On day 150 I woke up at the crack of dawn to make sure my temporary travel buddy Lina got on the bus safe and sound. Lina lives only 80km or so from the Albanian Border but until 2 days ago she had never crossed it. It has been awesome exploring yet another city/country with adorably forgetful Lina. A lot of people living this close to the border speak Greek which has made getting around/finding things really easy, but now Lina has gone back to Greece I have been left to fend for myself again and revert to miming, hand signals and broken Albanian to get by.
As I returned to the hotel the sun was just starting to peak over the mountain so I decided to stay up and watch the sunrise and try to figure out what I was going to do with my time in Albania. I decided to head to another village called Berat, but when I arrived at the “bus station” there wasn’t another bus going for several hours. So instead of waiting around I jumped on a bus heading to the capital of Tirana without giving it a second thought.
The bus ride itself was intensely interesting. The bus driver drove around town for half an hour shouting Tirana to try and attract more commuters. Shortly after we stopped out the front of this slum for 20 minutes where children were playing with tyres and garbage which was pretty sad to watch. A dog from the slum attacked a passer by at one point too. I watched/felt the road go from smooth to rubble in a matter on seconds not far from the Greek boarder.
About 3 hours later my bus arrived in Tirana and it dropped us off in a nondescript location on the edge of the city. I hadn’t looked up any accommodation, downloaded a map, or even knew where the city centre was. But as I was a out to step off the bus a cute Albanian girl named Rudi stopped to helped me out. She seemed pretty concerned that I was in Albania to begin with and more concerned that I didn’t have a place to stay, so she took me an showed me how to get to the centre, we stopped at her place so she could drop her bags and then helped me find some accommodation for the night.
Afterwards she took me for a short tour of the city and then we went out for a drink along with one of Rudi’s friends. I set about asking all the questions a newcomer to Albania might want to know and trying out my terrible Albanian. I was supposed to go out again for drinks later on but after laying down for a nap I didn’t wake up until… well now.
