Doughnut Tour, Part 1: Albania & Montenegro

As mentioned previously, I recently completed a two week tour around the Balkans with my friends and fellow Peace Corps volunteers Kaylee and Kerry for what was affectionately dubbed the “Kosovo Doughnut.” Prohibited by our Peace Corps safety policies from entering Kosovo, we decided to tour around it including Albania, Montenegro, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Serbia. Using time-honored backpacker staples—hostels, grocery / ice cream lunches, and commandeering restaurant napkins to use as toilet paper—I did the whole vacation for $800. Yeah, I actually kept track of what I spent, that’s how I roll. Apparently other Americans missed the memo about how affordable the Balkans can be though because we encountered only a handful of other Americans at the hostels and I didn’t even see one senior citizen group from the states. Ok, that affordability demands some compromises that perhaps most Americans couldn’t make but for posterity, here’s how it can be done with Part 1, Albania and Montenegro.

Albania was the cheapest place we stayed—6 Euros ($9) per person to share a 3-person room. Sounds great, right? Ok, I should mention the toilets were Turkish (squat) toilets down the hall, the shower was upstairs, and the door of our room didn’t actually lock—but what a bargain! Not that it mattered much where we crashed, everyone was tired from taking the overnight bus because nobody sleeps well upright, even me who amazed Kaylee and Kerry with my ability to fall asleep almost instantly on every bus we took.

Our destination in Albania was Shkoder (also called Shkodra), in the northern part of the country. There isn’t a ton to see there but it was a convenient jumping off point for our next stop, Montenegro. I did enjoy checking out the Rozafa fortress where I bought some filigree silver earrings made locally (or so I was told) and we had fun scandalizing the locals by drinking a 3-liter tower of beer while taking in the nightlife on the pedestrian mall. Traveling in Albania was made infinitely easier with Kerry’s “mad skillz” with the Albanian language—Kaylee and I were most appreciative to her for not letting us get stuck in the outskirts of Durres.

From Albania, we used a taxi/bus/bus to get to our next destination: Kotor, Montenegro. Kotor is a walled town located on the northern coast on a large bay in the mountainous nation of Montenegro. Since it was sunny and warm, we availed ourselves of the pebble beach walking distance from town. We also forked over some euros (Montenegro is the only country we visited that actually uses the euro as its currency but they are widely accepted in tourist destinations) for a day-long tour hitting some of the country’s highlights. Unfortunately, due to a flat tire on the van and our guide’s Balkan sense of time, we didn’t hit everything on the itinerary. After almost 2 years living in the Balkans, I’m still working on just trying to go with the flow and be happy for the good times; however, this may require increasing my rakija consumption.

Kotor is the only place we stayed for 3 nights, which was great for relaxing and bad when the hostel kept running out of toilet paper—what were we paying 15 Euros (~$22) a person per night for if not TP? Not that anything that trivial could spoil our fun and you can see for yourself in the pics here.