A bus with spare jet engines strapped to the top, another with a living room set of furniture, another with a live goat, mountains spiking skyward from the water’s edge, the boat heading directly into a wall of rock, a wedding party, and a dozen calves. Highlights from our 2-hour ferry ride in northern Albania last week.
We had left Tirana at 5:30 am for a three-hour drive to the ferry launch
. The last 500 meters, we crawled through a dark tunnel made by a Looney Tunes character with bare rock, bare light bulbs, and zero braces or supports. Gratefully, we arrived in plenty of time, and at 10:00 the boat appeared on the reservoir just above the dam. While we waited, the morning crew unloaded the sheep and calves. After a small boat filled with hay moved on and the calf dinghy putted away, we were treated to a bird’s eye demonstration of a delightfully cruel way to wash sheep. A man tied a rope around the animal’s neck and proceeded to sloop him back and forth in the water. We wondered if the wool would shrink.
There are many advantages to traveling with young kids—one of which is that ship captains will be friendly and will often invite you into the cockpit. We stepped into the small room with three US flags tacked on the walls. “I am a fan of the US,” he said. He had his fingers on a small toggle switch instead of the steering wheel, but he wasn’t making any course corrections. The captain explained how the boat is guided electronically. I imagine that there are sensors that bounce signals off the sides of the mountains that automatically adjust the rudder so we stay exactly in the middle of the channel.
Along with the naked beauty of the mountains, sometimes not more than 10 meters away, at times we could see calm scenes of agricultural peace. We learned that these houses, with their grapes, terraced corn, and boats tied up on the beach, belonged to men on the wrong side of a blood feud that may have lasted hundreds of years. In sparsely populated northern Albania, the core rules are set by Kanun code—traditional system of laws practiced since medieval times. Apparently, these people ended up here after being exiled from every other town in the area. There are no roads to their abode, no electricity. The isolation is alluring.
At the northern end, we drove off to another dirt road that made us glad again that it was not raining. At the first village, we stopped to ask if there was a hotel in town. We investigated four rooms for 10 Euros per person. Merita, the school's office manager, asked why they would give the price in Euros when we are in Albania. No answer. Albania uses the Lek, with is worth about 110% of a cent. 90 Lek = 1 USD = 70 Euro cents. I was ready to reserve the place and then we would be free to explore for the rest of the day. After all, I have stayed in much worse 'hotels' in Moscow, Kiev, and Azerbaijan. Merita, however, wisely said that the price was not cheap, so we should look at the next town, Bajram Curri, 30 minutes away, where a hotel was described in our guidebook. We easily found the hotel and negotiated a price of 6000 lek for two nice rooms plus a couple dormitory cots. We had five adults, three teenagers, and Oskar and Maxim.
Now we were ready to commence the final leg of the excursion to a former vacation spot near the border with Montenegro. The gravel road followed a turquoise steam that was so clear, one could peer into 10-foot deep pools and see the future. Words really can’t describe the luscious beauty of the roadside stream. I wanted to go down to wash my troubles away.
One valley was a model for The Shire, home of Bilbo and Frodo Baggins with huge haystacks, goats, cows, stick fences, water springs, and a bearded elderly farmers riding a donkey pulling vegetables in a rickety wooden-wheeled wagon. Sprinkled lightly across this bucolic scene were hints of modernity like a satellite dish on top of the outhouse, or a dirty moped straining under the weight of a shepherd and a young pig tied to the rear rack.
You might think that in a country where the main religion is Muslim, there would be few, if any, pigs—not so. When you buy a hamburger here, that’s what you get—a hamburger. As with the FSU (Former Soviet Union), religion was not in favor for several decades. An article in Slate.com has these words:
Enver Hoxha, the country's Muslim-born Marxist-Leninist dictator, outlawed all religious practices, books, and icons in 1967, declaring Albania the world's "first atheist state." Perhaps not coincidentally, the Muslim world's most tolerant nation is also its most secular. A recent Gallup poll found that of every Balkan and Muslim-majority nation, Albania had the smallest proportion of people who said religion was an important part of their daily lives. http://www.slate.com/id/2226840/entry/2226843/
In addition to the natural splendor, our trip was another lesson in Albanian friendliness. Not only would people respond when offered a wave of the hand, but when meeting another car on the one-lane road, drivers would compete to achieve the honor of allowing the other person to traverse the slightly wider spot between the uneven-wooden fence and the stacks of hay.
Increasing the value of their natural wonders is also a priority here. On the road along the stream, there were several spots where heavy road-making machinery was in use. As we approached, the foreman would order the excavator to move to the side and allow us to pass. A couple times, we had to wait while a couple truckloads of rock were unloaded. We remarked how pleasant it was to see the workmen dressed casually in flowered shorts and flip-flops. Pleasant because we are used to seeing all men, no matter the weather, wearing long pants and gruff expressions at all times.
At one point, a metal swinging footbridge crossed to the other side. I stepped daintily across before the boys tried it. "Look, Mama! I can walk over this hole!"
"Oh, oh, oh!" her voice cracking. "Okay. I guess you can. Now be careful. I think you should—"
"Look, Mama, I can walk on this rock!"
"Look, Mama, I can swing on the branch!" All day Maura had to swallow some of her concern as we chose to allow the 'boys to be boys.'
It was great. Another swinging wooden bridge featured a cow calmly chewing in the middle with a countenance of utter contentedness.
After another three hours of travel, we arrived at Valbona, the sight of a communist-era resort district. Now, there are no more than a dozen people living there. Most everything was destroyed in the late 90's during a period of lawlessness that invaded the country. The hotel, which our guidebook says was rebuilt and reopened had holes for windows, crumbling walls, and livestock exploring the bottom floor. We stopped at the restaurant that must employ the whole town, the sign for which featured a scary-looking lamb stretched out over a fire. We netted our fish from a pond and shared out table with roaming sheep and goats.
We returned to the town of Bajram Curri for an evening of cards and story telling. The owner appeared—bad news—he was NOT the man with whom we negotiated earlier. He said that the price was higher than we expected. After a bit of back and forth, our friend Mr. Negotiator appeared—quite drunk and rude. After discerning that this man was no good to us, our school director, Mark, put it succinctly. Motioning to one side of the table, he said, "Okay. Here are the keys," and, motioning to the other, "here is the money. Take it or leave it."
We returned to the town near the ferry. In the morning, we would have a short trip to the boat, and we still had time for a couple games of Blockus. We paid 6000 lek.
For some pictures of the ferry and of Valbona from 2006, go here:
http://www.gadling.com/2006/07/27/balkan-odyssey-part-10-lake-komani-albania/http://www.gadling.com/2006/07/28/balkan-odyssey-part-11-valbona-albania/
The shoreline
No comments:
Post a Comment