(Not so) European Vacation part 2

So the day after Professor D and I flew back to Prishtina, we left rather early to collect a rent a car outside town. Alas, Prof. D did not have a very restful night as he was introduced to the many sounds of my inner city neighborhood, including the pack of dogs which awoke him at 5:00 a.m., then 5:15, 5:25, 5:35 (you see where this is going), the sounds of the city water supply being turned back on (water is turned off every night from 11 pm to 5 a.m.), and a few car alarms. I don't make this stuff up.... if you are coming to my house, bring earplugs!

Now I had put a great deal of thought into our journey, and I had certain voices in my head that morning. "They've redone the road from Kukes to Puke. It's fine now." said the senior staff attorney in my office. Meanwhile, a guidebook published last year said "the road between Kukes and Shkodra has been fully upgraded." Armed with this knowledge, I decided we would go into Albania via the town of Kukes and drive the 120 km or so west to Shkodra on Saturday, and on Sunday we would take a ferry through gorges in the north to a different border crossing and head back to Prishtina for Prof. D to catch his plane. A two day Albanian adventure.

A cab driver in Prishtina dropped us off at around 7:30 am outside the rent a car gate that was locked. I yelled a hello or two to no avail, and the cab driver, taking some pity on us, the two Americans he just left on the side of a rather deserted road, honked his horn. This awoke the guard who came out and let us in. After an exchange of a handful of cash for a set of keys & a letter from the car company saying I had permission to use the car [no need for a pesky contract], we were in a Nissan Tirana (how appropriate) heading toward Albania.

The border crossing was uneventful. The border guards took Prof. D away into the building - told me not to come - into a room with a computer, which they paid no attention to at all as they pulled out the registry book to hand write all our info and give us a paper for our car. Apparently, they asked Prof. D something about soccer, not understanding that he is American and that he would not have an opinion on European soccer even if he could understand what they were saying. After about 20 minutes at the border, we were free to enter Albania.
The first thing we noticed were the pillboxes. We read about them, that they were everywhere in border areas, and they are. A fear of invasion by the (fill in the country of your choice) in the 1970s resulted in thousands being built - most big enough for one soldier. They are still scattered around the countryside.

I had heard that the entrance to Kukes was rough, and reality proved this correct. It was dirt and rocks. Sometimes, the road diverged into two and you really couldn't tell which side was the one less travelled by. Once, we climbed a hill and found ourselves in a gas station - not along side a gas station, but in one, as the road went right on into the station and by the pumps. We didn't stop for a refill.

By the time we got to Kukes, some thirty minutes or so after we crossed the border, I was tired and was looking forward to the fully upgraded motorway that awaited us to Shkodra.

In Kukes, we stopped for coffee and got our first taste of the Albanian fondness for ceramic and plaster figurines - our cafe terrace was full of them. The waiter and the owner of the hotel/cafe were very nice and helpful with changing money and telling us that Shkodra was about 2 and a half hours away. We also stopped in the center to take some pictures of the area.

Water levels throughout the area are extremely low, due to lack of rainfall, and you can see how far down the banks the actual water level is - it usually goes right up to the greenery. We wondered if our ferry was even running if water was so scarce.

Beautiful towering mountains surround a portion of the town. Our guidebook noted they are part of the Dinaric Alps - the highest peak about 9000 feet. (I know this should have been a clue, but it did not sink in.)

It was time to depart Kukes. We found the road we wanted, and while the workers were literally paving a part of it, it was good road - smooth, paved, modern, with marked lanes, for about 2 miles... we rounded a corner and the world opened up before us. Those mountains we took pictures of now stood between us and Shkodra. And that fully upgraded road, well, I guess it could be in the eye of the beholder - I have been debating: if 60 % of a road is now paved while previously 0% was, does that qualify the road to be described as "fully upgraded" - a question perhaps more suited to philosophers than mathematicians. And we could see the road winding up the mountains (anywhere between 3,000 and 8,000 feet) before us. It was a challenge, an adventure, a nightmare(??), as Prof. D. reminded me of his absolute fear of heights as he wondered aloud if the road was like that the entire way to Shkodra and whether he would survive such a trip.

I was doing all the driving as Prof. D does not drive stick. And it was okay although exhausting for the first thirty minutes, that felt like 5 hours, and during which time we traversed about 10 km. Then the mountains got steeper, and the turns sharper. At one point, the steepness of the first outright switchback took me by surprise, and the car stalled out - on a hairpin, at 6000 feet, with no guardrails anywhere (the only thing on the side of the road are plaques every 50 feet or so dedicated to individuals who have died on the road), and we rolled back a bit before I got the emergency brake up. I restarted the car and off we went, but not I suspect before Prof. D lost 10 years off his life. After that, if I put the car into third gear, Prof. D. would ask me to slow down, so I traveled about 50-60 km in second gear - poor Nissan Tirana.

About two to two and a half hours later, we arrived to the town called Puke (pronounced Pook-ah), about half way to Shkodra. I was intensely aware that per my office colleague's comment, we had just finished with the good part of the road, and would now be driving on the old, unrenovated road. By this point, my shoulders were cramped, and my hands permanently clutched upon the steering wheel, but there was no way I was driving back, so forward we would go. Puke was the biggest town we saw on the road - about five blocks, two cafes, a store, and a mosque.

And true to my colleague's word, the road was now mostly dirt and stones and holes and trenches and ruts. Every now and then, I would look around and notice how breathtaking it was to be up in these mountains. It's very unspoilt natural beauty, but utterly brutal for drivers. At one point, we were on our way down a pretty high mountain when we looked off to the side and saw this crazy dirt road cut into the side of another mountain. We laughed and consoled ourselves that "at least we aren't on that one. ha, ha." Predictably, when we reached the bottom, we realized our road was taking us straight there.

I was parched after hours of driving and wanted some water. Prof. D. however would not give me the water bottle until we found a wide enough part of the road for me to pull off onto, as he believed, not unjustifiably, that should I take my attention off the crazy, winding, dirt, mountain road for the second it would take to put a water bottle to my mouth, we would die. It took a while to find such a pull off, but when we did, water never tasted so good.

There wasn't much traffic on the road. We saw the occasional bus with passengers, and several police patrols sitting by their cars along the way, which I thought was smart as they are presumably there to respond to accidents, of which, judging by the number of memorial plaques along the road, there are many. And every so often, usually near the mountain peaks, children would appear along the side of the road, selling cherries or something puffy that looked like a flower. We never saw a house, or an adult, and so could never explain how they got there, yet children sightings were frequent.

Four and a half hours after we left Kukes, we arrived to the end of the mountain range, and the river valley of Shkodra. I never wanted to drive again, although recognizing this was not realistic unless we wanted to investigate taking up permanent residency in Shkodra, I was willing to settle for finding a hotel, parking the car, and taking the night off.

The first hotel we tried had no vacancies, and for a moment, I feared we would be sleeping in the car, but then the second one, the Colosseo, had rooms and we checked in. It was right across the street from the Al-Zamil mosque, which dominates the architecture in the center of town. The hotel was fine - comfortable and clean - and it had parking right in front.

Shkodra is on a lake - 4000' above sea level - and is where two main rivers come together. Its main tourist attraction is a castle. I didn't know the Albanian word for castle, and multiple attempts-at-giving-our-destination-in-the-four-languages-we-knew-between-us later, a taxi driver finally understood where we wanted to go, and for the price of about $3 round trip, he took us up the hill on the outskirts of town where the castle was perched. The views were impressive.

The earliest walls of the fortress date back to 350 BC, and the castle and ramparts to medieval times. The castle is known as Rozafa in the town, named after a legend. Three brothers were building the castle, but the walls kept falling down each night after they spent the day building them up. They decided a sacrifice was necessary to appease the divine power, and that it would be which ever wife would come up the mountain first with their lunch. The two older brothers told their wives to stay home, and Rozafa, the wife of the youngest brother, was the one to bring their lunch by. She agreed with her husband to be walled into the structure on the condition that her right arm was left free to hold their son, her right breast left free to feed her son, and her right foot left free to rock their son's cradle. Legend says this is what the brothers did - immured half of her in rock, and the castle remained and remains standing.

A much happier fate awaited me as we finished our tour of Rozafa and headed back to town for dinner. An attempt to locate a restaurant from the guidebook failed, and we ate at the hotel, and it was fine. I fell asleep to the Eurovision song contest playing on my television - and by chance ended up seeing the eventual winner - the Serbian entry.

As I slept, I seriously felt as though I was still driving - even to the point of feeling the air from the dashboard a/c vent on my face. I awoke at sunrise to the call to prayer from the mosque across the street and felt as though I had driven another 120 km overnight.

I had been told to leave 2 and a half hours for the trip from Shkodra to Koman, the ferry town, and the ferry was scheduled to depart at 9 a.m. Prof. D and I set off at 6:30 a.m. for the next leg of our journey.