Notes From The Road: The Tail End of a Very Albanian Bus Ride

29th March, 2010. Just outside Saranda, southern Albania.

I can see the light at the end of the tunnel... or rather at the end of a nine hour bus journey. The departure from Tirana, the Albanian capital, was almost eight hours ago now, and according to our intrepid guide, whose name I can't for the life of me remember, but who is the epitome of Albanian hospitality, we have about another hour to go before we roll into Saranda, a small fishing village on Albania's south coast, about 20km north of the Greek border, and our final destination.

The road, as has become standard for Albania, was ridiculous. The distance from Tirana to Saranda is a little over 300km. The journey took nine hours. That includes a half hour lunch break, but no other major breaks. Yes, the roads are that bad. Potholes at regular intervals, some a foot wide and at least six or seven inches deep. Roadworks crews taking up the whole road and then some. Mountain shepherds laconically herding their flock across the road, blissfully oblivious of anything beyond their rural farming acreage. Sometimes all three within 100m of each other.

The terrible roads also mean that I can't use writing to pass the time in the bus - well, not for most of the road anyway. In the last hour though, as we get closer to the Greek border, the road has become somewhat better, so I'm taking the time now to make some quick notes of the "highlights" of the bus ride.

Coming in at number three is the scenery. About two hours after leaving Tirana, we passed through Dürres, Albania's major harbour, then headed directly south towards Greece. As we left Dürres and the houses and buildings became fewer and further between, the countryside transformed from industrial complexes and apartment blocks to rolling hills and flat green meadows, and off in the distance ahead of us, an imposing mountain range rose from the plains. Within an hour, we were trundling alongside the Drin river as it carved its way north towards Montenegro, soaring snow-capped mountains flanking the valley. As I'm sure some of you can imagine, I was so overwhelmed with excitement, I could hardly sit still, to the amusement of the other passengers on the bus: I kept switching from the left side of the bus to the right and back again, taking photos, basking in the sunshine and absorbing the magnificent view.

A close second in my highlights list is the aforementioned guide - the bus driver's right hand man, and ticket vendor. As I said, I have no idea what his name was, but he was the best possible representative for tourism in Albania that the government tourist board could ever hope for. As soon as I found the bus to Saranda and the guide realised I wasn't a local, he switched into surprisingly fluent English and would have quite happily bent over backwards to make sure that I was happy. He offered me food and drinks for the road, helped me find fruit and water at the bus stop, offered to buy me lunch when we pulled into the truck stop (though after four hours in a bus where two young children had been throwing up most of the time, I didn't have much of an appetite left), and during the longer stretches between stops, he would venture back to where I was sitting in the middle of the bus to have a chat about anything and everything: where I was from, where I was going in Albania, what I thought of the country, what I liked about it, and especially why on earth I'd chosen Albania as my Easter holiday destination. (I got that question a lot.) In short: he was very cool.

Number one has to go to my assigned travel companion for eight and a half of the nine hours. The guide told me at one stage what his name was, but it was long and complicated and Albanian. In my head, he will forever be "Toothless Old Guy." He got on the bus five minutes after me in Tirana, took the seat on the opposite side of the aisle, and travelled all the way from Tirana to a bus stop on the side of the road in the mountains in the middle of nowhere about twenty minutes before the end of the line. I pretty much ignored him for the first few hours - I was too enthralled in my book to pay much attention to anything else ("A Thousand Splendid Suns" - highly recommendable), but after the lunch break around 1pm, I noticed that this older gentleman was regarding me with a curious expression. He had figured out that I wasn't Albanian, nor was I Greek/Macedonian/Balkan in any way (the book in English and the camera were big give-aways), and this proved to be a great source of entertainment to him. He tried talking to me, but there were two slight problems. First: I don't speak Albanian. Second: he had been slurping from a two-litre bottle filled with an orange coloured liquid, which made him smell suspiciously like raki (an Albanian/Balkan version of Ouzo) and the whole bus seemed to erupt with laughter whenever he spoke; this made me relatively certain that even if I'd had some skills in Albanian, I wouldn't have been able to understand him.

About fifteen minutes before he got off the bus, he offered me two oranges, with a renewed effort to get a conversation going. This time he was yelling so loud that the guide ventured from the front of the bus to take the seat in front of me to translate between the two of us. With him as an intermediary I discovered that Toothless Old Guy was a mere 65 years old (I had guessed at least 80, possibly 85), a devout Muslim (as are most Albanians), and that he had a small farm in the mountains of southern Albania which he shared with his two wives. The best part? The reason he had been badgering me to talk to him for the last few hours was because he had his slightly blurry sights set on me as #3 in his collection. I almost died trying to suppress my laughter - after all, it was beyond ridiculous to me that I would be Wife #3 to a 65-year-old Albanian farmer, but in his world, I would clearly be crazy not to take advantage of an opportunity like this. Yes, Toothless Old Guy was the highlight of the bus ride.

He got off the bus about ten minutes ago. We're now well into countryside very similar to what I would expect of northern Greece: orchards of olive trees as far as the eye can see, low stone walls lining the roads instead of the usual curved metal barriers, and every so often, a small white stone altar by the side of the road. Out of the front window of the bus, I just caught a glimpse of a wide expanse of blue water, which can only be the Adriatic; this means that we're very close to Saranda, so I'll leave you here for now, and promise to continue my rambling notes from the beach tomorrow at the latest.