November 2018 – Hours after dropping our last load of olives at the press we boarded a ferry in our old-but-mighty Renault Twingo and headed to Albania for a roadtrip. Albania may sound exotic to some but from where we are it’s quite close, just a 5 hour ferry ride from Brindisi to Vlores across the Adriatic. We were the same four travelers as our last road trip through the US in 2016, though one is no longer a teenager. After debarking from the ferry in Durres we drove directly to the airport in Tirana to pick up Nahid who had been backpacking solo for the last four months.
After WW2 the country was completely closed off by communist dictator Hoxha until 1992. No one could leave and no one could enter. During this time people were able to pick up tv from Italy so many many people speak Italian. In fact we spoke that more than English, though most young people speak English too now. Supposedly there were only 600 cars in the country at that time. Today there are plenty of cars, and even plenty more crazy drivers, but lots of donkeys, horse drawn carts and in general people walking from one place to another. It’s a country of only 3 million people, and mostly agrarian, however the capital was very modern with exciting urbanization projects in the works. The coast is made up of gorgeous steep mountains that dive into the crystal turquoise Adriatic sea.
We hiked. We drank raki with people who invited us in eagerly. I sketched. We learned that the name for Albania in Albanian is “Shqipëria”. Django and I share a common love and fascination for abandoned industrial sites and stone villages so that kind of guided our itinerary.
In total we were there 9 days and saw just a bit of the country. We needed another couple weeks really! But the people were very friendly, the landscape incredible, and the food good. We look forward to returning to this welcoming nearby neighbor of ours.
from the sketchbook –
morning ferry from Bari to Vlores
Tirana, the capital
Tirana
An abandoned former museum pyramid in the center of Tirana
The pyramid can be climbed, carefully!
Getting down is a bit harder…
Tirana
Elbasan – a partially abandoned factory called Kombinati Metalurgjik
Elbasan
Berat, a UNESCO World Heritage city of cobblestone streets and wooden Ottoman-era houses
Berat is known as the “city of a thousand windows”
Berat
Ravine outside of Berat
The Albanian riviera is incredible
The mighty Twingo meets the Adriatic from the other side
A meeting with a sheep herd on the main coastal road
Gjipe Beach on the Albanian riviera
An abandoned village outside of Tragjas, Orikum
People were harvesting the olive trees in the abandoned village
Shot for the cover of our new record 🙂
Vlores
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