Onward to nostalgia

I will admit that after two final nights in Albania, in the northern town of Shkodra, I have had enough of the country. I'm ready to move on.

Saranda in the south is the buzzy Mediterranean entry to the otherwise undeveloped Albanian riviera. It has bars and beaches and a broad, curving boulevard of marble. Gjirokastra and Berati are picturesque hill towns with multi-storeyed whitewashed houses of stone and thick wooden pillars which tumble down from hilltop castles like fields of square boulders. And Shkodra? Sprawling rotten concrete and overflowing rubbish skips.

There is also a well-restored cobbled strip with cafes and bars at one end and a park at the other. But in just four blocks, Shkodra rapidly sprawls away from the arbitrary centre into soiled, broken footpaths and ugly utilitarian buildings, culminating in my hotel.

In the spartan restaurant on the ground floor, where noises echo off the tiled surfaces like a hospital ward, some swaggering Albanian is arguing in English with a girl on his phone. "No, I fucking told you... yes, in England! The fucking UK, bitch... what do you want... sure, I should fucking sell my car?" I shift uncomfortably in my seat and try to tune it out and write my travel notes, but he goes on and on, oblivious that his voice is the only sound in the room. "You don't fucking know... look, I spent time in prison..."—at this I begin packing up—"It was hard for gangsters..."—and start heading to my room. Only now does he finally hang up. Then he starts closing the restaurant. He's staff!

I arrive the next day in Budva. Montenegro is more prosperous than Albania, a fact immediately evident by the state of the roads. The bus hugs the seaside cliffs as below it passes nearby Sveti Stefan, the small luxury island of stone terracotta-roofed houses connected to the mainland by a narrow isthmuslike a speared whale . It was made famous in the 1960s by cinema royalty such as Sophia Loren and Elizabeth Taylor (as well as actual royalty Princess Margaret and Queen Elizabeth herself).

Six years ago I was in Budva. It's a summer resort town, but I was there in October when the storms pelt the coast of the Adriatic and the locals, surly in their off-season colours, bolt their shutters to the fierce winds. Everything was closed and not a tourist was to be seen. Sveti Stefan was still abandoned following the collapse of Yugoslavia. Everyone had gone home. The quiet desolation was all mine.

Now, in July, it is writhing. Budva is party town. The locals have snapped out of their funk and colonies of Eastern European tourists cram the white sandy beaches, plunging into the crystal turquoise waters beneath the craggy limestone cliffs. Crowds throb and clubs thump.

I miss the desolation.

Back then I stayed at the kitsch Hotel Kangaroo. It was a likeably incongruous place, naively cool in its cheesiness and unrelated to anything Australian other than that it was owned by a family who lived for a time in Perth. The decor of my overlarge room was genuine retro with pink flock bedspread and a bathroom of dusty lime enamel, and the restaurant downstairs had one entire wall taken up with a fibreglass bas-relief of a sailing ship, like one of those themed family seafood restaurant in the seventies. The menu was defiantly nonetheless staple Montenegrin meat and fried potatoes. 

But through a little back door in the restaurant was a dimly lit modern cocktail lounge of low tables and clean lines, square purple ottomans and yellow cushions, with Fellini's black-and-white classic La Dolce Vita projected onto the wall to a mellow electronica soundtrack. And the drinks were cheap.

After this discovery I returned the next evening. Happily, La Dolce Vita was playing again and I could watch scenes I had missed the previous night. The music was still good, and I wondered if I might actually have the album. But when I went back the third night and La Dolce Vita was on yet again, I realised why the music was familiar; it was the same album still playing. They just never change it.

I drop in to see if the son on the front desk whom I befriended back then is still here, but he has apparently returned to Australia. Not much else has changed, though. The decor is the same. The portholed ship is still atop the fibreglass waves. Unfortunately the lounge hasn't opened yet. I really wanted to see if they've changed the CD.

Is Albania a dangerous place?

"Albanians are good people," my driver says in a Balkan accent that 15 ex-pat years in England failed to dissipate. "Albanians do anything for you. They help you. But just one thing," he warns. "Never cross an Albanian. He will never forget, and he will fuck you."

The bus from Gjirokastra had deposited me at an intersection 35 kilometres from my destination, the ancient hilltown of Berati, in a heat of as many degrees. It had skirted the mountains that divide the two towns and wound along the milky turquoise waters of the Vjosa river as close as it could indirectly take me, but from here, at Lushnja, the bus was going north and Berati was south.

I fumbled in Albanian to the conductor, "autobusi stacioni?" and he waved me down a rural road.

As I prepared to flag down the next bus, minibus or furgon, knowing it was unknown when one would appear, a Mercedes Benz pulled up. This was the second car to stop. I had declined the first offer for a ride because, though I'd done a great deal of it in my youth, hitch-hiking here hadn't occurred to me. Is it safe? But I'm clearly a visitor to the country, and it seems this is what's done. Albanians always take care of you.

"Albanians are good people," he says again as we coast past fields of some low-growing grassy crop, "but, like everywhere, there are good people and there are bad people. I hope very much you find only good people."

His name is Marius. He is a middle-aged local, stocky with dark, bristly hair, on a return visit to his family from Manchester where he now lives. He asks where I'm from, whether there is corruption at home and if Australian police take bribes. Albania was recently a lawless place after the demise of Enver Hoxha, the post-war Communist leader, in 1985 and the chaotic years of financial collapse and popular uprising after the Soviet Union dissolved. Though stable now, corruption remains endemic.

Then he asks me how I am finding Albania and the people.

I have found Albanians nothing short of helpful and hospitable. His comment that they never forget a betrayal, though, rings true. Blood feuds between families are a very real problem here. Clan warfare goes on for generations. If a man is murdered, the men of the victim's family are honour-bound to exact revenge by killing the perpetrator or, if that's not possible, a close male family member. Or descendant. 

Having not killed anyone, I figure I'm safe. I have met only good people, I tell Marius.

He pauses as though I said something naive. He warns me of 16-year-old gangsters with guns, and goes on to tell me that two Czech tourists were shot and killed near Shkodra last week. Shkodra is my next destination.

"Just one bad person and you won't want to come back. Please," he cautions me, "keep your money separate. Some in your wallet, some put away."

This is already my habit as a matter of prudence wherever I travel, but his sustained concern is making me uneasy.

Ten minutes along this road of scrubby farms and simple dwellings billowing in the heat we pull up at a palatial white mansion, where manicured gardens shade vine-bound gazebos, flowers and fountains.

"This is as far as I'm going," Marius says. "This is my cousin's restaurant."

"This is your cousin's restaurant?" I marvel, betraying it's impression on me.

"Would you like to have a drink?"

"Yes!"

Marius buys me a beer and we sit in the cool garden. I meet the cousin. A tall, grey-haired man, mid-fifties perhaps, in unassuming shorts and T-shirt, he reminds of Anthony Bourdain. Nonetheless, he has an air of importance about him. He is brought his lunch by his brother, but he sits at a separate table and doesn't eat with us.

"He's very influential," Marius tells me. "Respected. If you have trouble, you know... he has connections."

I make sure to go over to him to shake his hand and show respect before I leave, carrying my hat in my hand. He smiles, appearing pleased I've done this, and as I reach for his hand I find and unexpectedly grasp a wrist. He has offered his forearm. I've seen this kind of handshake before, in Ethiopia, when a man greeted one of the much venerated priests. This is a handshake reserved for people of high status. I don't miss a beat, smile and thank the cousin in Albanian: "faleminderit."

It seems I have responded well to the hospitality. Marius decides to drive me the rest of the way to Berati, and in the car tells me I am welcome to return to his family there anytime if there is anything I need—"They will help you". He then gives me his phone number.

"If you have any trouble, call me."

Trouble, he says. I am both reassured and nervous.

Gjirokastra

Inland from the Albanian riviera is the hilltop town of Gjirokastra. Over centuries it has spilled its inhabitants from the now abandoned castle down the hill; the stone houses topple onto one another's slate roofs. On the map the streets look like a star crack in a windshield. They spread like spokes from the town centre and are wedged together like an Escher staircase, bulging as if beneath the cobblestones are barrel vaulted ceilings of some troglodytic civilisation.

The modern town now spills from the foot of the hill like an upturned pudding, but the castle retains a hold on those who still live on the slopes. They are like ancestors in the clouds of time past looking down on their descendants below. The culture belongs to the hill. Indeed, the castle hosts a quinquennial folklore festival fostering the millennia-old culture of the Albanian diaspora.

Gjirokastrians are friendly without being effusive. They smile gently, almost shyly. Their handshakes are never shows of strength. Greeting is like breathing—effortless and ephemeral, unlike the enthusiasm of the American hail which compares as an overblown affair. Half the Gjirokastrian greeting is done over the shoulder in parting.

Until recently there wasn't much here to engage the visitor. Most of the cafes, hotels and souvenir shops that now exist to entice the tourist are just a few years old. This new economy hasn't sold out the heart of the town, though. Not yet. There are still little markets for the hillfolk's milk, people greet neighbours on the footpath from tables outside cafes at which they lounge for hours, and the local bus is still full of locals.

Transport in Albania

Two-and-a-half hours I've been waiting. The journey itself, from Saranda to Gjirokastra, takes only one-and-a-half. "The buses leave hourly," my host in Saranda told me. "Buses ply the route frequently," the guidebook reads, "until early afternoon, and later in summer." My host who is expecting me in Gjirokastra said there are buses all the time. So what gives?

The Albanian transport network is, like Albanians themselves, informal. There are just a few trains, excruciatingly slow, to only a handful of destinations in this mountainous country. In the communist years, rail was the only travel option for Albanians, but recently the train station in the capital, Tirana, was bulldozed and the rails asphalted over.

These days there is a robust system of buses and minibuses in every direction. The buses do in fact run to schedule; it's just that the schedule starts at 4.30am. (I am not a morning person; I'm a night owl. There are morning people and then there are Albanians. Albania is a nation of extreme larks.) Minibuses don't have a schedule; they simply leave the terminal when full ("terminal" typically being some empty ground at an intersection).

Even "minibus" is a loose term. In Tirana, after walking from one side of the city centre (where I was disgorged by a bus from the south) to the other side of the city centre (to the "bus station" for the north, a narrow parking lot beside a roundabout), I was approached by a stocky middle-aged man in jeans looking no different from any other man in the street who called out something I didn't understand. This was my driver, apparently. I told him my destination, Shkodra, and he nodded and waved for me to follow him. A few paces later we were at an unmarked station wagon. It was his car. I didn't want a taxi; the guidebook says a taxi would cost €50 for the two-hour trip.

"No, autobus për Shkodra," I said.

"Minibus! Minibus!" he insisted, nodding and pointing at his station wagon. I asked him how much (500 lek, about A$5) and I thought, well, if this is how it's done, let's do it.

Three other passengers crowded in and, despite being the tallest, I somehow got shafted with the middle seat. The driver started up and inched out into the horrendous Tirana traffic. It was 36 degrees. There was no air conditioning and only the front passenger had his window open. The driver blasted the radio—that all pervasive Euro club house music. After we got out of the traffic and up to speed, an air pressure vortex caused by just one window being open went wub-dub-dub-dub in everyone's ears. The driver was fidgety. He put on his seatbelt. He swerved. He turned down the music and opened his window. Then closed it again. Wub-dub-dub-dub. Opened it again. Swerved. Checked his phone. Turned down the radio. Closed the window. Wub-dub-dub. Blasted the radio. Opened the window. Swerved. Took off his seatbelt. Turned off the radio. And after one hundred and four minutes of overtaking on single lane roads I piled back out, gave him his lek, bid "ciao" and didn't care when I realised I'd left my nice aluminium water bottle in the car.

Finally, this bus that has been chocked next to the park in Saranda for two-and-a-half hours starts its engine. The tourist office said the last bus leaves at 2pm, and since "last" also seems to have meant "next", the least that can be said is that it's on time. Indeed, it is the only one; I called out to the sole minibus (an actual minibus) that passed me an hour ago with Gjirokastra displayed in its window and he could only shrug his shoulders, indicating with a finger that I would be the only passenger.

If only he knew I would have paid him €50.