Travels through Albania and Kosovo

One of the other Firefly volunteers, Mark, travelled through Albania and Kosovo a couple of weeks ago. It sounds like an intriguing experience and he has kindly agreed to let me share his insight on this blog!

Here are his comments from a couple of emails:

Greetings from Santorini, Greece. I did pass through Albania, and I managed to do it without getting robbed, shot, stabbed, buggered, carjacked or captured by bandits. So I would consider that a success!

I came over through the Kosovo border. Sarajevo to Prishtina (capital of Kosovo, which is a United Nations-run protectorate, is on the Euro, and is the cheapest place I've ever been to), Prishtina to Tirana. Three night buses in a row with no sleep and no shower. I came out pretty smelly.

Kosovo:
I took the night bus in from Sarajevo. They sold me a ticket to some town in Serbia then sold me another ticket once I got to that town to Pristina- I guess you can't get a direct bus into Kosovo.

So by the time the bus enterred Kosovo the sun was rising. I remember these flats plains with purple mountains off in the distance and some tiny towns and mosques and not much else. It was really surreal. It looked very beautiful and felt very far away and exotic.

I remember I was nervous being an American on that bus. The border guard at the Bosnian border, bless his heart, took it upon himself to announce to everyone that I was an American. So when all the heads around me turned towards me, I smiled my shy, somewhat embarrassed, friendly smile of American Awkwardness. I remember there were these two old mean-looking Muslim Bobushkas and one of them smiled back at me. It felt nice.

This Kosovar guy I met on the bus came with me to the bus station and helped me get a ticket to Tirana, then he left and I was alone in a faraway and supposedly dangerous land. I was sort of freaking out, and then I saw this girl with a big backpack. I talked to her and she chilled me out. She was the only other backpacker I met there.

Anyways, Pristina... It was full of UN personnel and not much else. Kosovo is a UN protectorate. It's called UNMIK - United Nations Mission in Kosovo. It's on the euro, and I guarantee it is the cheapest place you will ever find on the euro. They speak Albanian there. I was using my few Bosnian words, which is also Serbian, and getting dirty looks, then I switched to Albanian and got smiles.

Pristina isn't all blown-up and bullet-pocked like Sarajevo, I guess because the Serbs just marched in unchallenged. There are quite a few big buildings popping up and they're all UN related. There are loads of internationals there, and pretty girls, and I tried to work up the nerve to chat to both but ended up talking to neither.

Anyways, I spent most of the day wandering around back and forth between these cafes frequented by UN personnel and this market. It was really lively, tons of people floating around. Mostly vegetables and really cheap clothes. Lot of old men with white caps, Albanian style.

That night I caught the bus to Tirana. On the way out of Kosovo, I saw a tank driving down the road! Alongside donkey carts and lines of people, a tank rolling down the highway. My first tank.

Some stuff about Albania:

There are no streetlights in Tirana. You stray off the main road at night and it is completely dark. You see these shadowy faces lurking in the darkness. It is super creepy. I wouldn't walk around at night.

I saw passports being sold on a street corner. When you first enter the country, there is a big sign at customs that says "Welcome to Albania". And then a little kid tries to sell you bootleg cigarettes out of a carton. I think that sums up the trip. The water and electricity in Tirana is cut for a few hours several times a day.

Something kid of fun: They took a lot of those bleak, gray, crumbling communist flat buildings and opened them up to artists, so you'll see purple polka dots on a big concrete block of a building, or a DNA double helix running down the front.