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.

Albania Mania

One might think that my dearth of posts over the last month was due to a lack of activity but the truth is quite the opposite. For 16 of the last 30 days, I have been away from home and somehow I never managed any writing in between repacking my bag. The unfortunate result is that I'm going to now write several posts back-to-back and try to remember all the best details from the range of things that kept me from "home." Here we go...

Pelister National Park, what Peace Corps calls my "primary" project, has been a tough place for me to figure out how I can be of assistance. I read somewhere that showing up as a Peace Corps volunteer is like having someone who can't speak your language show up in a bunny suit and say, "I'm here to help," and I don't think that is far off the mark. I say all this because it was with some excitement that my counterpart Sashka and I found a potential partner in Albania to work with in applying for a European Union cross-border grant. We'd spoken several times over Skype with our proposed partner, Zamir, and the time had come for an in-person meeting. For reasons I won't get in to, the meeting was delayed until we were one month out from the application deadline, which sounds like awhile before you see the brutal applications the Europeans have concocted. But finally I thought we were going to Albania's capital, Tirana, to meet with Zamir until...Pelister's director and the president of the Park's management board decided we needed to meet with some other people in Albania instead, people with the forestry department. I was, I'll admit, pretty peeved. All I wanted was for us to finally meet with the contact we'd been cultivating since January, the guy we'd already started drafting a grant proposal with. Yet off to Korca, Albania we went...

Albania is the 34th country I've visited and the first new country on a business trip, so my wander-love meant was in fairly good humor as I set out with Sashka, the director, and the board president. Peace Corps slogan is "the toughest job you'll ever love" and I think this may have been "the toughest business meeting I'll ever love." Our meeting with the Albanian forestry folks lasted all of about 30 minutes and did not really relate at all to our grant application. Afterwards, we all drank coffee together because that's the national pasttime throughout the Balkans. Then things really started getting interesting when the Albanian forestry officials led us to a nearby village, toured us around a monastery, and then fed us lunch. Of course, this was lunch with rakija, wine, and dancing the oro. In hindsight, I think the trip was positive for building bridges and hey, how many times am I going to be on a business trip with a monastery tour and the oro?

Less than a week later, the same group from the Park headed out for Albania again. This time we did go to Tirana and talk to Daniela, an associate of Zamir. On the way, Sashka and I discussed an agenda for the meeting and she agreed that thinking before the meeting about what would be discussed was "useful." For me, that learning moment alone was a huge accomplishment! At the meeting, we went step-by-step through everything that we'd drafted thus far for the grant proposal and I was admittedly amused as Sashka, Daniela, and I ran the show, with the director and president mostly twiddling their thumbs. I also must confess the second highlight was lunch afterwards with a pizza topped with arugula (a rare find in Macedonia) and my first German beer (delicious, so delicious!) in many, many moons.

My impressions of Albania were extremely positive. Everyone we met was very nice and the countryside is lovely (if dotted here and there with concrete bunkers that ex-leader Hoxha insisted on building, 700,000 of them at one point--you can read about them here). There's a picture of a bunker and much more under my Picasa link. Also, I am happy to report that Sashka and I are still plugging away with Daniela and Zamir on a grant application. Will we get everything done in time for the July 19 deadline? That remains to be seen, but the cross-border collaboration alone seems like a good, productive thing.