After four weeks of familiar French, hand-spoken Italian and whatever is going on in Maltese, we moved on from Lea and James time to pick up an unlikely, but surprisingly common travel buddy to take on some new Baltic state experiences for all of us.

Any worries about language issues were soon extinguished exacerbated as, in our first taxi ride, James ended up needing to speak French to our Albanian taxi driver as he took us out to see an atomic bunker built during the cold war, but also, soberingly, used within our lifetime.  Now, thankfully, mostly used as a way to make money from printing “mind your head” signs.

For our good deeds over 2 nights in Tirana, we were committed to a single night in Prizren, Kosovo.  Nobody at the bnb, no phone coverage for any of us…no worries?  Nope…some worries.  Our host, thankfully, showed up, but then led us into the basement where 3 men were brandishing gas axes; helped us log on to the house wifi to get some contact with the outside world only for James’ phone to scream it’s been hacked; and then noticed each bedroom had its own shower, causing us to ruminate over the possible other uses of our apartment above a Kosovarian gym…so, some worries indeed.

One of the benefits of a beautifully integrated and understanding culture (which we were assured it is) is that, after a lovely night wandering the town, we were woken to the sound of not only church bells, but calls to prayer…dogs howling…and roosters cock a doodle doo-ing…and the beautiful sight of our rental car in one piece in an otherwise now empty basement.

From Kosovo we ventured to the capital of North Macedonia, to Skopje it out…it was a nice town and they’re spending a fortune beautifying the centre with neo-neo-classical buildings (to be finished in 2014…) that are worth seeing, but I can see why Mother Teresa moved to Ireland. The highlight of Macedonia was Ohrid. A rare opportunity to see a stunning town on a lake, almost ready to be flooded with (foreign) tourists and to genuinely be part of the problem by destroying the affordability for locals whose families have called it home for centuries.  Over 2 days in Northern Macedonia we:

• Got to hand over our passports at the border, before driving on to a shack at the side of the road to hand over €50 cash to purchase extra “green card” insurance to drive in Macedonia (our 2 lots of real insurance didn’t count), and walk back to customs to mercifully receive our passports back
• Took a sunset cruise over the soon to be boat laden lake
• Made fun of Lea for thinking she mistranslated another surprise festival as a “folklore music festival” instead of the more likely “folk music festival” (NB: she was right…of course)
• Had a fluent Macedonian speaker from New Jersey buy us raki (rakia, rakija, rakiya??) shots by convincing him we were Australian quoting Crocodile Dundee for the second time in a month (and second time in 43 years)
• Took an interesting taxi ride to a winery in the middle of nowhere in the middle of Macedonia that was closed (which left us all wondering who of us was the alpha ready to step up to get us out of trouble…I mean, 2 of us knew it was Lea and best not ask where she was laying her bets)
• Followed up said taxi ride with a FIVE HOUR wine tasting, including like 6 wines in 4.9 hours and 4 raki shots in 0.1 hours…each with a different herb steeped inside, leaving Lea disappointed she bothered asking James (who also had to help with her raki) why they called the straw in the last one “donkey nettle”.   I know I don’t need to write this, as you all know ee-aw, ee-aw-ways calls it donkey-nettle…
  • Side note: James asked a simple enough question of: “when does it rain here?”, to be met with the stone cold reply of: “when there are clouds”…I really can’t stand smart arses (Editor’s note: he means other smart arses, see “ee-aw” comment)
• Took a boat ride through a canyon to enter the deepest underwater cave in Europe…possibly.  They assured us it was, likely. I mean who can prove these things right? The scientists couldn’t for one thing
• And found another subtle way to drop in that we were Australian to engender smiles from the owners: “we don’t get woins loik this in AUSTRALIA mate” 

From Macedonia, we were back to driving in Albania where:

• We lost faith in our online maps while realising we were totally reliant on them, and the fact that the street signs were no longer in Cyrillic didn’t help
• Drove through “abandoned” Albanian oil fields
• And, had to explain to our companion why James was hesitant to pay the price required to refill at the Kastrati petrol stations.

Our favourite Albanian town was Berat. The first night spent having dinner in the back of someone’s thousand year old house, such a great experience where you might have guessed, the owner did shots of raki with everyone as they paid their bill…and with a “lucky” bunch of Australians, who were told to wait back, did a couple more… We then had lunch the next day above the town, watching embers rain down into our drinks and food, and rather than be nervous, be thankful we could drop that this “happens all the time back home…in AUSTRALIA” 😉 before being forced into raki shots in a way that made us nervous to continue these announcements going forward…the nerves didn’t last long (see below).

Then, after spending ~40 weeks over the last decade in Europe, there was still an experience James was yet to have…a haircut.  All the barbers of Italy, France and even Seville over the years had yet to tempt him in, but it was in Albania, on a 35 degree day in Berat that it all changed.  While sweating profusely, being handed towels by the barber whose tools were likely rusting in the salinity that was my hair, and being stared down by a family of four waiting Germans, who muttered along like an angry barber shop quartet out of the Sound of Music, I lost my European barber cherry.  Thankfully with no bleeding.  We had been confident of a successful outcome as a fellow traveler had once told us that most of the time in the Balkans, men were either cleaning their cars or doing their hair.  Not sure where his facts came from, he may have just fallen asleep watching Grease on the flight over.

Surprised not to get free raki after the haircut, we found a bar and first chance dropped the Aussie bomb, and was straight away offered free raki by the bartender…James insisted the kind young man joined in.  He did, but with vodka, as he hates raki (as I’m pretty confident everybody does).  As he skulled his vodka, on what turns out was his third ever shift, it became clear that he could not have been more than 17 years old, explaining why he hadn’t yet developed a pallet for raki.

We enjoyed a fascinating taxi drive to the middle of nowhere for another “wine tasting”.  A quick tour of the vineyards, cellars etc was followed by an equally quick tasting of 4 wines with 40 or so of our new closest friends before we got to the main event…yep, raki “tasting”.  At least 4 shots in quick succession were demanded, as one poor guest was picked out, for making a joke to the head honcho, that in the same position James would have done in a heartbeat, to make a new toast each time, ensuring he couldn’t hide his raki anywhere as some tried to do (at threat of being refilled and forced to make another toast).  Lea, for instance, managed to hide much of hers in her water glass (as James found out the hard way).  We felt bad for the toaster (he was sitting with us) and would have preferred the peski instagramer (that was filming everything before being Berat-ed by aforementioned honcho) to be called out instead.  Our traveling companion, perhaps high on raki, or over excited from sitting next to the young Dutch girls all night decided the night was not over, so we found our favourite 17 year old bartender (of which we actually had a few in Berat) for more cocktails and yep…raki tequila shots…raki is terrible.

Our final night was spent in the beachside town of Vlore, in the biggest electrical storm any of us had ever seen, on the biggest balcony for a 2 bed flat anyone had ever seen.  Our companion did 3/4 of the driving for this part of the trip, however, due to impacts of tequila (above), James was required for the morning shift before handing over the keys just before the onset of said storm.  With most locals pulled over on the side of the highway to wait out the weather, we drove on!  Not perturbed by having barely recovered from being hit in the head by a cricket ball, complaining of tingling fingers, occasionally driving in the wrong lane (in good weather) or his barely recovered hangover, he powered on and as you may have guessed based on me writing about it, we made it!

After Vlore, we dropped our mate off at the airport back in Tirana so James got his wish of one last drive from an airport to the centre of a capital city with Lea saying how lucky we’d been not to be pulled over (10km from the final destination!!), instantly ushering in a new wave of cops to stand at nearly every corner tapping a pull-over paddle in their hand waiting for their next sucker on our way in to town.  Due to Albanian plates, we assume, we made it back bribe free.  However, our exit from Albania with the assistance of Milos, our Montenegrin driver, was a little different. After Milos was pulled over, we got to hear an amazing conversation in English where the Albanian cop accused him of driving 131 in a 90 zone.  After being taken away for some time, he came back beaming that he avoided the €300 fine as he knew it was a scam and demanded proof of him speeding, which didn’t exist. It was a short section of 90 amongst other 130 areas, seemingly designed for this purpose.  James thought it was lucky they didn’t have the proof, as he’d been monitoring him nudging past 150 where the imaginary cameras were positioned…this win deserved a raki shot for sure.

We’re so lucky to have been able to travel around this beautiful part of the world that’s coming into its own after such a difficult century…or more.  Nestled between Greece, Montenegro and Croatia, there are beaches, mountains, lakes, towns, wines, castles, amazing roads, incredible people…and raki…that are sure to be on the radar of many more moving forward.

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