Macedonia - Ohrid & Skopje

The crossing to Macedonia was interesting as it is the only one I have ever done on foot. I'm used to passing through airports, being in a bus or train or at least a car, but this border crossing from Albania was something like out of the wild west. I had to take a taxi from Pogradez, the nearest town on the Albanian side and was eventually pushed out by the driver who gestured in the direction I assumed I had to go. After following a deserted cliff-side road around a hair-pin corner, I found the near-deserted border post tucked away almost as if it was supposed to be hidden.

Ohrid Castle

I made it across and tried to find a way to Ohrid, my destination, quite a distance away around the other side of the lake. The bus would not be coming for quite a while and I was stuck in the middle of nowhere, but luckily I met a nice American family who were also stranded and together the 5 of us, plus a driver, squeezed into a private Macedonian car and paid 10EUR to take us to Ohrid.

On the castle walls

I had a lot of fun in Ohrid. The hostel I stayed in was run by a Finnish guy, which must be pretty unique in eastern europe and attracted all kinds of people. I met some Irish teachers, two Moldovan-Americans on their way to visit their homeland for the first time and even a group of Kosovans. This turned out to be quite convenient as I'm hoping to travel to Kosovo soon and was able to ask them everything I needed to know. They were some of the friendliest people I've met (must be that Albanian blood) and really helped set me at ease about the idea, after being continuously told it's a stupid thing to do.

An archaeological dig sight

Ohrid itself is a nice town, with a lot to see including an old Roman amphitheatre, archaeological ruins, an imposing castle and several remarkable churches. One in particular is nestled dramatically on a cliff above the lake and was a spectacular sight at sunset.

A beautiful sight

It was really nice just to wander around the town and relax by the lake, after my rather chaotic-but-fun time in Albania. I met with the American family in a restaurant and they bought me lunch, which was nice of them.

This was taken from a charming fisherman's village at the cliff base

Later on, I went out in a big group with people from the hostel. We first went to a highly recommended pub, which was absolutely rammed with people so made our way along the lakeside to another bar. The town seemed to have made a transformation once night fell - the place was thriving, with crowds of holidaymakers and revellers filling the streets. Quite different from the serenity earlier on!

An oversized message of support from Tito regarding a 1970s earthquake

The next day I took the bus with an Aussie and a French girl from the hostel, as we were headed to the same place in Skopje, the capital. We were forced to take a late bus and arrived in the middle of the night, in the pouring rain. Not a nice introduction to the place, but it actually turned out to be quite fitting.

A typical sight. Note the Tito dedication on the sign

Skopje is, I'm sorry to say for anyone who lives there, possibly the most depressing and dull city I have ever visited. Maybe it didn't help that the weather wasn't too great, but the dull, grey, concrete buildings, dirty streets and almost total lack of sights combined to make it a thoroughly unremarkable place.

Not the best destination for sightseers

The 'historic' stone bridge, supposedly a highlight of Skopje turned out to be nothing more than a rather plain modern reconstruction over a dirty river. On the other side, the thriving Turkish market was indeed quite interesting, but it was no different from the others I've seen.

Converted railway cars now serve as bars in the old station

Unfortunately Skopje just screams 'Former Yugoslavia' to me, which basically means a landscape of crumbling concrete and lack of cultural appreciation. After Ohrid, which I really enjoyed, Macedonia's capital was a let down. However, all is not lost, as it conveniently serves as the launching pad to perhaps my most exciting destination yet - Kosovo!

Albania - Shkodra, Tirana & Kruja

The journey to Budva, the main beach resort of Montenegro, was quite interesting, with the driver having an enormous argument with some other passenger and ending with everybody having to switch buses. Not quite sure what happened there. Once in Budva I tried to book a hostel at the accommodation desk, but the astoundingly unhelpful lady didn't seem to want to facilitate this, despite it being her job, so I set off on foot and had a quick look around. I was not impressed at all, with the town crowded with tourists and a seemingly never-ending landscape of dull apartment blocks and hotels stretching along the coast. I decided to move on immediately and head to Albania.

The Albanian National History Museum

This was where, for the first time on my entire trip, things got difficult. Despite Montenegro's close proximity to Albania (they share a bloody border!), nobody seemed to know anything about actually getting there. I eventually took a bus to Podgorica, capital of Montenegro and right next to the main border crossing, certain that there'd be public transport continuing from there. This was not the case. I was told that there were no buses at all and that the railway line had closed years ago. Eventually I met a helpful taxi driver who offered to drive me to the border, for a 'cheap price' of 25EUR. I had no choice and accepted.

A closer view of that wonderful communist mural

It turned out he used to work for the Montenegrin tourist board and therefore spoke impeccable English, which was quite a pleasant surprise after my experiences earlier in the day. He explained that not many people want to travel to Albania and so the only way is by private car. We drove alongside the rusting railway line to a large and beautiful lake that marks the border. Once at the official border crossing, he negotiated with another driver and I was passed along into a crampt old car with an Albanian driver, with 5 of us squeezed inside. Little did I know this would be the scariest ride of my life, and a worthy introduction to Albanian road safety. Or, rather, the lack of.

Sunset in Tirana

He drove at speeds that must have been well over 100mph, along bumpy, poor-quality roads, overtaking on blind corners and generally ignoring anything resembling a highway code. We made the journey, which looking at my map I estimated to take a good hour, in about 30 minutes, arriving in the Albanian border town of Shkodra. This place was a real shock to me, having an almost third world appearance. Crumbling buildings, chaotic streets and a staggering lack of infrastructure. There was rubbish all over the place and random piles of it burning in roads throughout the city. Weathered old men road past on horse-pulled carts, motorcyclists, none of them wearing helmets, weaved dangerously in and out of traffic and filthy trucks drove past with people sitting on top. I attracted quite a few stares, clearly being the only foreigner around. I hopped on a Furgon, which is the main method of public transport here in Albania. Like a communal taxi, furgons are minibuses with a flat-rate fair that pick up and drop off people anywhere on their routes and continue to be a necessity throughout eastern europe and Russia.

The main square

While waiting on the furgon for more passengers to get on I saw my first traffic accident happen just metres away from me. I was amazed to see the poor old motorcyclist picked up by passers by and bundled into a car off to the hospital within seconds, leaving just a pool of blood in the road to indicate that anything had happened. Once we set off to Tirana, the capital, I counted twelve road-side shrines to accident victims in just five minutes. I have never seen a place as dangerous as this, and once again the ride was quite unnerving, with the minibus weaving in and out of traffic, overtaking on corners and having a total lack of seatbelts that I would soon need to get used to.

In the Albanian countryside

A couple of hours later I was dropped off in a random street on the outskirts of the centre of Tirana. Not knowing where I was, I tried to ask passers by but nobody spoke english, and the waiting taxi drivers didn't seem to want to drive me, but pointed in the direction of what I hoped was the centre. After a long walk in the heat, and not finding any hostels, I eventually found a hotel on the main square with one room left and managed to persuade them to let me have it for 25 Euro a night, which was the best I could do.

A typical village market

After a good night's sleep in a proper hotel bed, I awoke quite excited to discover this strange place I was in. A quick wander around the city found it to be quite a pleasant place indeed, if you can look past the chaotic traffic and accept that crossing the street is much like a game of Russian Roulette. All the buildings have been recently painted in bright colours, giving the city a strangely cheerful and disorientingly art deco-style look, not something I would have expected in this part of the world. What would have been a depressing place full of grey apartment blocks has had a remarkable facelift, which I later found out was thanks to the mayor, who is a former artist.

One of those lovely bright buildings

My aim of the day was to head to Kruja, a town in the countryside which came recommended as a good place to see. I eventually caught a furgon there and had a walk around the town, then headed up to the castle on the hill. Here I spotted the only other foreign tourists I saw in Albania - three of them! The castle was quite nice, but there wasn't much else to see and so I grabbed a furgon back to Tirana, on which I met a charming Albanian chef, who spoke almost no english but we managed to have a constructive conversation through the international language of waving our arms about. He explained he had been a soldier in the Albanian army and had just come back from Iraq, but said being a chef paid better!

Statue of Skanderbeg, hero of Albania

This brings me on to one of the things I most liked about Albania - the people. They really stood out, even after having just travelled through 17 countries, as collectively the nicest, friendliest, most charming people I have encountered. Despite having perhaps the least number of English speakers of anywhere I've been (with Ukraine in a close second), it really didn't seem to matter. Even if people couldn't understand me, they were very patient and tried everything they could to help. When leaving Tirana I asked a group of taxi drivers how I could get to the Macedonian border, and rather than a simple shake of the head that I expected, I soon had a team of them working together trying to find out how I could get to my destination!

Atop the clock tower looking over the main square

Albania had one of the strangest post-war histories of all the eastern european countries. Before the war they were led by the self-proclaimed King Zog (Yes, really). After the war, led by the dictator Enver Hoxha, the country was, like the rest of the region, transformed into a communist 'people's republic' with close relations first to Yugoslavia, then after falling out, with the Soviets. However, after the death of Stalin, Hoxha also fell out with the USSR and had just one friend in the world - the Chinese. Eventually they fell out with them too (I see a pattern emerging) and became one of the most isolated countries in the world. Nobody was allowed in or out, propaganda emphasised the importance of self-determination and independence and the evils of the outside world. Hoxha had over 400,000 bomb-proof bunkers built across the country as defence from the outside. Albania was, in a sense, a tiny black hole in the corner of Europe that was a mystery even to its neighbours. And in fact, it still seems to be that way today. Yes, it's now free, democratic, capitalist and making steps towards joining the EU, but it still feels like nowhere else in europe, a place few people know about and even fewer have visited.

A rather small example of those ever-present bunkers

This is what I loved most about Albania, the real sense of difference, of being somewhere few tourists go. It's just such a unique place - 90% of all cars in the country are Mercedes (just don't ask where they came from), those 400,000 large concrete bunkers still litter the country as they proved demolition-proof and despite appearances of normality in the capital, the power still goes out several times a day. This doesn't seem to be much of a problem for its residents, even in the night - within seconds generators are wheeled out and as a strange hum descends over the city, the cafes and bars stay open and people continue to get on with their lives. What a wonderful place!