Today was our last day in Albania. We packed up and left Tirana. Getting out was fun (and our bus driver was glad we were leaving), as Albanians generally believe traffic laws are optional guidelines, that they generally ignore.
For example controlled intersections (traffic signals, round-abouts, etc) generally mean “obey the general gist of stopping and right-of-way, unless you see an opening, then take it”. Surprisingly this works reasonably okay, as they all drive slow and cautiously, so there aren’t a lot of serious accidents (with the locals).
However, when fellow Balkan’s come to visit (such as Croatians, Montenegrans, etc.) who understand and follow the “I have right of way at this intersection” drive faster assuming they indeed have the right of way. Aaaaand then collision-ville.
Here is an example of a round-about on their main round-about heading out (it is nominally a 4-lane round-about, albeit there aren’t really lane markings; supposedly as in the rest of the world – if you are in the round-about you should have right of way, etc.) :
Albania while working hard and growing (as we noted yesterday), is still a fairly poor and struggling country. Tirana (the capital) is working hard (and generally succeeding) at being a modern city, with modern “stuff”. Once you get out of Tirana however, folks struggle a little more. Here are some (through the window bus pictures) of Albania that we saw to give you perspective:
Our final adventure in Albania was a stop in Shkodra, one of the largest cities in Albania. The population is about 110K which seems small to us, but the country’s entire population is just under 3,000,000.
Here are some “bus pictures” of Shkodra as we drove through:
We had almost two hours to spend walking around the pedestrian area (downtown) to do last minute shopping and/or lunch.
As shopping holds little to no interest for us, we elected to eat lunch. We were seated on the second floor terrace of the restaurant, facing the pedestrian area. Our lunch buddies were a really a nice couple from Pittsburgh. He’s a former Green Beret so of course we thought it was super cool to have dined with a bad ass. 🙂
Tim was particularly delighted as the man is also a mining engineer, which means he and Tim have a geology background in common.
Nothing terribly exciting to see, but here are some examples of the pedestrian street:
During lunch we had two interesting experiences. The first we weren’t able to get a photograph of, but it was unique (and made us wonder what was going on!).
Walking up the street was a small crowd led by two Catholic cardinals, three Imams (leaders of Sunni Muslims), and a Jew. They passed by the mosque and turned down a small alleyway behind it. Admittedly this does sound like the beginning of a “three guys walk into a bar” joke, but it was interesting to see three religions represented with a small group behind.
The second interesting experience was that Salat occured while we were eating. We’ve heard Muslim calls to prayer before, but never sitting so close to the mosque. And, for once, it didn’t sound mournful as we normally think they do.
Leaving Shkodra, we headed straight for the Albania/Montenegro border. Who knew that as soon as we crossed the border we would start climbing?! Literally within a mile of the border we starting gaining altitude traveling up and through the mountains that give Montenegro it’s name (Black Mountains).
The landscape is absolutely beautiful! The mountains are rocky and high and provided for lovely scenery for our drive. Adding to that was the greenish-blue Moraca River that runs along side the highway.
A quick stop was made at Moraca Monastery which was built in 1252. There are frescoes from the 13th & 16th centuries in the small (very small) cathedral on the grounds. For the size, it was amzing how much iconography was in the cathedral! There are only three monks that live at the monastery but there is housing available on site and their families are welcome to stay for up to three months at a time (provided the church approves the request, of course).
Some of the features of the grounds include a waterfall, a small cemetary, beehives, and a nice garden. What the monks don’t consume from the bees and garden is sold to help sustain the monastery.
Here are pictures from Moraca:
From the monastery we drove to Kolasin, a ski resort town in Montenegro. The town is incredibly small and there’s nothing to do after sunset, except walk to the grocery store. Otherwise, it’s dark and nothing is open.
The hotel was built during the Yugoslavian days and was the top hotel at the time. It has been well maintained and is quite a comfortable place for an evening.
Here is our hotel / ski lodge:
Tomorrow – headed for Croatia!
Dubrovnik to be precise…. (or for those in the know… King’s Landing). 😉