’s ally, we had no trouble getting in. TripAdvisor showed one nice hotel in Peć, the first important city, so that’s where we are. Rezart quickly found us the perfect restaurant to have local food, and with a bottle of wine all was good again.

Dinner in Peć, Kosovo

Dinner in Peć, Kosovo

Today we’re pretty confident we can get to Valbona across a real border crossing. Meanwhile, how much better can it get than a gorgeous drive, a great dinner, and a surprise stop in Kosovo?