Midnight Train to Georgia

The title is misleading.  The train didn't even take me remotely close to Georgia.  This actually looks more like the BC Southern Interior.

Can you even imagine how long I have been waiting to use this title?   The train actually left at a few minutes before 7am and arrived pretty close to midnight the next day.  It cost somewhere in the neighbourhood of $36 and got me as far as Kars, an ex-Russian colonial outpost and once a part of the old Kingdom of Armenia.  I believe it’s now firmly in the territory known as Kurdistan.  In fact, I think I knew the moment we entered Kurdistan when a bunch of Turkish soldiers disembarked from the train and immediately assumed positions and started skulking up hills and around corners just outside of Erzican.  Not the most nerve-easing sight but as two enormous, 8-ft Kurdish freedom fighters on the train assured me, I had nothing to worry about because I was not Turkish.  Then they told me that communism was the way forward, called me a post-modernist because I don’t own a cell-phone, gave me a bisous on both cheeks, and told me to go to sleep because I look tired.  So, don't judge a person because they are 8-ft and 300 lbs of Turkish-hating muscle talking about small acts of civil disobedience.  They can actually be quite cultured.

What's your train threshold?  Mine is 46 hours.

I'll be the first to admit that the Dogu (eastern) Ekspress does not mess around; or rather, it messes around so much that it took me 46 hours to reach my destination.  As the old adage goes, the Germans who built the rail line were paid by the kilometre, which is why it does some formidable zigs and zags across Asia Minor.  But, after several trips to the dining car for the same meal of kefte, several instant coffees, and several intermittent periods in the bathroom trying to charge my iTouch (I had, afterall, just downloaded the entire Wikipedia database onto it and couldn’t wait to read about things like “Kurdistan,” “the Georgian Alphabet,” and  “Kim Kardashian.”

Things get real in Kurdistan.

Kars was a pretty dusty town without much of a grand station to mark the eastern terminus of Turkish Rail but what did greet me was two Turkish students who were putting up two Swiss-French students from Constantinople.  They asked me if I’d like to stay there as well and showed me the way to the Georgian border the next morning after a delicious doner, the first good one I have ever had in my entire life, and one that is worth commenting on.  The dining car of the Dogu Ekspress, however, is getting of the lowest rankings in my hierarchy because of the lack of tomatoes with my kefte and the instant coffee.  I guess the Turks have been taking the Vienna loss pretty seriously. 

The C-Stan Outro

I’m trying to think of other things of note from my considerably languid time in C-Stan.  I’m not exactly recounting anything in perfectly sequential order, and I must admit I didn’t do anything too spectacular.  When I was dropped off in Taksim my first night I was delighted to find a McDonald’s right in the main square because you know as well as I do that McDonald’s = free wifi (in fact, only in Romania has it been that I had to actually buy a meal at a McDonald’s in order to get an hour’s worth of free wifi to help me figure out where I was).  The first thing I found in my considerably full inbox was an e-mail from S in all-caps that said “DO NOT STAY SULTANAHMET!  GO TO TAKSIM!!!  BY ALL MEANS VISIT SULTANAHMET BUT STAY IN TAKSIM.”  

This was pretty sound advice.  I did stay in Taksim, mainly because I was already in Taksim, and the two times I wandered over to Sultanahmet (apparently there is some sort of bluish mosque there and a palace or something) I was accosted by the most lethargic carpet salesman in my entire experience of the Levant/Maghreb: 
“How many carpets are you going to buy today?”
“None.”
“Okay.”

S was totally right: no one should have to put up with this kind of treatment.  The spark has gone out of Turkish retailing.  But why wouldn’t it?  Dealing with tourists must be awful.  In fact, the first thing I noticed upon entering the city was the tourists.  I could argue that they are everywhere and ruining this city, but I suppose then that tourists have been ruining Constantinople since the city was founded due to its whole cross-roadedness.

One part of town I did like was this hill on the south side of Taksim that had lots of small corner cafes and one chain restaurant that was always offering free samples of chicken or bread or something.  Down by the water there was also a tall ships exhibition with galleons, or frigates, or privateers or whatever from all over Europe. The Russian ship was my favourite mainly because the lack of customer-service-oriented attitude of the sailors guarding it. 

Battleship MIR was closed.  The guard told me, "I don't known when is open. Maybe tomorrow, maybe later.  Now is closed."  As someone who once worked in public relations for a port authority, I took issue with his tone. 

I guess I can say that the most memorable part of Constantinople for me was leaving Constantinople, mainly because it took me (with the assistance of Turkish Rail) 42 hours.  Much like in almost every other instance, the day before my departure I did a dry run and reconned the Eastern Train Station on the Asian side.  I purchased my ticket and planned out my route.  But no amount of careful planning and diligent route-surveying could prepare me for this atrocious Turko-Cypriot at the hostel who went to Texas A&M and, in between telling me stories about how drunk he got at university and how he’s an arms dealer or “military contractor” or whatever and the step-son of the Dutch ambassador to France and how I should NOT go to Armenia because it’s the most boring place on the planet, also demanded that I take a minibus to the train station and not take the ferry.  He even got up at 5am to walk me to the square for the mini-buses where we learned that they had all left, so I had to run down to the dock to catch the ferry.  This only strengthened my resolve to visit Armenia because if he was wrong about the minibuses, then I had ever reason to doubt absolutely everything he said, especially all the stories about how awesome his university experience was.

Somebody needs to write a book on hostel etiquette and then throw it at these two awful hippie girls who dumped out the contents of their suitcases on the floor in the middle of the dorm and also walked around Constantinople barefoot and were generally unpleasant.  

Aside from being a popular place to drink tea, Constantinople is also one of  the larger ports in the world.  These are gantry cranes.  Please ask me more about them. 

Luckily I caught the ferry and was in time to catch my train but not enough time to buy some sort of gyro or breakfast-appropriate food or anything to stock up for 36 hours of trans-Asia-Minor fun.  So a small kefir and a pretzel had to suffice for the morning and I thenceforth I would be at the mercy of the dining cart.  

Middle Ages-Free Since 1453

The best thing I ever did was forget to bring money to the train station.  If I had purchased my ticket right away, I wouldn’t have noticed this awesome poster that informed me that the 557^th Anniversary of the final fall of Constantinople to the Turks in 1453 was on May 29.  This is a pretty big deal for me.  This should be a bigger deal for everyone.  Not only did this finally bring an official end to the tiresome Middle Ages, but it also became a rallying point for Christendom, and, to a degree, sewed the seeds for the concept of Europe and ultimately the European Union. (Because they are still trying to keep Turkey out.  See what I did there?  See?)

This either is, or isn't, part of the area that the Kerkaporta is located in, which is where the Turks either did, or didn't, enter Constantinople.

I resolved to remain in the Sublime Porte for another couple of days so that I could go to the Kerkaporta at the appointed hour, and reflect on how intense the whole scene must have been.  So you can imagine how I felt when I climbed up to one of the towers and saw a bunch of Turkish youth drinking rum and coke (or possibly just coke.  Oh, but I think they had marijuana too, so I'm totally cleared for moralising) on this the day of the most recent sacking of Constantinople.  While avoiding boisterous youth is something that I work very hard at albeit unsuccessfully, I actually found these particular Young Turks to be quite pleasant.  Certainly compared to the ones attending the Turkish nationalist rally at a nearby soccer stadium (I also attended, and admired large pictures of Kemal Ataturk and Suleiman II or Mahmud 2 or whoever). 

It probably would have been nice of me to rotate these before I uploaded them.

The Turks victorious.

In order to fully appreciate the willing and unwavering submission to Oriental culture by going to a Starbucks to aid me in my walk to find the Kerkaporta. In front of me were two groups of women—all tourists.  The first group spent forever explaining to the hopelessly unprepared barista what they wanted and were quite particular and argumentative and demanding.  The next woman starting angrily shouting at the barista and then stormed out disgusted.  I then approached the counter, and very gently, in Simple English and with delicate tact, explained the steps necessary to complete my drink order: that I would like a full cup of ice with two shots of espresso, more ice, then 1 pump of vanilla and filled to the top with cold water.  It’s not an iced Americano, by the way.   While I think he appreciated my tact, he still probably cursed, and curses daily, the grave of the mess officer or whoever was in charge of victuals and logistics during the Vienna Campaign and accidentally left behind that bag of coffee beans at the gates, introducing the drink to Western Civilisation and ultimately negatively affecting him today. 

I'm not sure you can say things like this. 

Aside from this I drank a couple of teas (at least one of them was apple.  Have you had apple tea?!  I don't know if there is actually a difference between it and that apple cider packets you can buy at any grocery store in Canada but it's really good), listened to a drunk Turkish man tell me that Georgia was the best place to be due to all the things one could buy for minimal American dollars, and watched Turkey come in second place to Germany in Eurovision.  Yep, we've come a long way from hammering at the gates of Vienna. 

Wily and unpredictable youth at the Kerkaporta.

In any case, this is how I commemorated the final collapse (or at the very least, one of the final collapses. One might even go as far as to use "penultimate" in this instance) of the Roman Empire in sunny, blustery, hazy Constantinople.  I'm not sure there is any other way because these are the sorts of unprecedented paradigm-shifting fin-du-mondes that only happen once every half-millenia or so that it should really be about individual self-expression.  And lounging in a series of Oriental cafes complaining about the heat, reflecting about how the Turks nearly swallowed Western Civilisation whole, and reading literature by and about people who have sat in Oriental cafes in the past complaining about the heat and worrying about how the Turks are going to swallow Western Civilisation whole is self expression par-excellence if and when you’re me. 

Orient Expressing Myself

Okay, so perhaps opening a post about scams in the Orient with Orientalism perpetuated the myth a bit so perhaps it’s best to turn to another primary source, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu.  You may remember LMWM from when I left her travel diaries inside a pair of gumboots with a towel, a can of shaving cream, and a cardigan outside of Prishtina and “made some scrounger’s day.”  Lady Mary spent a fair amount of time in Constantinople in the palace district, Pera.  She passed the time with ambassadors’ wives and sat in gardens drinking sherbet while servants waited on her; I bought a carton of 100% orange juice and sat in a park next to the ocean.  We basically experienced Constantinople on the exact same terms, though I admit by 2010 there was considerably less palace intrigue going on than in the early 18^th century.*

So, much like my arrival in any city, I immediately set to work trying to get out of it.  I was in Turkey for one reason: to cross it.  Luckily on my hour-long walks between the different train stations I was able to see quite a bit of the city.  One idea was to purchase the Balkan Flexipass, which would allow me to cross Turkey and back over 5 days in the space of one month.  It was also good for rail travel in the rest of the Balkans, the only network of use being Romania’s and the only networks directly linking to Constantinople being Serbia’s and Bulgaria’s.  But this would mean that I would have to be in the Caucasus for only one month, which severely strained my freedom of movement.

Another restriction to me was my visa to Turkey expiring in three months’ time.  So I was basically able to spend up to three months in the Caucasus should I wish to return to Europe by land via Asia Minor.  The price for the Flexipass was 120 lira, and would you know it, at the time there were no trains running in Thrace (rendering what was left of the Orient Express to a rather precarious state of existence) and the customer service woman at the train station was a raging cow so these three powers combined convinced me that I should a one-way ticket to Kars at the end of the line and just see what happens when I get there.

*Palace intrigue is one of my favourite things in history.  Not only is the name very agreeable to me, but I also picture bishops and counts whispering in corridors with wide eyes about how “intriguing” a certain palace intrigue just was.    

The Orient Sexpress

Look, I’ve read Orientalism enough times (once, and even then it was a bit half-assed.  So let’s rephrase: I’ve cited Orientalism in term papers without having read the whole thing through enough times) to know a thing or two about Turkey.  In fact, most of my identity actually stems from what Turkey is, and therefore what I am not.  So you can imagine my delight when I read several warnings on the old internet that it’s a common scam for locals to approach tourists by speaking Turkish, and with the tourist stops them and says, “No! I’m not Turkish, I’m a tourist!” the con-artist will then apologise profusely and offer to buy the tourist a drink.  They would then go to a bar of the local’s choosing where the tourist would be robbed of all his possessions, or the drink would be on the tourist and would be 1,600 euros.  Or his kneecaps get broken.  Or something equally horrific.  This happens in Eastern Europe a lot with “hot” girls who walk up to American backpackers and ask them if they’d like to get a drink.  Then the backpackers are all, “Oh, snap, this chick totally wants me because I’m such an American hottie” only to discover later that the hot girl is actually a prostitute (twist!) and has a large, neckless ex-boxer boyfriend who drags them to the ATM to withdraw all their savings. 

While I think you’d have to be pretty stupid to think that a “hot,” eastern European girl actually wants to talk to you, this Turkish scam is a lot more innocent and quite worrisome.  Luckily for me, however, I and my anemic skin tone had beaten the system.  There was no way anyone could mistake me for a Turk.  I am the anti-Turk.  I have \spent enough time in Africa to know that everyone thinks I am Russian or German anyway, so I would be well-aware of any scams in the making; in fact, I am almost scam-proof in this regard.  So when several people, independent of one and other, approached me and ask me if I was from _______, because I have a ____-ish face, I thought to myself, “Oh my god, I know what is going on.  They think I am a sex tourist.”  I was onto their game, and what they thought of people from a specific northern European country.  There is no other explanation.*  In each situation when I was asked if I was from _______, I uttered “NO!” and fled the scene.  Can’t scam me.

So I locked up all my money and possessions in the hostel and spent the entire first day in Constantinople artfully dodging scam artists and trying to soak up the beauty of the sunset in some lesser-frequented neighbourhoods outside of Taxim.  Waiting at a crosswalk I noticed an old man carrying a shoe-shining stool had dropped his brush so I quickly scooped it up and handed it to him, as a conscientious individual might do.  He was so grateful that he insisted he shine my shoes for free.  I told him I had no money.  He told me it was for free.  I reiterated that I had no money.  He reiterated that it was for free.  I then said, “Look, I don’t think you’re fully grasping the situation: you’re not just a homeless person.  I’m not just saying I have no money.  I actually have no money.”  He articulated roughly the same message to me about it being free.  I gave up and said, “Fine, let me enjoy this free shoe-shining.”  When he finished and inevitably asked for any money I had, I reversed my pockets to show him that I actually had nothing on me.  He persisted in asking for anything, and I remembered I had a two Lev Bulgarian note in my fifth pocket.  I pulled it out, handed to him and told him to go exchange it.  He wasn’t happy, and sure I technically got scammed, but my shoes look great. 

*I am not printing the name of said country for so many reasons, but I will let you know that in Chisinau I overheard the hostel receptionist, a sweet young girl whose English was quite impressive, exclaim to a young couple checking in, “You’re the first _____ people I’ve met that aren’t sex tourists!”  While it was a bit of strange thing to say, chiefly because the girl had no proof to back this up, these are the moments I live for because they reaffirm the national stereotyping that movies like Hostel and Hostel II have worked hard to indoctrinate me with.   

Smorgas-Bourgas

I awoke with a jolt when the train suddenly stopped in Bourgas.  What surprised me about all this is that I had actually slept at all.  The night train from Sofia had been packed, smelly, and fully of atrocious soccer hooligans* who were evidently just scream-counting to ten.  Getting to Bourgas may not have been comfortable but it was fairly easy.  From Prishtina I bused to Skopje, then immediately caught a bus to Sofia (at a terrible exchange rate in the bus depot because it was some sort of Orthodox holiday and everything was closed) and then found the Black Sea Express to the coast.  I had been through 4 countries in 24 hours, and the first thing I did when I emerged from the train at 5:30am was crawl onto a bench in the station and fall as asleep and the first thing the security guard did when he saw me was grunt angrily and poke me with a stick, telling me to leave.

I'm very much convinced that Bulgarian grandfathers are the original hipsters.

 Bourgas is great.  I think the Russians had something to do with it.  I couldn’t decide if I should stay there for the night and rest up for my big trip to Thrace, or if I should just go to Thrace and deal with the fallout later.  I decided to go to Thrace right away because there was the little matter of needing to withdraw cash.  I only like to withdraw $300 at a time, and while I could easily have blown $300 on Bulgaria’s Black Sea coast on caviar and iced sweet red wine, my fiscal prudence had me counting the precious few lev I had left and purchasing a ride in a minivan (7 lev I believe) to Malko Tarnovo.  I had been to Veliko Tarnovo, so why not Malko Tarnovo?  It also was right on the border with Turkey, which I believed was a pretty good starting point to access Constantinople.

Surprise!  It wasn’t!  Malko Tarnovo, much like the name suggests, is a small Tarnovo.  This is the smallest tarnovo I have ever been in, and while I had a great mixed grill at the local hotel, there wasn’t anything indicating a means of transport to Turkey, nor a Turkish border anywhere in sight.  So onwards I walked, assuming the border was close, and minibuses were waiting to whisk me away.  I took a few twists and turns through the woods and found myself on a road, hoping it was the road the Turkey.  It’s fairly fortuitous I stumbled out onto it when I did because a car immediately stopped for me and drove me all the way to Constantinople. 

The driver’s name was Rouman and he was in logistics, or shipbuilding, or engineering, or porting, or something along those lines.  He had been to Vancouver, and much of the rest of the world.  Now he was driving to Constantinople for a business meeting of sorts and dropped me off in the centre square, which was possibly the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me.  Have you seen Constantinople?  It’s one of the biggest cities in the world and the suburbs look hot, unpleasant, and they start at the Greek border. 

C-Stan approaches.

Rouman also told me many great stories, and finally cracked the riddle of the Vauxhall mystery for me.  Evidently the Russian tsar had sent two agents to the UK to learn about railways and the two agents ended up getting disastrously drunk.  When the tsar asked them to relay all their information they could not remember a thing, and when the tsar asked what the train stops in they reached into their memories and came up with the only thing that stood out: Vauxhall, which is the name of a stop in London.  And now that name is on every train station across all the Russias.  The more you know.

And just like that, after waking up in a smelly and dingy train in Bourgas, and before that having been told by my best friend, like in Harry and the Hendersons, to “go on!” because I wasn’t wanted anymore, I was in one of the oldest and mot cosmopolitan cities on the planet.  The city was pulsing with life around every corner, so I took this opportunity to really let loose, find my bunk bed and fall asleep at 6:30 in the evening.

*AHHH!  What is up with soccer hooligans?  They are ruining Europe!  Young, unemployed men (myself excluded) are the worst thing for a society!

The Secret to the Perfect Bajram Curri

Unfortunately for almost everyone, Bajram Curri is not a tasty local delicacy in the north (yet), but rather a makeshift town for Kosovar refugees right across the border from Gjakova.  In fact, the only thing I can really say about Bajram Curri is that the text size used to denote it in Google Maps does not accurately portray the size and stature of the town one finds upon arrival.  G and co. accessed it by hiking across a glacier.  I took my 25kg backpack with me on the Koman Ferry (this is something I have even gone as far as to “like” on Facebook, so by all means go check it out.  The facebook page, I mean).  We stayed at the local AlbTourist hotel, had some great local food (curry-free), and then set off for Kosovo in the morning. 

There is nothing like a good threepeat, and Kosovo is the perfect place to do so.  After leaving Bajram Curri by furgon to Gjakova, G decided to drop the bomb on me that I was persona non grata in Tirana and that I was being abandoned, in Kosovo.  For my own good, of course.  This forced me to make some serious life decisions: do I go to Novi Pazar as per my most recent life dream, or do I embark on an epic push to the Black Sea and plunge into the last remaining bastion of Turkey-in-Europe?

We spread my large Ukrainian map out on the table at FRIENDS Café near the bus depot and plotted my next move.  Thanks to recent developments in political geography, Novi Pazar is one of the impractically located and least accessible places in the entire Balkans, and getting there would have amounted to crawling through a barbed wire stockade in northern Kosovo or worse, going through Montenegro.  I realised then and there that I have the rest of my life to go to Novi Pazar and that it was important to get to the Black Sea and across Turkey before that entire region began to smell as bad as I assumed it would later in the summer. 

After a tearful goodbye* and much cheek-pinching, I bid farewell to G and Jon (remember Jon?!  He was there too) and boarded a bus for my old nemesis, Prishtina, this time with a little more than 1.70 euros in my pocket.

* You may well ask if I was feeling a bit resentful about being cast out.  Alas, I knew this was the only way for me to move forward and I’ve since dropped any bitterness towards G and I have even decided to vote him “Best New Friend 2010,” much to the likely dismay of several Hungarians if they ever discover and read this.  

Prespa’d for Time

I’m not even joking.  I have never felt such a push to get back to Tirana as when we woke up in Ksamil with Garrett almost screaming at me that we had to make it back to Tirana post haste so we wouldn’t have time to see Saranda, or Gjirocaster, or anywhere in the south.  However, part of this mad dash back to Tirana did include a stop at a completely out-of-the-way lake (L. Prespa) on the Greek border that had no buses running to it.  Oh, whoops, no sorry, we didn’t stop at the lake, I mean to say we hitched with a series of cars up to the turnoff to the lake, where we could see the lake, but did not go down to the lake, and instead walked to the Macedonian border where we tried in vain to get a ride to somewhere that could get us back to Albania.  After all, we needed to be back in Tirana as soon as possible and didn’t have time for needless stops and meandering.

Jealous?

Another thing we managed to make time for was the symphony in Korce.  Evidently there was a French legion stationed in Korce during the First World War and we all know that wherever the French go, culture follows.  As such, Korce is the most culturally aware city in Albania to this day.  It was only after Korce and the symphony that we went to Lake Prespa and I had to sit in the back of a Mercedes with no seat, which only went on to prove that my knees aren’t what they used to be.  We discovered that on the Macedonian side, people were not into picking up hitchhikers whatsoever, despite the gaggles of graduating teenagers driving by honking and screaming.

The road to Prespa, once a centre of the Balkan Renaissance.

We managed to get a ride, as expected, with an Albanian truck driver whose truck broke down just outside of Struga on the way to the border.  His advice to us was to never buy a Made-in-China dumptruck, and I’ve stuck by this sage piece of wisdom to this day.  By the time we had walked across the border and connected with the highway on the Albanian side, we were ready to be back in rainy Tirana to gear up for the next big adventure.

Hella(s) Good*

I guess what we did once in Ksamil isn’t nearly as interesting as what it took to get there, so there isn’t a whole lot to cover.  Evidently I was on board to go to Greece, where I could get a stamp of the final and most Balkan of them all, eat a spanokopita, and criticize Greek fiscal and industrial policy their sovereign debt problems.   I believe I made a rather clever quip about how they ushered in Western Civilisation and are now unilaterally showing it the door, but who can know there was such much going on at the time and not everyone can keep track of my witticisms.  In any case all this was accomplished by noon, and then we were left with the very uphill task of getting back to Albania. 

What became readily apparent in the city was that no one spoke English and that seemingly universal words like “bus” and “to Albania” had not yet permeated this particular dialect of Greek.  And what became progressively apparent on our march out of Igoumenitsa is that the Greeks, while ready to accept a handout from Europe, are not willing to hand out free rides to people of European descent.  This icy slap did little to ward off the Mediterranean heat which was at its peach around 2 when we were trudging back to the border, excited for the cheap and plentiful furgons awaiting us on the other side.  As it turned out, however, an Albanian man picked us up and drove us not only to the border, but to the turnoff to Ksamil where we were to stay one more night. 

*Does anyone remember c.2002 and saying “hella”?

Serenading Saranda

As the bus to Himara was apparently not an option for us, we set off on the open road at 2pm, fairly late for such an ambitious venture.  Luckily, Albanians are the few Europeans left not jaded by the sight of North Americans with backpacks and impish, hopeful and naïve faces.  The first to pick us up was a truck driver delivering water dispensing accessories, so we earned our keep by helping him delivery a large amount of plastic water nozzles to a warehouse about 1km along the road.  He dropped us off in what I believe was Himara (I seem to recall a story about how the Soviets developed a naval base there and then the Albanians kicked them out and kept all the military technology—hence Albania’s naval prowess today—but that also happened in Somalia, so quite possibly it didn’t happen in Albania or it was a common theme in the Soviet Union’s hegemonic expansionist policy) where we caught sight of a bus in the distance.  Two old men picked us up and drove us another stretch which somehow placed us in front of the bus and it stopped to pick us up.

The big problem with this bus is that it was very local and it only took us to the foothills of the mountains before turning to service the villages in the foothills.  We overpaid and were back on the open road on our feet.  After half an hour, a couple picked us up and drove us as far as their car would let them, which sadly left us stranded halfway up the mountain while they tried to fix their car.  Our next ride was with two guys delivering a refrigerator/on their way to repair a refrigerator at a restaurant at the summit overlooking the sea.  While there was a tour bus there full of people, none were interested in letting us join for any leg of the journey. 

Driver #5 was an Albanian-Greek biznez-man, and he let us know it.  He drove a Mercedes, or at least had the kind of air about him that made me believe we were in a Mercedes and his new-money suaveness was especially evident when he took a swig of water from a bottle, decided it was no good and then spat it out the window where it then found it’s way back into the car via the back window and onto me.  So that was nice.

After #5 stopped at a café, we were picked up by about 7 people crammed into a tiny car that apparently had room for two more people and their backpacks.  They took us as far as Himara, evidently (this time it really was Himara) and let us off at the entrance to the city.  I believe there was an awkward should-we-pay? moment, but we somehow got away without any awkward confrontations.  In any case, as no ride is truly free, as soon as I got out of the car the entire side of my shoe burst open (see Exhibit A) and I was left on the side of the road in Albania, without shoe.  This is the last time I buy anything for 6 euros from a man with random things he presumably stole on a blanket on the sidewalk in Barcelona.  Live and learn.

Getting dropped off on the outskirts of Himara meant having to walk into, through and out of Himara itself.  Luckily there was a fisherman who drove us a short stretch out of town towards what looked like another, though more medieval, naval base.  Then two young guys (definitely in an old Mercedes) drove us as far as the next town, Borsh, where we began a long climb uphill, past olive groves, randomly-placed restaurants and concrete structures that I contemplated sleeping in, passing the rapidly-approaching rain storm under. 

Then finally, after what felt like an eternity, we were picked up by a young couple going to Saranda.  Between the two of them they spoke Albanian, German, Italian, French, and Russian but no English.  They drove us all the way to Ksamil because they were so friendly and wonderful, and we arrived at 8pm, ready for food and sleep.  In all I can count this as the most successful hitchhiking adventure Garrett and I have ever embarked on, the least successful being when we went to Durres for the afternoon to play beach volleyball with the Peace Corps workers and then were left in the city after the last bus went back to Tirana so we had to walk for three hours along the highway where stray dogs eyes us hungrily and Garrett wanted to kill me for getting a crepe and causing us to miss the last bus.  

Spring Break Vlorë 2010

Awaking in Fier to rain and thunder wasn’t the most reassuring sign of a successful day ahead but we continued our flight from the aggressive northern weather front closing in.  The next stop was  Vlorë, which you’ll of course remember was the site of some congress of important Albanians, or the signing of some sort of pact or constitution, or something*.  I would have known a whole lot more if I have been allowed to go to the museum and find out, instead of downloading the entire Wikipedia database onto my iTouch at a later date and then sporadically reading about the gradual etching out of an Albanian state in 1912. 

So, Vlorë.  It was nice, but from what I recall the weather was pretty bleak and we didn’t have much of an opportunity to enjoy it.  It is right on the ocean with a nice stretch of beach, however, and was evidently an important Byzantine naval base.  But the most important thing that I learned about  Vlorë that day was that buses to Saranda leave unfashionably early on Monday mornings.  So depite getting there well before noon we discovered that we had dead-ended on the coast.  This would have been awesome if we were on a Spring Break Tour of Albania and had a seemingly endless supply of money to spend on 3-star 30-euro hotel rooms that seem to be both everywhere and empty. It also would have been awesome if the weather had been better.  As fate would have it, however, we were on some sort of deadline (1/2 of us had to go back to “America” or whatever within the next two weeks).

We walked for a good length along the shore and sat at a resto-bar on the ocean eating pizza and asking literally everyone we could find if there was a possibility of catching a bus.  Averaging out all the feedback we got, the answer was a definitive maybe.  We then decided hitchhiking was not only our best option, but our only option.  Running over a rough topographic draft in our heads of what the road to Saranda would be like (I, reared on the West Coast of North America, expected it would be exactly like the Big Sur in California; my ethnic Albanian host was expecting something exactly the same, only how it was before California had entered confederation).  In any case, in what will eventually follow is a concise account of our trek from Vlorë to our Ksamil terminus.

*Albanian DofI, evidemment.  I love this picture.  I imagine a bunch of men suddenly opening the window and making a huge to-do to the passers-by to get their attention and then once everyone stops to see what is going on, one of the men on the balcony says, “Okay, so guys, we’re a country now” and then everyone goes back to whatever they were doing before because most people in the former Ottoman realms had poorly-conceived notions of any real consequences of post-Westphalian statecraft.

Sleeping in Fier

I suppose my little sojourn to the south of the country and the Adriatic coast warrants comment as well.  Since I had suddenly turned into an urbane, social-climbing Tiranite, it was high time to get me out into the countryside and give me some plausible claim at having seen all of Albania.  So what followed was a whirlwind trip to the south, slip into Greece for a couple of stamps and to cross off the final Balkan country on my list, and a glimpse of Lake Prespa for the sake of speaking authoritatively about it at dinner parties in the future.  Which I still plan on doing.

So for a second let’s back it up to the point where I dragged my carcass out of bed one rainy morning after a thrilling game of three-way-beer pong and a dance off with a large Albanian girl at one of the local discotheques.  Clearly this was a day for coffee and pizza with prosciutto and arugula but it was not to be. We ran to the sidewalk that happened to be the meeting point for the buses to Berat, and I settled into my book on the Balkans, titled The Balkans, by Mark Mazower.  I’m only mentioning this because I severely regret trading it with a British guy in Georgia* and if anyone has this book I’d appreciate it if you post it to me.   I got through the first chapter before the bus finally filled up and we were off towards Berat, where it was surprisingly sunny and preferable to Tirana. 

Berat has a pretty good claim on being the nicest city in Albania.  It has a lot of history and stuff, and there is a fortress where 100 or so people still live.  We checked out the fortress c/o two personal guides.  A little girl and her brother showed us around and told us all about the fortress and the history of the area.   Probably the highlight was when an old crone emerged from her house and started hollering about whatever it is 95-year-old Albanian women don’t like young people doing.  The littl’un turned to us and indicated that her great aunt was “in a mood” and that we should tread lightly.  But in all seriousness, this young lady, at the age of 7, will probably lead Albanian into the EU one day she was so confident and well-spoken.  Once we had our fill of fortresses and the requisite pizza, we then furgoned to Fier, the centre of the Albanian oil industry, and stayed with a Fulbright-er, whose research activity was dental anthropology.  We looked at a lot of teeth over dinner.  

*Spoiler alert! I make it to Georgia.

Lettuce Alone

Oh, probably the biggest highlight of my two weeks in Tirana was a “guys’ night” during which we played beer pong, called each other “bro” and talked about Civilization II.  I had thought this was basically it but then someone mentioned that no guys’ night is complete without a pear vinaigrette salad.  This was news to me but I used this opportunity to go to market and buy some lettuce. 

Next to the train station there was (and still is) a group of vegetable sellers from the countryside.  I selected the oldest and cronliest of vendors (who traded exclusive in lettuce) and indicated that I would like two heads of buttercrunch.  She then indicated some number to me which I thought was 50 leke ($0.50) so I gave her 60.  She looked at the coins, did an exasperated and disbelieving double-take, and then looked around with a smirk.  She put ALL of her lettuce into a bag, handed it to me, picked up her stool, turned to her fellow vendors as if to say, “Later, loooosers!”, swatted her hand and walked away.  60 cents!

The Other Toronto

So the next two week in Tirana were spent exactly how life should be spent everywhere: cooking elaborate meals and entertaining for the intellectual elite of the community.  Riding the coattails Garrett’s celebrity status in order to achieve a position of my own, I plotted a course that would have me on top of the social scene by the end of two weeks, which I was.   All the ex-pats in the city made pilgrimages to Garrett’s apartment on the west side of town to eat, drink, be merry, and most importantly, claim that they were there.  

The highlight of these two weeks came when we went to the Coin Tower to watch the latest protests.  Everyone who receives Albanian news e-mail alerts knows that there are two common themes in Albanian news: flooding and political gridlock.  As the opposition had been boycotting parliament and on a hunger strike for however long a period of time, Friday was to be the day that the strike ended, and most were anticipating the government falling, violence and widespread brigandry.  In fact, a Czech girl working for the EU in Tirana called and pleaded that we remain indoors that night because the government was about to fall and that things could get real, real fast.

Interpreting this as a suggestion that we go out and have one of those “I was there” moments to peg up on our walls of privileged elitism*, we set off for the new Coin Tower, which I have every reason to believe is the tallest building in Albania, which had a terrace and a brilliant view of the downtown.  It’s also the only place in Albania where speaking English—which tacitly implies that the speaker is American, which directly implies that he/she has supported Kosovo—does not give one carte blanche.  In fact, we had to dress up, as dressed up as a filthy backpacker on the road for seven-and-a-half months could be (by tucking in my plaid shirt), and set off.  To my delight we were let in and we sipped imported beer and a $6 glass of wine on the terrace overlooking the main square and the hunger strike below.  This was it.  This was our “Let them eat cake” moment.  I felt like the Gromekos in Dr. Zhivago, mocking the revolutionaries just before they moved into their stately apartment and divied up the rooms, headed by a stern party matron.   As it turned out, however, [unfortunately] no plump Russian commissar would be mistress of my destiny.  At least this time around.  The “revolution” sputtered and died remarkably quickly like an old Mercedes.

So aside from this, I attended the opera for an Italian-Albanian cultural exchange, dined on fresh prawns and innovated with both arugula and kitchenware design from old 5L water bottles.  In all, a success for me and Tirana, which has proven itself to be just as, if not more, worldly than its namesake, Toronto.  

*This is very important to people like me, who expect to cap out at $30K a year and want to be able to turn my nose up at the world and say things like, “Yeah, I have no employable skill, but I have experienced the raw emotion of the Balkan spirit.”

Welcome to Tirana (Bienvenido a Tiranë)

“So…um…how long do you, like, plan on staying?”

This question really led me to sit up and take notice.  I realised I had invested so much energy in pursuing my goals that I never really stopped to think what I would do once I had actually achieved them—or it in this case: Tirana.  Tirana was absolutely bumpin’ at this time of year too. It was hot, crowded and full of crazed, American spring-breakers looking for a good time and willing to take off their shirts for free shots.  This is actually entirely true, as two busloads of new Peace Corps recruits had just been shuttled up from the village they were training in to experience the fun and excitement of the big city and—essential for any United States-reared citizen who has to go through the anguish and self-sacrificing experience of living outside the homeland—eat at a Mexican restaurant. 

As it turned out, I knew one of these Peace Corps recruits.  We had been roommates in university during the mass out-migration of Americans to Canadian universities in the mid-2000s.  He, being from Yakima, WA, naturally understood me, being from Grand Forks, and the importance of Spokane not only in identity-building but also as a source of cheap shoes and delicious Mexican food at Rancho Chico (which has locations in Colville and Omak as well).  He also knew how much I love talking about Kelowna, and talking about going to Kelowna, and ultimately how disappointed I am when I actually go to Kelowna.  

So it only made sense that meeting up in Tirana—the T-Dot—would be the thing to do.  We planned all sorts of festivities for the times when he wasn’t engaged in 9-hours-per-day Albanian language classes in a village to the south, and until he was assigned to his official site location, we had the opportunity to occasionally meet up.  I used this as leverage with Garrett, my cordial and ever-gracious host. 

“Yeah, just for a few days, until you get sick of me.”

This bought me a whole TWO WEEKS and Tirana was my oyster thenceforth.

Crna Gora-phobia

Oh, so did I mention that we picked up a straggler in Trieste?  He was of Canadian and American stock and was a Fulbrighter in Albania.  We drove him as far as Sarajevo where he needed to get on a bus to Split to visit some friends.  Garrett and I decided to power through and continue to Albania.  Well, we had planned this until we went o an Indian restaurant (in Sarajevo!) and then decided that we would just sleep in the car and get an early start on the morning.  We decided that a school parking lot in a small village right on the border between Bosnia and Respublika Srpska was the best place to do this.  

Being fairly high up in the mountains, it was pretty chilly and I had to content myself with opening my backpack and layering all my clothes, scarves and towels (which at this point consisted of one dish towel that I accidentally-on-purpose carried away with me from Ukrainian State Railways) on top of me and shiver through the night while Garrett lay smug in his sleeping bag.  I initially thought that the chattering of my teeth was probably the most passive aggressive way of dealing with this situation but I think posting it on a blog that no one reads two years later actually takes the cake in this situation.

In early morning we high-tailed it for the border and felt the cold slap of Montenegro’s desperate attempt to get into the EU: a “green tax” of 10 euros for every car entering the country.   And no sooner had we paid this official bribe were we stopped by some obnoxious policeman in Podgorica who claimed we had gone through a red light.  The fact that we had actually gone through a green light is not important here—three other cars followed us and for some reason the police officer decided to stop the car with Albanian plates.  Well, this traffic cop picked the wrong Albanian rental car to mess with and was greeted with a barrage of Ango-Saxonese about how we went through a green light, we’re citizens of the US/Commonwealth, and that we can contact the US/British embassies if there is any problem because we were unaware of the law in Montenegro that Albanians are not allowed to go through green lights at traffic intersections.  Needless to say, we were off in a few minutes and decided we were not interested in spending much more time in Montenegro.

So aside from stopping at the Lake Shkodra National Park at the border to pick some wild asparagus and thyme, we made haste for the Hani I Hotit border crossing and were in the DTTD (DownTown T-Dot) by sundown.  Along the way we played my usual favourite game of naming all 53 countries in Africa along with their capitals, and then counted the number of furniture shops in a 2-km stretch on the Tirana-Durres highway.   There were 72.  I say “were” because as we all know I am writing this two years late and that number has probably doubled by now.  As the old Albanian adage goes: “Where one shop selling cheap, crappy, Italian-themed furniture exists, there is surely room for 800 more right next to it.”  This is also applicable to cafés.  While this is clearly a remnant of the Turkish souk style of retailing, it goes against everything that Anglo-American capitalism stands for and has indoctrinated me to the core.

I Go Slav, Yugoslav

As much as the Adriatic coast was beautiful and the highways of Croatia were an attraction for people eager to move about quickly, there is nothing like wading one’s way through the back roads of Ex-oslavia  to avoid paying tolls at those modern and EU-financed toll booths.  But pay did we ever at the border to Bosnia.  Why, one might ask, is there even a border between Bosnia and Croatia when it appears Bosnia’s territorial integrity is so loosely regarded by even the border guards themselves?  Who can know?  And who could have expected that this particular crossing, in the middle of nowhere, would cause us the most hassle on our trip?  

Apparently this border wasn’t arbitrary.  I refuse to believe that all borders are not arbitrary, but that’s about as post-colonialist as I am willing to get right now.  What’s important is how our hopes and dreams nearly came to a crashing halt all because the border guards to the Bosnian Federation could not read Albanian.  Harvard-educated though he was (/is), my chauffeur could not anticipate that there would be any problems showing the rented vehicle’s registration papers to the border guards.  Unfortunately for all parties involved, they refused to believe that the date of issue was not the date of expiry.*  So while he argued with the guards in English, I took this opportunity to hop out of the car and anger and alarm everyone by taking a picture of the ancient Turkish border post across the street.        

   

While the guards were up in arms and shouting and rushing over to me, I used my vague understanding of Russian to turn the situation into a history lesson and learn that for 300 years this has been a major crossing between the Hapsburg and Ottoman Empires.  The border guards seemed pleased enough that someone was interested and I like this little distraction resulted in getting us through the border eventually with no fines and no hassle.  Garrett, of course, believes his US passport and smooth diplomatic skills allowed us and the car in.  But I think it’s glaringly obvious, retrospectively, that the border guards’ fiery dislike of paperwork is what truly carried the day, and we were free to pass without hindrance.  

We hit Banja Luka, the capital of the Respublika Srpska, a place you probably have not heard of (but if you go to Belgrade and look up tours at the bus station, it’s listed as its own country), which I think we can all agreed we liked.  The café scene was pretty impressive, the pizza was okay, and a friendly waiter warned us to stay off the streets after 11pm because there was a soccer game that night and soccer hooligans might mistake us for Croats and beat us up.  We thanked him for the hot tip and moved indoors.  

*A similar and arguably less-disastrous incident happened at the Bulgarian National Museum, where the matron would not accept my student card.  The fact that I was no longer a student notwithstanding, it was still valid until 2013.  To my luck, she didn’t care, about anything anymore apparently, and let me in at the 1/10 student rate.