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.