Airport Adventures
Our first challenge at Mother Teresa airport in Tirana is that we cannot get trolleys because we don't have the local currency leks. We have euros. But not leks.
Vodaphone Is Voiceless
The second challenge is getting a mobile phone. We buy two local Sim cards from Vodaphone, but cannot get the phones to work. Our old passwords don't work with the new Sim cards.
Hidden Whizz Car Has Whizzed Off Where?
The third challenge is finding the Whizz car company's office, which is outside the airport perimeter. The airport official expects us two seventy year olds to leave our trolleys and carry six pieces of luggage off looking for the Whizz car company's office, we have searched for, back and forth, for the last forty minutes, under the mid-day sun.
We later learn that the sign for car park P3 has been lost in the renovations. We then have to drive back into the airport and pay to revisit the Vodaphone kiosk. But we still can't get any of our four phones to work.
Whizzing Off
At least, at last, we have a car. Things are looking up.
Garages - Goodness Gracious
The car is delivered with an empty tank, so we have to get petrol. Disconcertingly, many of the garages are called Kastrati. That is a common Albanian family name. The garages all have different names, of the owners.
At the garage, a man hurries out of the office to help us put petrol in the tank! We have found one good thing about being time travelled back two decades.
Colourful Tirana
We drive into the centre of Tirana, the capital. Negotiating the traffic, and traffic lights among the trees, we are impressed by the jolly, coloured, artistic traffic lights. The design is not three disc shapes like lollipops in most of Europe, instead unique half arches of colours like strings of Xmas lights.
The buildings are also all brightly coloured. Later I learned that the prime minister decided to uplift the citizens' morale with colour. It works.
Romantic Rustic Restaurants
We drive out of the suburbs because we are heading north, and look for a place to eat. We then discover that Albania in summer is full of restaurants full of delightful rustic outdoor seating, open sided under awnings and slatted roofs.
Murati
We stop at Murati, family run, and the owner's son greets us and later serves us. Outdoors, you have to play dodgems with smokers. So we opt to eat in the dim indoors.
Fullsome Food
The next surprise is the huge portions. One portion of anything is enough for four to six people.
I reject baklava in favour of something Albanian. I later regret this. Baklava is always on menus. But not served in summer.
Tirana's Toilets
I also discover Albanian toilets. The toilets are easily found, with the word Tualet.
The cubicles, one for each sex, with a shared basin outside are behind a curtain made of hanging separate ropes which you push through.
The cubicle doors have an old fashioned key which you turn, or a slider, not the push buttons of many modern door handles. Again, great bright colours. Disconcertingly, the toilet does not always have a toilet seat, or one the same shape as the toilet. However, all is well. You nearly always have modern taps and toilet paper and proper flushing toilets.
Lovely Language
We drive past many English sounding words, Hotel, bar, taksi, policia, dentist, farmacia. Albanian is a confetti of Albanian, Italian, English, French and other languages. English, French and lots of Italian. Italy is just across the sea.
Every third restaurant is Italian. Those which aren't serve pizza and ice cream. Most of them have baklava on the menu. However, heavy baklava is only served in winter. In hot summer they serve cold ice cream.
But not much Prosecco. In Albania, every third garden has grape vines and the restaurants either make their own wine or buy Albanian wine made locally, or buy Albanian wine from one of the half a dozen big producers who supply Albanian restaurants and supermarkets.
When the waiter says there is no menu, yet you see and find a menu, he explains, 'No English menu'. However, with the aid of the pictures, and lots of Italian words like pizza and cappuccino, most of the Albanian menu makes sense. You can use a dictionary, or waiter, or customer, to translate the two or three words you want to read, or the items you want to ask for.
We stopped at Murati restaurant. We received huge portions of bread and cheese and olives. What looked like hummous was bread with cheese on top.
The road north passes many two storey shopping malls. Unfinished malls.
Car show rooms. Garages. Tyre shops. (Americans spell it tire.)
Wedding dress shops. Wedding venues is white look like Disney palaces, twice the size of hotels.
We spin along the motorway until, as the day darkens, by late afternoon we see the Balkan mountains ahead.
We reach the northern small town of Shkroder with a hilltop ruined castle.
Shkroder Prison
A huge prison, reminiscent of of WW2, the Holocaust, horror movies, high walls with towers and prison guards at the top. Yet, ironically, humorously, along the outside walls are positive motivational messages in English.
Life always offers a second chance - called tomorrow.
The road climbs up the hill, around a corner, another corner. U bends. Z bends. The road is just wide enough for two cars.
Every now and then a car appears around the corner from the other directions. Both of us brake sharply.
The teenage girls of Tirana in their tight miniskirts are far away. We see a cow, blocking our road, led by an old man. A goat, blocking the road, led by an old woman in a scarf.
Fields of vines. Beehives in many colours.
Our hotel room has a tiny balcony, just big enough to stand on and admire the mountains. But the bed is magnificent. Wonderfully supportive but soft. A perfect nights sleep.
Next morning we have an Albanian buffet breakfast. Big olives. With stones. Salty donuts, like bagels but without holes. Wonderful white yogurt with local honey on top.
We are now ready to hike in northern Albania's Balkan mountains.
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