Shqiperia

Trip Start Mar 08, 2008

Trip End Oct 02, 2008

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Flag of Albania Tirana, Albania
Sunday, August 10, 2008

...........we were driving past the border at a break-neck speed in a golden old Mercedes with our newest Albanian friends..... our cab driver had left us on the Montenegro side of the border where he negociated with the golden Mercedes people to drive us to the city of Shkoder for 5 euros...........it was a Sunday and there were big white weddings everywhere....... people were looking after their cows......... everywhere looked kind of runned down........ and I smilled...... because this country has no pretentions...... what you see is exactly what you get......

the road was bumpy and the Mercedes was flying and avoiding any nasty collisions with the other Mercedes........... because you see the Republic of Shqiperia - a.k.a. Albania - went throught the nineties in a lawless ride..... and part of the fun in those days was to go to Western Europe and steal as many Mercedes as possible and bring them back to the lawless republic........

Technicolour dreamcoat_1

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we made it to Tirane that same day..........

Tirane - the glorious and unceremoniously delapidated capital.......... hardest city to find a restaurant......... but charming in a decrepit way......c�ty of Jacob and h�s techn�-colour dreamcoat well the bu�ld�ngs anyway..... and almost devoid of tourists........ after Croatia and Montenegro being in a country still untouched by the evil claw of mass tourism was more than one could dream of........... go there now before it gets its guts gnawed........... go now i tells ya.........

and Albanian people are simply one of the nicest and most polite people we've encountered so far....... it's true that they don't have a good reputation in certain countries and some of them admit straight away that there are certain groups of people that tend to misbehave......... but that certainly doesn't apply to the majority of the Albanians.........

after years of paranoid communist rule that amongst other things left around 70.000 bunkers throughout the country (another brilliant idea by Enver Hoxha paranoid megalomaniac leader number 1) everyone seems quite ready to move on and everyone seems a tad sad that the world tends to look at them in a generalised discriminatory way............

my advise to anyone: just go there.......

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