Modern Gonzo in Albania

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“Be weary in Albania! No specific knowledge, obviously must just be some embedded prejudice,” writes my cousin Marc from London. He isn’t alone. When Croatians found out I was going to Albania, their reaction was anything but encouraging. By anything, I mean, laughs, rolled eyes, and overall bewilderment. “Why would you want to go to Albania?” asked one guy, as if he were asking, “Why would you want to shove a pineapple up your rectum?” The kayak guides in Dubrovnik both sniggered knowingly, but most disturbingly, was the Albanian I met on the Montenegro border. His shiny, shaved head was spit-polished and his neck was as thick as a bull. “We Albanians, we’re crazy. You must be crazy to visit this crazy country,” he said, in mangled English. “Not crazy, just Gonzo,” I replied as I backed away very slowly, maintaining eye contact.

The six-hour bus from Dubrovnik drove along a spectacular coastline before depositing me at the sweltering, dry border town of Ucinj. Modern Europe as I knew it had disappeared beyond the mountains. Here, a mini-bus took me through a quasi-official border, official for the amount of guns, and quasi because nobody seemed to know what was going on. A few bumpy hours later, I was once again stranded in Bolivia. Except this was Albania, but it sure looked like Bolivia. Donkeys and cows on the dusty pockmarked highway, skeletal buildings, trash everywhere, non-stop car horns and all round mayhem. The Albanian flag, with two black eagles on a red canvas, struck me as being almost comically fascist. By coincidence we met some other travelers on the mini-bus, none of whom knew anything about Albania, including why they chose to visit it. They were the only travelers or tourists I would meet all week. Without info kiosks, maps or facilities, Albania has no tourist infrastructure, or any infrastructure for that matter. The Lonely Planet, which Phillipe conveniently forgot in Dubrovnik, described Albania as only for “experienced travelers.” It also had more than the usual warnings about ethnic violence, political instability and generational blood feuds. With a pinch of salt, of course. Before this trip, the world “Albanian” conjured up images of refugees, and also the brilliant movie Wag the Dog, in which Robert De Niro creates a fictional US war with Albania to draw attention away from a presidential sex scandal. “Why Albania?” asks Dustin Hoffmann. “Because nobody knows anything about Albania,” replies De Niro.

“I’ve seen more in one hour than I saw in a week in Croatia,” says Sara from Sweden, and she’s right. Keeping one eye on the road and in all likelihood a head-on collision, I stared out the window with a cocktail of wonder and anxiety. Half empty buildings littered the plain, as if the entire country had been recently bombed or abandoned mid-construction. And then there are the bunkers, built into the earth like the cement-domed head of R2D2. Hoxha, the paranoid communist dictator who ruled Albania for 40 years, insisted the country be prepared for attack. The inventor of the bunkers had to stand inside one while tanks blasted it to bits, just to make sure of the quality of his work. He survived, and went on to plant over 700 000 of these concrete gray eyesores into the country’s fields, beaches and mountains. Albania ditched Russia in the 60’s for not being communist enough, and then did the same with China in the 70’s, thereby completely isolating itself from any allies whatsoever. It claimed to be the world’s only true communist country, the way some people claim to be the world’s only true rulers of Alpha Centauri. Both were treated just as seriously by the major powers. The state religion was atheism, the tone distinctly fascist, and the country was gradually drained of its wealth by the party elite and their dirty work plumbers. The currency was devalued by 150% in 1991, which might explain all the empty husks of buildings. And just about everyone drives a diesel Mercedes Benz, stolen from the capitals of Europe and available for a few thousand dollars, according to Ilir Number Two (I met a few). Today, over 70% of the population are Muslim, and the country is torn between a Christian south (which periodically wars with Greece) and a Muslim north (which periodically wars with Serbia/Yugoslavia). My visit coincided with a period of general anarchy, as recently held elections were being disputed and nobody was running the country at all. The only thing I was certain about was that Western, Central and Eastern Europe have little love for the Albanians (or their tragic refugees), and you’d have to be from another planet to want to drive on an Albanian highway.

As we drove into Tirana, Albania’s dusty and noisy capital, we urged the mini-van to keep driving. The cracked streets were piled waist high with trash, and just about every building looked like it had been napalmed. Some donkeys were holding up traffic, and our driver seemed immune to oncoming traffic because he spent a lot of time playing chicken with it. Our ragtag group was dropped off on a curb and fortunately we found an Internet caf⁄ to look for a place to stay. I had expected Tirana to be cheap, so it was a surprise that even cheap hotels were asking for $25US a night per person. With some serious digging, I found out that the city’s first hostel had just recently opened up, and we would be amongst its first ever guests. It only cost 12 Euros a night, making it the cheapest place to stay in the city, unless we wanted to share the streets and parks with the Roma Gypsies. So we walked off in search of the hostel and learnt my first lesson about Tirana. Don’t ask for directions, because everybody will give you some, and none of them will lead anywhere. Maybe it was the unusual site of several backpackers walking in the intense afternoon sun, but everyone was eager to help, in their special, not-so-helpful way. After an hour of walking in circles, we finally got Edvin to come and get us. We must have asked over a dozen people where the address was, and it turned out we weren’t even close. No street signs didn’t help either. Like Bolivia, people would rather give the wrong information than no information at all. The streets were broken and charred, full of potholes that resembled dark tunnels into the netherworld. But it was safer to walk on the streets than the pavements, because someone was bound to fall into one of the numerous open manholes, and I could have seriously hurt myself…laughing. We passed buildings that still displayed the triumph of communism ‹ massive murals of the people’s revolution, wide streets for military parades, grand looking buildings that were the party headquarters. In relation to the flaking houses and buildings around them, the offices of power were mighty and proud, guarded by AK-47 wielding soldiers. It looked like somebody had sucked up just about every ounce of wealth in the country, spent it on their own comforts before hitting the late night bars of Geneva. Which, apparently, is not too far off from what happened.

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