The Door

Jazz very rightly so was a little bit concerned. She said we should have a look and if we are not comfortable we should leave immediately. We all agreed but we reassured her its just the Albanian way. She fought through her better judgment and followed us in.

We were greeted by another man who showed us into his house, there were leaflets and maps on the living room table and just past this a small room with a single bed and a double bed. It was cosy, super clean and we were happy with the set up.

Off we went to get some of the lovely food we remembered so fondly. We walked across the main square and just followed the road, we ended up at a small pizza shop. We sat outside despite it being zero degrees and ate our pizza and the waiter very kindly gave us some local shots. (That stuff will knock you sideways!)

We moved inside after our pizza as the temperature was getting lower, had another shot and then off we went. We went via a little wine shop when we got back to our ‘home’ for the week. We sat outside even thought it was in the minuses and we drank wine and talked into the early hours. It was so nice to talk of home and tell stories with no filter.

         The wee garden at our 'house'

The next day we went round the city telling the little information that we do know about it to Jazz. The gardens were full of people sitting on benches relaxing or writing with people playing football with their kids. It was such a relaxed atmosphere. Everyone taking their time enjoying what was around them. A million miles from the quick pace of life in other capital cities or even back home!

We watched the people and decided the plan for the next day. We decided we would go to the beach. The beach is something I truly miss about Scotland, I used to see it everyday and now it’s a rare occurrence.

We got up the next day and headed to the ‘bus station.' I wouldn’t say it’s a bus station, more a car park full of mini vans. There is a long street with about 17 different car parks all full of these minivans and you just have to ask and they send you to the next one or put you on a bus. It took us an hour and half to find the correct car park. We kept going and a man in a van told us to head towards the roundabout.

As we walked towards the roundabout I could see that it didn’t seem too well organised. I caught a man in a carpark waving at me. The three of us walked over to a tall man, he was smoking. We told him we would like to go to the beach and in true form he scooped us onto a bus. There was other people on the bus who gave us some strange looks we went up the back. Jazz asked us what about tickets and if we were sure this is the correct bus. We told her they have a keeper of the bus.

The keeper of the bus is a man who is in charge of the bus. They scoop you onto the bus and once it is full the bus leaves and he goes up and down the aisles taking ticket money and finding out where everyone wants to go and tells them when it is there stop. Some of the buses are also used as a postal service where the keeper of the bus will take a bag or packages off people at the stop and call the number on the side of the bag once its at the correct place.

Once the bus was full up we sped off. Even though there were no seats left people got on regardless and people stood up the aisle. The keeper of the bus told us it was our stop so off we got. We were in a sunnier town full of shops and restaurants, you could smell the sea but you couldn't see it.

We followed our gut and started walking, the sea came into vision but there was a wire wall separating us. We followed the pavement along and we saw a mother and a small child walking towards us. We asked about the sea, the mother didn’t speak English but the little girl had some. As we are all teachers much to the shock of mother and child all three of us started making wild swimming motions. They looked surprised as it was only 1 or 2 degrees, so not the best swimming weather!

The little girl pointed us in the right direction. We came to a motorway that was in the way so we legged it over the road and found a little sand path. We followed it to an abandoned restaurant, we went through the garden and onto the beach.

The only decent picture I took!

It was beautiful. The light danced and twinkled off the sea, the wind was gentle and the sand looked smooth. We were like children, running around taking pictures and going as close to the sea as we could without getting wet. I wanted to be brave so I went along a very thin piece of rock risking my shoes getting wet. Thankfully they didn’t.

We decide to go for a beer and look out over the water. We went to the closest place and sat down, a boy of maybe about 15 came out and he had tattoos on his hands, a Gucci jumper on with a Gucci bum bag strapped across his chest and a pair of baggy gray joggers on. He gave us a menu and we said its ok just 3 beers please. He came back out with 3 Heinekens. We talked about how old we thought he was we agreed he must have been about 14 or 15. He kept coming out to see if we were ok and to chain smoking.

This is shocking but having lived in Slovakia for so long where everyone smokes all the time, in bars (yes, you can still smoke inside), on the street, over coffee, everywhere - you become a little desensitised to it after a while and to be honest it's hard not to start smoking yourself.

After we had a few more beers we went to get some food but before that we played a game of Bank Hunting In The Balkans. (It's really hard to find bank machines in some places so we turned it into a game so when you have run out of water or are starving it seems a little less depressing.)

We walked for a few kilometres and we asked along the way. We eventually found one, after we withdrew some money we went on the hot pursuit of food.

As we walked along we decided to head into a little small restaurant that looked quaint, we were handed menus in Albanian and we google translated some of the options and waited to see what would come out of the kitchen. In true Albanian style it was to die for.

Before we left I managed to twist the girls arms into getting a local shot. It wasn’t too hard to convince them but they put up a valiant fight of ‘No, ahh okay go on then.’ We saw the man pour the shots from a see-through bottle with no label. I was secretly hoping it was homemade stuff as I had learnt in Serbia the homemade stuff is apparently the best.

The man appeared with three giant shot glasses, I mean they were giant! I had a pint of beer and it was half the size of the beer glass. We were all shocked.

Look at the size of that bad boy!

We necked the shots and I looked at the girls whose cheeks had gone a healthy pink, maybe it was from the cold to the hot or the half pint of moonshine they had just drank. I took two gulps and drained the glass. Nothing. I felt totally fine. It didn’t burn my throat or taste bad, I could however feel my arms go all warm.

We decided to throw caution to the wind as the shots had not affected us to order another round then we paid the bill and went to find the bus. As we retraced our steps we veered off the path to go to a cake shop. After this we kept walking but came back to the same piece of road we had to leg across earlier, this time is seemed much less scary. We confidently sprinted across the motorway fuelled on moonshine.

We found the bus and climbed up the back. The keeper of the bus came up to us we got our tickets and told him where we wanted to get off, he smiled kindly and nodded. Then the giggles hit us, we couldn’t stop laughing for the whole bus journey. I'm not even sure what it was over just giggling away, we couldn’t stop.

The bus keeper told us it was our stop, as we got out in an abandoned car park with nothing around us, except four men sitting on some crates. We followed the people who had gotten off our bus and came to the start of a long long stretch of dark street and closed shops.

It was dark, we all knew we were lost but oddly I felt very calm. I knew I would be alright with the girls. Jazz and Alona both appeared calm as well, we stopped and decided the best way to find how to get back. Jazz looked at google maps, it was very vague all grey and green. We worked out where we thought the main square was and we started walking in to the abyss.