No One Goes to Albania by Jane Hertenstein

A number of years ago, we made a side trip to Albania. I know, no one goes to Albania. This was before the prevalence of the smartphone and the ease of accessing data. Meaning: we were out on a ledge. Yet, I cannot get the place out of my mind. The colors, the chaos, the smells, and the vibrant life. Memories circle my brain like a kaleidoscope.

The dollar being at an all-time low was the determining factor. We wanted to travel as far as we could with the least amount of economic pain, which meant hostels and cheap suppers. A lot of pizza or variations of sauced flatbread in former Soviet satellite nations. We landed in Slovenia and made our way to the coast of Croatia and then to Montenegro. It was in Montenegro, at a beachside promenade, at a kiosk, where we met a guide talking up Albania. Who goes to Albania? we asked.

I mean, it was just a few years earlier that there had been an international crisis and a border war. Albania has always sat at the crossroads of religion and ethnicities, occupied by Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, and Ottoman Turks up to the 20th century. Not exactly European or Mediterranean, Orthodox Christian or Muslim—a Balkan mishmash. Only recently had the tiny country emerged from the shadows of a bizarre dictator. Primarily, for us, Albania was an overland gateway to Greece, our intended destination. The idea of an all-inclusive packaged motor coach trip sounded appealing.

What if we skipped lunch? How much to get there?

You want to stay? The guy was unsure of what we were asking.

Not exactly, but yes. The pared-down price for transport and clearing the border was a much better deal than trying to arrange all this on our own. (Which we were still foggy on. Okay, we were foggy on 98% of everything.) 

All we had to do was wake up early and wait at a sketchy corner in dawn darkness. Slowly, the sun came up, and a big bus turned down the narrow street where we boarded, hoping we would end up in Albania and not in some back alley minus a kidney.

I’m not sure what I was expecting. Out the window of my motor coach, I kept a watch for bombed-out ruins. There were guards at the border with machine guns; we handed our passports over to the quirky guide whose command of English was noble but flawed. We weren’t sure if we’d see those passports again.

Our first stop was Shkoder. We observed minarets and traditional churches and were given a basic overview of the country. I edged away from the tour to find a cash station. All I knew was that the Albanian LEK was worth a fraction of a dollar. We’d do very well for the couple of days we planned to be there. Back on the bus, we passed a hydroelectric dam and a castle-like structure fortified with a tall stone wall. The guide, first in Serbo-Croatian and then in English, unfolded the myth of a woman being sacrificed, sealed into the wall with only her breast exposed so that she could continue to nurse her child, in order to save the castle from invasion. To my ears, this story made no sense. Another stop was at the side of the road. Now we walk, we were instructed.

We tramped across a field with the other “tourists,” which included another American couple, college kids. We exchanged quizzical remarks, like Where the heck are we going? We were led to what looked like a concrete egg submerged in a hillside. Apparently, the late dictator Enver Hoxha was as paranoid as North Korea’s ruler and had planted up and down the country a complex of 173,371 one-man bunkers. Who’s going to invade Albania? I might have quipped to the couple. Many of the bunkers had been converted to stables or, judging by the graffiti, illicit hangouts for the youth.

Our last stop was Tirana, the capital, and for my husband and me, the terminus of our trip. Through a fortuitous email exchange with an acquaintance prior to boarding the bus, we were put in touch with an American diplomat who offered to accommodate us. Again, we hung out at a corner of the main square by a statue of Skanderbeg, the national hero of Albania from the Middle Ages. As we waited, I tried to discern the chaotic traffic patterns. Drivers navigated the roundabout, weaving in and out of merging traffic, playing chicken with pedestrians, and, in general, ignoring signals and rules, giving the impression that anything goes. Buildings around the square were that Fascist brand of architecture mixed with newly-painted apartments in tropical colors.

Trash was everywhere despite the barrel containers.

Our host met up with us. He, a Bush-appointed economist, was there to help out the Albanian financial ministry, which had suffered a number of pyramid schemes. After the collapse of the regime, they were susceptible to mafia-style outside investors and internal governmental corruption. We wound our way through city streets and crowds of people enjoying the late autumn weather. He stopped at a stall to buy grapes, but did not offer us any. He tucked them, wrapped in newspaper, under his arm and continued on.

His building was gated and had a doorman. It was definitely a step, or two, above anything else we’d seen so far in the city. Very “Western” in terms of conveniences, and we didn’t even know the half of it. Once at his apartment on the top floor, he washed the grapes with bottled water and laid them out on a plate. Dig in and, by the way, don’t drink the water.

As we dressed to go out for dinner, there was an interruption to the power. Suddenly, everything went black, and a hush fell before the lights came back on in his unit. His was the only building with backup. Out on the street, a party atmosphere reached our ears as we stood on the balcony, as if aristocrats lording it over the peasants, or like a scene borrowed from the apocalyptic sci-fi film Soylent Green, where the haves, the fortified elite with security and power, look down on the have-nots. The hum of generators added to the chaos below us. 

At the restaurant, we met up with one of his colleagues, a young woman who had studied abroad and whose command of English was exceptional. We ate outdoors on a patio lit by propane lamps. In an orange glow, we talked across the table. It’s amazing how at home I felt despite being foreign—perhaps it was the conversation. I was excited to get inside the head of a local. I asked her: Why did you come back?

I was in my forties at the time and still married. I had no idea how little control we have over our decisions. I missed my mother, she answered.

We only spent a day and a half in the country, barely scratching the surface of the paradoxes of its people and rich history. Our host effused that we must come back and rent a 4 x 4 and get up into the mountains, the countryside. He told us this after explaining the archaic ritual of Gjakmarrja or blood feud, taking revenge on someone if they have harmed one of yours. Though not legal, it is an honor code upheld generation after generation. Only the taking of another life will appease the loss until the debt is paid.

The night we left was a bookend to how we entered Albania—a motor coach in the early morning hours. Our host booked a taxi at midnight to take us to the location printed on our ticket, again, a random corner without the benefit of a sign or bench upon which to wait. We stood outside in the unseasonably warm night while residents, oblivious to the hour, washed cars or played backgammon on overturned trash cans. Our taxi driver pulled up, and we couldn’t thank our host enough. He’d been a lifesaver on our journey into the unknown. Literally a light in the darkness, since the power was again out. Before pulling away from the curb, the driver tossed a takeout container out the window onto the street. That was Tirana, Albania.

Even now, my mind and memories wander back to that woman stuck in the wall, with her lone breast, to Skanderbeg who freed his people from the Ottomans, to the bunkers—the remnant of an out-of-control autocrat—to the apartments in Tirana painted to symbolize newfound artistic freedom, to the Roma family banging a drum on the trash-littered streets. I’ve learned so much more after that trip by reading the novels of Ismail Kadare and guidebooks. I’ve often wished we had stayed longer and rented a 4 x 4 and gone up into the mountains, to the villages cut off by blood feuds and warring families. Sometimes we only know what we don’t know, and, as the day-to-day chaos of life becomes a certainty, I find myself longing for Albania.