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.