Gadling

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

Prior to 1992, it was illegal to own a car in Albania. There were, of course, a few automobiles running around but these were either driven by high communist officials or municipal employees doing their job. No one actually owned the wheels they were driving.

In March 1992, a new democratic government was elected and the universal right to own a car was one of the many benefits which quickly emerged with the fall of communism. Or so you’d think. The problem was that after 52 years of outlawing car ownership, Albania had no traffic laws, no traffic lights, very few paved roads, and no system to issue drivers licenses. The country also had very corrupt border officials. Cars stolen in Western Europe were smuggled en mass across the border to feed the ravenous appetite Albanians suddenly displayed for a set of wheels. The result was chaos, if not predictable. It was as if 20,000 16-year olds were all given a pair of keys without any instruction whatsoever. From March to September of 1992, Tirana alone had 208 traffic fatalities, quickly bumping it up to the highest per capita in all of Europe.

Albania ranks pretty high on the Mercedes per capita list as well. The entire country is crawling with the German car–more so than anywhere I’ve ever seen in Germany. Of course, that may simply be due to the fact that an estimated 80-90% of the cars on the road in Albania were stolen. Most, probably from Germany.

It took many years to develop a traffic infrastructure and for drivers to begin to settle down. They’re not there yet. My travels in Albania were peppered with mad drivers who swerved all over the roads, pounded through potholes and otherwise made me slightly nervous. Every time I passed a junkyard–and there were dozens of them just off the road crammed with every imaginable type of destroyed automobile–I felt the ominous presence of foreshadowing. If this were a movie, the ending would have involved a fiery crash and a shot of a junkyard as the credits roll.

I was one of the lucky ones, however. I had debated renting a car, but wisely chose to travel by public transport instead–leaving my life in the hands of those more experienced in the art of defensive Albanian driving. I’d still look out the window at recently totaled autos that were just pushed off the road and abandoned and get worried, but everything worked out fine in the end; there was no rolling of credits whatsoever.

Despite such worries, getting around Albania is surprisingly simple. Every city has an area reserved for minivans, or furgons. The furgon is the lifeblood of Albania, crisscrossing the country in every which direction. The destination is always written on a large placard sitting on the front window. If you can’t find a card with the place you’re looking for, just ask around. Everyone was always very happy to help me out in such situations.

The problem, however, is that the minivans usually don’t depart until they are full. If you’re the first to sit down, it might take a few hours before the driver has enough passengers to make the trip worthwhile. Occasionally, there are actual departure times as well. If such departures were too many hours away and I wasn’t traveling very far, I could usually find a taxi to take me. I could travel 1-2 hours for 15-20 euros. The minivans, on the other hand, ran about $1 per hour of travel.

The minivans are surprisingly comfortable. They’re certainly not luxurious, but they were efficient, cheap, and a great opportunity to meet the locals. On longer trips, the minivan will usually pull over and stop for a meal at a local café. Passengers tend to sit together at the same table so this is a great time to meet the other people in your van–the ones who shot the look-at-the-foreigner glances in your direction when you first climbed on board.

One of my more memorable experiences was sitting with five people in a café in the middle of nowhere on the way to Northern Albania, chowing down on warm soup, bread and cheese and trying to communicate with my new friends. I had gone from the odd foreigner sitting quietly in the back of the van to the center of an animated discussion which ended in some type of marriage proposal, I think, from a middle-aged woman in her fifties.

Did I already mention that traveling in Albania is fraught with danger?

Yesterday’s Post: Berat, city of a Thousand Eyes
Tomorrow’s Post: Lake Komani, Albania