Gadling

It’s impossible to speak about traveling through Albania without mentioning the bunkers.

The bunkers are the product of the demented, twisted mind of dictator Enver Hoxha who ruled the country from 1945 to 1981. During this time he broke off relations with the Soviet Union, China and every other socialist country on this planet, not to mention the sworn enemies of communism, the western world.

The xenophobic leader completely sealed off Albania from the outside world, a world the paranoid dictator was certain would invade one day; he just didn’t know if it would be the communists or the capitalists.

To counteract this “imminent” invasion, he ordered more than 700,000 bunkers built with the idea that if an invasion occurred, every resident who could carry a gun would run off to the nearest bunker and protect the fatherland. Keep in mind that Albanian had a population of less than three million at the time. That means one bunker for approximately every four people. That means a lot of bunkers.

It is impossible to travel through Albania without coming across these concrete pillboxes. They have proven too expensive to remove and as a result, are slowly–very slowly–succumbing to the elements. Perhaps in another five hundred years they will disappear altogether.

In the meantime, they remain strategically located on hillsides, beaches, roadways, rail lines, fields, mountains, and every horizon. Sometimes there is just a single one, other times ten or more can be seen.

Yesterday’s Post: Shkodra, Albania
Tomorrow’s Post: Albania Wrap-Up

Sometime there are disappointing travel days and this was one of them.

My goal was to get from Prizren, Kosovo, to Shkodra, Albania. To do so, I woke early and went to the Prizren bus station where I was hoping to grab a minivan across the border to Kukës. It was told, however, that minivans did not run that route, just shared taxis. I’m not sure if this was true, but since I couldn’t find a minivan that was actually heading into Albania, I ended up grabbing a taxi (20 euros) with another traveler and headed west.

I transferred to a minivan in Kukës, Albania, a rather drab town on the shores of Lake Fierza-a reservoir created by the communists to power the Light of the Party Hydro-Electric plant. The communists sure loved their dopey industrial names.

The journey took almost four hours as we passed through numerous miles of sparsely populated mountains, some of which were simply covered in waist-high shrubbery while other sections were blanketed in amazing pine forests. About half way through the journey as we were approaching the town of Puka, I hit my highlight for the day. Apparently the town name is conjugated on road signs because we came across one which read, “Puke 15 Kilometers.” Shortly thereafter, and I kid you not, some ten year old kid in the minivan lived up to the town’s namesake and lost his lunch out the window of the minivan. For some strange reason, I was the only one who found this funny.

A few hours later, I was deposited on the side of the main highway to Tirana where I flagged down my last minivan for the day and headed northwest. By mid-afternoon I had reached my final destination.

Shkodra turned out to be my least favorite Albanian town. Although it is situated near Lake Shkodra, the picturesque expectations I had in my head were quickly erased by urban sprawl and decrepit buildings. The city has almost no charm or character and is cheapened by the malaise that affects so many border towns. Montenegro is still about 12 miles away, but Shkodra is usually the first stop for those crossing the border. Sadly, this is all that many tourists see of Albania. Visitors to Montenegro often make the quick jaunt over the border to check out Albania and my guess is that most come away rather disappointed. The above photograph looks across Lake Shkodra and into Montenegro. The city of Shkodra is just to the right of the shot.

A better feeling for the town can be seen just behind this studly statue of Isa Boletin, an Albanian nationalist who fought against the Turks in the early 20th century. Although the town has a few nice streets, most of it is lined with buildings such as these.

Certainly the nicest street in Shkodra is this one, just east of Hotel Colosseo. Dhjetori is lined with old Ottoman houses and art galleries. Sometime in the future it will have cafes and ice cream shops and become a great little walking street that will inject some character into this town. Anyone looking for somewhere to invest?

The town’s main tourist attraction is yet another castle on a hill. Rozafa Castle was built by the Illyrians and modified by subsequent conquerors. Today it is a series of walls, ramparts and a few ruined churches. Wild grass covers the interior and farmers bring their animals here to graze. It’s quite fun climbing amongst the stone ruins and checking out the great view. The only disappointment was the taxi ride there. After surviving my whole time in Albania without feeling like I got ripped off, the taxi driver charged me $6 for the three kilometer ride–hardly a surprise when you consider that Shkodra is the only town in Albania I visited that is accustomed to tourists. I know, I should have walked. I was short on time, however, and was worried that the castle would close before I could get there.

I traveled through a large swath of Albania before finally coming across such an outstanding example of socialist realism artwork left over from the communist era. Such statues and their sturdy, looking-to-the-future gaze were typical throughout the socialist camp. This particular one, The Five Heroes of Vig, commemorates five martyrs who died for the communist cause in 1944.

Personally, the whole visit to Shkodra was worth it for me when I came across this beast of a steamroller. It was abandoned on the side of the road, perhaps decades ago, but still evokes a sense of sturdiness and power. They just don’t make machines like this anymore.

As for accommodations, I treated myself to the nicest hotel in town, The Colosseo. I paid 60 euros a night for the best accommodations I had in all of Albania. It’s central location, however, means a bit of street noise and the dreaded morning call to prayer at 5 a.m.

So, that’s it. I’m aware I’m not giving the greatest endorsement to this town. I will admit, however, I only spent 24 hours here; some places take a lot longer to warm up to than others. This might be the case with Shkodra. Or, my first impression might have been dead on.

Yesterday’s Post: Kosovo!!!
Tomorrow’s Post: Bunkers, Bunkers, Bunkers

Not many people get to northern Albania. I suppose it is off the beaten path in a country that itself is off the beaten path.

During communism, northern Albania marched to its own drum. It was somewhat cut off from the rest of the country by mountains and a rugged landscape, and entirely cut off from neighboring Kosovo and Montenegro by a tightly sealed border. The mountains, however, were supposed to be beautiful and I was therefore determined to visit.

This would not have been the case in the mid-1990s when the borders opened and the region became a very dangerous hotbed of smuggling and blood feuds. While the smuggling dangers have mostly disappeared today, the blood feuds have not. This ancient law of the land encourages the family of a murdered person to kill a relative of the murderer. It is a tit-for-tat, slippery slope of vigilantism that has carried through the generations. It’s why the rest of Albania calls the northerners crazy. The good news is that blood feuds never involve foreigners; unless, of course, you happened to kill someone.

My destination was a mountain village by the name of Valbona. I had started my journey in Tirana, traveled by ferry across Lake Komani (as discussed in yesterday’s post) and eventually arrived in the town of Bajram Curri. It was here, in the capital of the Tropoja district, that I caught another minivan onwards to Valbona (there is usually one in the early morning and one in the afternoon). The two hour drive was on yet another dirt road, this one following the length of the Valbona River up through a narrow valley.

About one kilometer below Valbona, the van pulled up to a two-story wooden cabin just off the road. The driver made drink motions with his hand and waved me towards the doorway. Inside, was a small bar where four men were smoking and playing backgammon. A fifth man came out from behind the bar and greeted me in English. I was quite surprised to hear English in such a remote place. Alfred, however, was one of the many Albanians who fled the country in the 1990s and worked abroad. He eventually returned home to build the bar and cabin in which I was standing. Upstairs he hoped to provide four rooms of accommodations for travelers like myself. Unfortunately, Alfred had run out of money and the rooms weren’t finished yet.

He asked where I was planning on staying and I mentioned the hotel in Valbona–a recommendation I had dug up online. He shook his head. “The hotel is broken,” he told me. As you can see by the above photograph, he wasn’t lying (note the small bunker next to the hotel – more on that in a later post).

Alfred offered me a place to stay on his family farm just up the road. As I would later discover wandering through the town, this was pretty much my only option short of camping. I also realized that every minivan carrying tourists made the stop at the cabin; I wasn’t the first one to stay on Alfred’s farm.

The farm was very rustic and beautiful. It was only $10 a night including breakfast. I had my own room, complete with wooly lamb blankets, but shared a bathroom down the hall. It was clean and surprisingly modern but the hot water pressure made showering a near impossibility.

This is pretty much downtown Valbona. Once home to more than 1500 people, only a couple hundred remain. I saw no more than ten people my whole time here. And, not a single tourist. Tourists do pass through the region, I was told, but not so often.

Valbona is located high in the Dinaric Alps. These shots were taken in June when there was still plenty of snow around.

Here’s the generator which supplies power to Valbona. The building sits above a small tributary which powers the turbines. As you can see, the equipment is very antiquated and I was told it will burn up if left on for too long. As a result, the power is switched on only in the evenings. I had to climb out on a shaky, wooden platform suspended above the river and shove my camera into an open window to get this shot so apologies for the bad quality.

I don’t know what it is about water color in Albania, but the Valbona River is a remarkable shade of blue. It’s deep, fast moving, and very narrow in parts. I’m no expert but it looks like the perfect, untamed river for kayaking. I’m not sure if it has been run before, but I highly recommend checking it out if you’re a kayaker looking to blaze new waterways. Call me though, because I want to come with you.

Evenings were spent back at the Cabin Bar where the barman would cook me dinner. Everything was prepared fresh and came from the local farms, except for the slices of lemon they tended to use as garnish–sort of makes me wonder why they even bothered with the garnish. I don’t think the menu stretched too far beyond lamb and the local specialty, river trout. The trout, although highly revered by the locals, was no different than trout I’ve had elsewhere. The lamb was good, and the cheese and bread delicious. The fries were horrible, however, and only got worse the longer I stayed.

Alfred’s cousin, Naim can often be found at the bar and speaks excellent English. If he’s in the mood, he’ll build a campfire and chat about his time working in London and about the crazy days when communism fell and Albania was a free-for-all. It didn’t take me long in speaking with him to realize that the northerners weren’t crazy at all. In fact, everyone I met in the north was extraordinarily friendly and helpful.

Yesterday’s Post: Lake Komani, Albania
Tomorrow’s Post: Kosovo

Before I left the states, I was able to dig up only a little information about it, but I did learn that the ferry ride across Albania’s Lake Komani promised to be one of the most spectacular boat trips in the world.

Surprisingly, the remote lake, located high in the northern Albanian mountains, proved rather easy to get to. Every morning, minivans leave from just south of the Unknown Partisan statue in Tirana at the ungodly hour of 5:45 in the morning. Their destination is Bajram Curri, but they must take the ferry across Lake Komani in order to get there.

Early one morning, just as the sun was rising, I found myself climbing into one of these minivans. As the rest of Tirana was slowly waking up, we motored out of the city, through some rather rundown suburbs and into the countryside where only fields and bunkers greeted my eyes for the first couple of hours.

We eventually started to gain some altitude as the dirt road climbed into the mountains. Villages were scarce at this point, but occasionally I’d spy houses tucked into the fold of the hills, or random kids walking the family cows. The views improved, however, when we summited one hill and came upon a very long lake which we then spent the next hour driving high above on a narrow dirt road. There were no guard rails and plenty of steep cliffs to keep the journey exciting.

We arrived at the base of the Komani dam a little before 10 a.m. and turned off the engine. A line of cars were slowly making their way single file down a dirt road carved into the side of the mountain. Somewhere, high above us, the Komani ferry had just unloaded the caravan of automobiles.

As soon as the last car made its way down the hill and passed us, we joined another caravan heading up the same dirt road. The road was a long diagonal cut that spliced right up the side of the mountain until it disappeared into the mountain itself, just a few dozen yards from the edge of the dam and quite near its top as well.

The tunnel into which the road disappeared looked like something a couple of kids had dug, but on a grander scale. It had no lights or concrete support and was slightly flooded.

Emerging on the other side we found ourselves on a small concrete dock looking out over a great expanse of blue, green water. The ferry, which leaves every morning at 10 a.m. was busy loading up cars.

Here’s another shot from the ferry itself. You can see the tunnel we emerged from in the distance. Only the outside of it is covered in concrete. The dam itself is just to the left, out of shot.

Lake Komani is the result of the Drini River being dammed. The steep mountains and narrow valleys ensured that the new reservoir retained the narrow shape of a river rather than that of a wide lake.

The water color, as you can see is magnificent. It was mostly cloudy the day I took these shots and I can only imagine the colors that a clear, sunny day would have evoked.

A few scattered houses cling to the mountainside as residents eek out a living. It is a lonely, desolate existence. I saw only one boat on the water for nearly two hours until we got to the very end of the lake.

I was rather intrigued by the contrast of this little girl in bright red standing amongst the cars and a big nasty generator onboard the ferry.

The top of the ferry provides a wonderful viewing deck, but the wind whips around quite strongly and it is rather cold.

Veterans of the journey escape the brisk wind downstairs in the bar. It is full of smoke and grumpy men playing backgammon. This is not the place to hang out if you are making the journey for the first time.

Just before we docked, this strange boat came floating by. It looked odd at first and then I realized what it was. Some clever locals had taken a public bus and built a ship’s hull around it. This is the local waterbus service.

The entire ferry ride is just over two hours long. When the boat finally docked, I climbed back into the minivan and we drove for another half hour until we reached our final destination, the city of Bajram Curri.

Yesterday’s Post: Albanian Transport, Living to tell about It
Tomorrow’s Post: Valbona