Albania, Kosovo and the passport
The smiling Italian woman at the Ancona sales desk said no problem getting on the ferry to Durres in Albania, but there was a slight delay, OK?
Yes, no problem, I was in no rush.
It was a big ferry. I’d guess it could take about 2,000 passengers and dozens of cars and trucks but I only counted about 50 passengers boarding. I wandered up to the deck with the recliner seats, to bag the best one. I needn’t have bothered because there was only one other person there.
I got talking to an Albanian guy, Clyde, who told me the ferry from Albania to Italy was always full, but this one going back from Italy to Albania was always empty.
“That’s because nobody wants to go to Albania, they all want to leave,” he said. Intrigued, I asked him why — wasn’t there any significant industry in Albania? “The biggest business in Albania is stolen cars,” he said. “I have a nearly new Volvo XC60. It cost me €3000.” Enough said.
Once I was off the ferry, past the rows of post-Soviet concrete apartments, I realised why Albanian car drivers were keen to buy new (stolen) vehicles. The roads were so bad any car more than a couple of years old would surely disintegrate after a few kilometres. The sound of top-of-the-range Mercedes and Audis slamming into potholes put my teeth on edge as I rode out of town, past a line of amusingly-named Kastrati petrol stations.
I got slightly lost, and pulled up by a parked car to ask directions. The woman in the passenger seat quickly wound up her window and locked the door, waving me away as she did so. I’d forgotten I was wearing my bike balaclava under my helmet; she obviously assumed I was going to steal her car . . .
As the sun set, I headed up into the hills, through the sultry evening woodsmoke towards Krujë, an astonishingly un-remarked city that dates back to about 4BC, and has been ruled/invaded by the Albanians, Romans, Ottomans and more recently, the dictator Enver Hoxha with his toadstool nuclear shelters. The place was sublime. Roman ruins, medieval castles, UN-listed cobbled streets and a wonderful atmosphere of antiquity, as well as a startlingly wide range of cheeses on sale in most shops. And nobody else visiting, despite all the antiquity.
I had no local currency, so walked out to look for an ATM. There was a cash machine nearby, illuminated by a bright bank sign. Two men sat underneath it, playing backgammon — it was the only good light available on the street.
Given what Clyde had told me of Albania’s key industries I was a bit hesitant about waving wads of cash over their heads but I needn’t have worried. They never even looked up as I leaned over to get my money. Must have been a close game.
Next morning I set off north along the coast road, then turned up the Mat valley towards Lake Shkopet, heading towards my next objective, Kosovo. Lake Shkopet is an amazing reservoir damned by jagged canyon walls that stretch for kilometres up into the mountains through the Ulza National Park. The road zigged along the canyon wall, 300m or so above the water with no barrier, no Armco, no nothing to stop the unwary rider taking a long dive into the lake on blind corners. Tiny spider-narrow footbridges crossed the canyon to otherwise completely inaccessible villages , and memorials to Enver flashed by now and again— it was fairytale, breathtaking countryside.
I stopped in Peshkopi for a breather and some food. A man sitting outside a café, sporting impressive body mass, thick chest hair and a very heavy gold necklace asked me where I was going — with a noticeable cockney accent.
“I worked for a few years as a bouncer and a scaffolder in Chelmsford to make some money, because there wasn’t any work in Albania,” he explained. “Then I came back here and bought three shops and two houses with what I’d made.”
As a gesture of European solidarity, he treated me to a full Albanian lunch, cost €1 including a hot chocolate, and warned me that going through Kosovo might be tricky as the Serbs don’t recognise the Kosovan border with Albania. He said they might refuse me entry or even send me back to Albania if I had the wrong passport stamps.
Undaunted, I rode out of the mountains along spanking new and totally incongruous EU-sponsored motorways into Kosovo. A friendly immigration woman stamped me efficiently in, but repeated the warnings about the Serb border guards possible intransigence at the exit border.
One day in Kosovo was enough; the whole place looked like a gigantic junk yard. Bombed and wrecked trucks, cars and scattered, crumbling buildings were everywhere either side of wide, new roads busy with UN trucks and armoured vehicles.
My diary notes described the countryside as “flat, wrecked, ugly.” Hearing about the civil wars in what used to be Yugoslavia on the TV gave me no idea of the trauma the country — and people- there had obviously suffered. It had a very sad and neglected air to it, so I decided not to spend too long in Kosovo, even though the food and beer was surprisingly wonderful.
Next day, at the Kosovo-Serbia border, I skipped the multi-truck border queue, and rolled cockily up at the front of the Serbian immigration line. Forewarned, I had swapped passports; my Kosovo-stamped UK one was in my pocket and I was soon offering my Australian one (with no stamps) to the Serbian Guard.
He flipped through, flipped back, flipped again then looked at me, frowning.
“Where you come from?” he asked. I mumbled a reply about being on a tour of gorgeous Serbia and glad to be in his wonderful homeland. “But which country you come from,” he asked again, intimating that I might be starting to waste his time. “Australia,” I answered, helpfully.
He flipped through my passport again, then told me to wait there as he walked off to get a Superior Officer. A group of six AK-47 toting, shaven-headed, uniformed and jackbooted dog-killers jumped threateningly out the back of a van next to me. I wondered if I might have bitten off more than I could chew.
The Superior Officer stamped his boots up to where I was waiting, by now the focus of a group of curious locals. He had more of a military look than the Guard, and it took a bit more effort on my part to convince him that I was stupid, didn’t speak good English, and was not worth sending back through Kosovo because I was on a tour of Serbia (not Kosovo). After more discussion with the Guard, he gave me another “Wait here,” instruction and went into an office. By this time the group of locals had expanded, and were already chuckling at my impending fate. I thought briefly about taking a few photos, then (wisely, it turned out) decided against it.
The Senior Officer came out.
I shivered. He didn’t have any of the storm trooper gear or guns or shaved head and boots, but was neat and wore a crisp blue shirt. He even had a tie. But you could feel the icy atmosphere spreading from him.
He said nothing, just stood there for a while, while the Guard and the Superior Officer hung back behind him. He flipped through my passport while glancing at me, and walked round the back of my UK registered bike. Then, after enough silence for me to experience a prolonged ‘oh shit’ moment, he asked in perfect English “Is this your passport?”
Yes, I said.
He handed it back to me, as he motioned me to go through the barrier.
“You don’t come back through here,” he said, in a way that sounded like he really, really meant it. I rode off very quickly into Serbia.
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