If you asked me in January, where I was most looking forward to seeing, I'm pretty sure Albania was nowhere on the radar, but it seemed like the most logical option for my next stop as I made my way south to Greece.
Day 220 - Wednesday, August 29
Wednesday I headed about 100 miles south from Budva to Tirana, Albania's capital. However, unlike most of Europe, public transportation on the Balkan coast is not all that easy. There are no trains that run along the coast, which leaves buses or hitchhiking as the primary means of transport for backpackers. And because they aren't yet members of the EU, borders are a pain as well. The 100-mile trip from Budva to Tirana required 3 different buses and took about 7 hours.
Tirana is not a popular tourist destination for many reasons, so I only planned to spend about 15 hours there (and half that time sleeping). A few pictures as I explored a little bit Wednesday evening.
You'll notice both pictures are of the same building -- there really wasn't much to see in Tirana.
Day 221 - Thursday, August 30, aka College Football Opening Day
Albania reminded me of SE Asia in a lot of ways: developing country, lack of infrastructure, very dirty with litter everywhere, no apparent concern for any sort of traffic rules, everyone uses 20-year-old minibuses/minivans to get around, the air had a bit of stench to it that probably comes with all the trash strewn about, and as with SE Asia, everything was really cheap.
Thursday, I was up fairly early and got a minibus south to
Gjirokaster, which is a really cool old town up on a hill, including an old large castle. A photo of the inside of my awesome minibus:
This next photo was pretty stereotypical rural Albania, with a concrete frame of an unfinished building and lots of trash:
I only stopped in Gjirokaster for a couple of hours, to see the town and the castle. Due to time constraints, I did some more hitchhiking from the bus station outside of town up to the castle and back the opposite direction. I'm thinking I might have to pick up a hitchhiker or two when I get back to the US to even things out after all the hitching I've done this trip. The castle was amazing, mostly because I was all alone in this giant really old castle, and I could go just about anywhere I wanted inside it. This was a shocking contrast to other similar places I had visited in Europe, where such a castle would've been overrun with tourists, security, preservation work, etc. The other cool thing about Gjirokaster is that most of the homes in the old town have maintained traditional stone tile roofs. A few photos of the town and castle:
After Gjirokaster, I headed over to the coast to Saranda. My minibus for this stretch was even awesomer than the last one:
From the balcony at the hostel in Saranda, we had a pretty good view of the full moon coming up over the bay.
As many of you are aware, I
have an unhealthy obsession with am very passionate about college football. Usually on Opening Day Thursday, I like to take the afternoon off work, fire up the grill and have a few beers and/or bourbons before the first kick at about 4:30 pacific. It's kind of like my own personal religious holiday.
With Albania being 9 hours ahead of Pacific time, that meant the first game wouldn't start until 1:30am. That gave me some time after I got there to go get settled and figure out what the best option was for watching the games. Basically no one in Europe cares about American football and even if they did, places that might show it on TV aren't going to stay open until 5am. In addition to celebrating opening day, I was using Thursday night as a test run for Saturday, when the Clemson game would be at about the same time, and I REALLY did not want to miss the Clemson game. Ultimately I determined that there was no way to use the iPad to watch the game, and my only good option was www.firstrowsports.eu, which streams the games online, but it uses flash, which is incompatible with the iPad. I then determined that none of the internet cafes in town stay open past 1am, so my only option was the communal computer at the hostel, which looked (and performed) like it was from the 1990's. But it wasn't enough to discourage me, so I sat in front of this computer watching a grainy internet feed of ESPN from 1:30am to about 5:00am, while my hostelmates questioned my sanity. I decided that it wouldn't be a terrible option for the Clemson game, but I should try to find a better option.
Day 222 - Friday August 31
About 30 minutes from Saranda is the ancient city of
Butrint. Over three thousand years old, it has some really cool ancient ruins that can be explored. A few pictures:
After only about 5 hours of sleep, I took a nap when I got home in preparation for another night watching college football until 5am. But much to my chagrin, the internet at the hostel went down that night and I ended up not able to watch any games. I could not risk such a internet outage for the Clemson game, so I decided that I needed to find another option.
Day 223 - Saturday September 1, aka Gameday
There was one other hostel in town that was rated pretty well and claimed to offer "free internet acces." I stopped by and as I walked through the door, I cut to the chase, "Hi. I'm looking for a place to stay, with a communal computer that I can use from 1am to 4am to watch an American football game." Somehow, the girl who I said this to did not look at me like I was completely crazy, but said, "yeah, no problem, I can handle all that, except no guarantees on the speed of the internet." Turns out she was a Florida Gator, so she kind of understood. I proceeded to move across town from my first hosel to the new one.
As a bonus, the new hostel had an awesome wrap-around balcony with a nice view of the ocean and was stumbling distance from a nice little beach.
The idea of a college football saturday with games not starting until very late in the day, was a bit odd (especially after games starting 9am on the west coast). But it meant I could spend the day relaxing on the beach with a few beers before there was really any football to watch. I would've rather been tailgating in Atlanta, decked out in orange, but a beach with crystal clear water and cheap cold beers, followed by a 1am kickoff wasn't a bad alternative.
Finally 1am rolled around and pretty much everyone else went to bed (which worked out pretty well because there was less of a drain on the limited internet bandwith). I had realized a week or so prior that I actually didn't have anything orange to wear to show my support, and I had lost my only Clemson shirt, but luckily I had an orange towel that I could rock as a cape.
I think the cape on top of the staying up till 5am to watch a football game really convinced my hostel mates that I was a little looney. Perhaps they were right.
