catching up on Montenegro and Albania

Hi.. I am writing this from Albania, in an attempt to catch up...lots of adventures over the last two days, and all has turned out well, but it's been challenging.

On Sunday night we were in Montenegro. It had been a very long day on very rough roads, with multiple border crossings. We finally got to our hotel at about 9 or 10 p.m. and hadn't had lunch, so we just ordered pizzas from the desk clerk's suggestion.

The pizza may not have been the reason, but 9 of the 14 of us had rough nights.... all the classic symptoms of food borne illness... luckily my roommate wasn't ill so I didn't have to share the facilities, but for those where both roommates were ill, I guess the picture was not a pretty one.

In any case, the next morning found a dreary crew. One of the healthy young guys was so sick and dehydrated, we decided he needed to stop at a clinic and get checked out. Sigh. Three hours or more.... Montenegro has clinics, but no sense of urgency, for anything. Finally Lisa was reduced to shouting at them that if an American died in their country, it would be their fault and .... they responded by shutting the curtains and taking a break. Finally a doctor saw him, put him on an iv drip, suggested hospitalization and started using the word salmonella. She wanted to move him to another clinic, hospitalize him, etc. (Lisa is scary when angry). Our guide, on the other hand, a delightful man named Lekko, was strongly urging we get him iv'd up, then move on to Albania where he could get better care.

Did you read that last sentence? I never in my life thought I would hear of someone suggesting that a move to Albania might be the key to higher standards of medical care.

Nevertheless we gave the invalid the deciding vote and practically had to race him to the bus. Meanwhile we had spent over 3 hours sitting in front of the clinic.

A command decision was made to truncate the day's educational sightseeing and head for Shkoder, the second largest city in Albania, "just over the border." Our driver drove, we swayed, occasionally the code word for potty stop "bush" was used and we stopped. It took many hours and much fortitude, but we made it. Lots of phone calls to the travel agency had rearranged our accommodations and when we got to Shkoder at about 4 we had hotel rooms, beds.... those of us who were still sick collapsed for a three hour nap before dinner (barf, it did not sound like a good idea). The hotel air conditioning didn't work, but I for one did not care. I was not nearly as sick as some of the crew, but it was not my finest hour. I didn't even take my shoes off before I was asleep.

I did straggle to go to dinner. Our guide took us about 20 minutes out of town to a noted little traditional restaurant where we discovered that the traditional menu of Albania always includes spaghetti. It was very good. Then veal chops, which were a mistake. But then melon, which is wonderful.

A little about Albania to refresh your knowledge. It has been invaded by lots of people... Romans, Ottomans, Nazis, Italians.. to name only a few. It is a mountainous nation (if you ironed it out flat it would be the size of Canada, but no one has thought of doing that) It was very Communist during the cold war years. According to Lekko, it broke away from the USSR in 1967 because the USSR had lost its ideological purity. From 1970-75 it allied itself with China and China pumped in billions of dollars in infrastructure investment, but in '75 they broke with them (you got it, ideological corruption) and pretty much went it alone till 1991 or so. It was desperately poor and isolated. About 1 million of its 5 million population left, most of them becoming illegal immigrants into Greece and Italy... you can see lots of evidence of it.. the country is full of half finished houses.. remittance money sent home from overseas workers comes and allows building by stages.

Student protests began in the 80's and caused the change to a form of democracy. It would appear that they are succeeding in some ways, but it is a poor nation still. Very rural, very dirty, very polluted. Since there was no private property ownership "in the socialist years" (as Lekko would say) and since people were pretty much moved around at governmental whim, when the chains came off, there was chaotic building and settlement and only a few years ago did they get around to some sort of formalization of property rights, etc.

One interesting building custom dates back to earliest times. We passed an old fortress near Shkoder and were told that there were countless disasters when it was built. Finally a wise old sage told the family of princes building it that they needed serious magic, sort of a night watchman to avoid the evil eye. The only way to get it was to bury someone significant on the premises to watch over it. There was discussion and chicanery and when the time came only one of the wives was left to be the burial victim. She consented, as long as her hand could be buried outside of the castle so she could continue to feed her child. Sigh.

Today the buildings under construction also have a way to avoid the evil eye, but it's not a human victim. Instead, almost every building under construction has lashed to it somewhere a baby doll or a large stuffed animal... it stays out on the framework as long as the building is under construction and is there until the building is finished. It can look a little grizzly after a while, kind of like an effigy. So far I've seen dolls, teddy bears, and then stuffed everythings.. monkeys, horses, dogs, cats, etc., etc. Our guide told us it is generally only among the Muslims, but they are a large segment of the population.


We left Shkoder a bit healthier yesterday and had a very long day. Two stops for exploring fortifications, museums, etc. Mostly vertical climbs in high heat. I opted out of one, but did the rest. Our last stop was a beautiful old musem in a church in a little village.... amazing art works from teh 15th century that somehow survived the communist era, when all religious expression was forbidden. Lekko tells us that during that time if you made an idle comment like "Oh, God, I'm tired!" you could be turned in and punished. Among the treasures of this church are some beautiful old icons and altar pieces, and a fifth century codex. Pretty amazing.

We also passed a much more contemporary wonder.. the George W. Bush Bar. Apparently Bush visited here during the last years of his presidency and was taken to a showplace old village and was entertained at said bar. Thus they named it after him.

Among the random observations.... Albania has two basic job fields... car washing and selling watermelons. There is an incredible number of little car washes... most of them a hose and a canopy. Our guide says it is because of the old cars and bad roads....

Another anomaly.. during the depths of the Cold War, Albania's leader became convinced the US was going to attack....so he ordered the construction of something like 700,000 concrete bunkers; they are shaped like short mushrooms and are EVERYWHERE-- they only stand a few feet above the ground and are about 8 feet in diameter. When they were ordered, the order was that they must be indestructible. The military fortifications guy who designed them (many tons of concrete in each) was put to the supreme test by being put in one of them and then attacked by a tank. He survived. One of the guidebooks said that a more modern use was as a place of assignation by young people seeking privacy for interpersonal relations.. love will triumph, I guess.

Many sheep, goats, mountains. I was sitting peacefully on a hillside yesterday when I was inundated by a flock of the sheep.. they paid me no attention. I was glad they weren't a herd of buffalo or something!

Last night at after 11 we arrived in Gjirocastra where we spent the night in an interesting hotel...the elevator only goes to the fifth floor, but the rooms are on the 2nd, 3d and 4th floors. When we hauled our stuff up, one woman came out saying there was no bathroom... turns out half the rooms have located the bathrooms on the former balconies.. interesting concept. The air conditioning worked, but not the internet except in the lobby. And not the hot water. No hair dryer but a tv.. and about 3 square feet of space. Breakfast was a lovely basket of fresh bread, goat cheese, sour cherry jam, and coffee or tea. We can still see hints of authoritarianism.. we were told we all had to have breakfast at the same time...

Albanian is a language related to ancient Illyrian, so not at all similar to the other Balkan languages, though it has a rhythm like Italian and occasional borrowed words from Italian, French, Turkish, etc. I found it was almost possible to follow the museum lectures before they were translated.


While I write this, the rest of the group is doing another vertical hike and my knees are not up to it. I am sitting in the hotel lobby where the internet works and kind of enjoying the down time. They should be back in a little bit.. though it is hard to tell. When Lekko says 10 minutes, it's more like 30; an hour's drive is more like 2 and a half.. so when he told me this morning it was a 2 hour hike, I opted out.

I will probably wait to down load the pictures for this till tonight when we are in Greece. It's going to be another long bus drive, I think. The roads here are one lane but accommodate two lanes of cars. They have ditches on either side where I would have put a shoulder instead, and many of them are on mountain sides. While the mountains are not super high by Rockies standards, they are still very obvious and lie in between everything and everything else. Our driver is steady and cheerful and I am still wearing my blue bead.

I'll no doubt learn more about Albania... it is lovely countryside but clearly there are challenges. But then, it's a welcome refuge after Montenegro. (By the time we got here, our sick young man opted out of more medical care. I can't imagine why!!