Carol's Diary of the trip to Albania 2007

Thursday 11th October - Friday 12th October - Saturday 13th October - Sunday 14th October - Monday 15th October - First Impressions 

Thursday 11 October

  We arrived in St Albans in good time, parked on Muriel’s driveway and met Graham and Nick Nightingale at the manse.  Helen and Barbara drove us to St Albans station; we bought rolls, caught the train and ate lunch as we travelled.  On arrival at Gatwick we “dropped off” our bags, Graham having checked us in on line and cleared security to wait in the departure lounge for our flight to Tirana which had been delayed by one hour!

  We finally took off at 17.10 and had an uneventful flight to Tirana where we were met by Agir, “our” taxi driver.  Agir drove us to the Hotel Familia run by Freddie.  There we were met by Ian Luck, YMCA rep in Albania.  Ian walked Nick to the hotel he was staying in, we settled into our rooms and walked round to the Piazza bar to meet Ian and Nick for a drink.  I noticed that Ian and Freddie made sure we were escorted and looked after at all times, but I feel sure that this was because we could not speak any useful Albanian rather than because of the security.  I noticed quite a few women who were walking around the streets unbothered that they were alone at night.  There seem to be no helmet regulations here for motorcyclists, most don’t wear one, and the pillion passengers tend to sit “side saddle”!

  We returned to our hotel where I slept fitfully – lots of dogs and car noises.

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Friday 12 October

  In the morning I discovered that we had no plug for the basin so I had to have a shower, which was hot and plentiful.  Freddie brought us rolls, butter, honey, fruit juice and coffee for breakfast. This was a great honour – he doesn’t usually provide breakfast. I’ve tasted the coffee, so I can see why one wouldn’t want it!

  Ian and Nick met us outside our hotel and we walked for about 10 minutes to the stop for buses to Shkoder.  We said “goodbye” to Ian who will meet the next group arriving in Tirana and join us again later today.  The bus fare is 200Lek (about £1.00) and the bus is elderly but quite comfortable.  As we travel through Tirana we can clearly see the dark brooding mountains that symbolize Albania to most Westerners.  This morning there are thick clouds of fog at the base of the mountains, the tops loom between mist and sky.  Everywhere in Tirana there is building work going on. Most people live in buildings that are unfinished because tax is not paid on a building until it is complete.  There are great puddles of water everywhere – it rained heavily last night.  Nick suggested that this was a common occurrence; he noticed that most of the kerbs are high and said this was to allow the water to run down the road more easily.  We left Tirana by crossing a bridge over a river – my word, what a lot of rubbish was in there!

  Travelling north through the villages we passed a lot of detached houses and bungalows in what appeared to be small holdings with vegetables growing in very neat rows.  The animals and chickens are obviously free range as they freely wander all round the vegetables.  Not many of these dwellings are finished either!  Then we passed what I can only assume was a furniture shop, glass walls and packed with 3 piece suites.  I’d hardly believed my eyes when we passed another “furniture store”.  Of course, they might not be shops at all, but I couldn’t think why else there would be so many 3 piece suites filling rooms with glass sides, and so many furniture stores as well!

  The bus ride to Shkoder was quite smooth and right on time (11.00am) we were standing by the roundabout of the Five Partisans in the middle of Shkoder.  Eventually Arlind and Sebina found us, they had been waiting at the other side of the roundabout, and took us to our hotel – Hotel Europa Grand, and very grand it looks too.  We booked in, found our rooms and had a coffee on the terrace.  Here we were joined by Fatmir, Lisa and Adonis from Greece, and the Chairman of the 4^th division (a sort of Parish Council Chairman) whose area the Roma community live in.

  We rode a minibus to the school and were shown around the bits that the caretaker hadn’t locked.  Just our luck, today is the last day of Ramadan and a public holiday so there are no children at school.  We visited the Roma community in their homes and gave some of Linda’s bears to the children who sang and danced for us.  The conditions they live in are pitiful – we’ve camped in better conditions!

  Fatmir took us back to the “nice” side of the river and to a café for lunch.  The contrast was incredible (but still only one toilet for the café and that not a water closet!)

After lunch we walked up to the Rozafa castle, which was a stiff climb up a steep hill, and wandered around the battlements.  There is a story attached to the castle.  There were 3 brothers building the castle, but somehow it fell down every night.  Eventually they met an old man who told them that the way to keep the castle built was to build into the walls whichever of their wives came up first with lunch the next day.  The brothers were told to say nothing of this to their wives, but of course brothers 1 and 2 told their wives not to bring lunch the next day and wife 3 whose name was Rozafa, was grabbed to be walled up.  She was pretty upset about this, but agreed as long as they left her right eye, breast, hand and foot uncovered so that when her baby boy started to cry she could see him with one eye, hold him with one hand, rock his cradle with one foot and feed him with one breast. “May the castle stay firm, may my son grow up brave and may he be king and rule”  The castle was built and stood firm, but the base is always damp and mossy because of Rozafa’s tears.

  Going back down the hill was worse than going up, but eventually we were back on the road to Shkoder and Fatmir flagged down a friend with a minibus to take us back to our hotel.  We are all to meet in the Red Bar on the 8^th floor at 8pm tonight – just like a spy story!

After a drink of (expensive) water in the very trendy Red Bar, Fatmir walked us through the suburbs to a “traditional” Albanian restaurant.  This is a place that has been rebuilt as a traditional barn and has lots of old artefacts in which look just like the ones one sees in England.  Why re-invent the wheel?  The supposedly traditional meal started with feta cheese, salad and bread, followed by various chunks of meat cooked on what looked like an indoor BBQ.  The smoke went up a large chimney.  There was far too much for me to eat.  This was followed by baklava, a rather sweet and boring concoction of semolina and nuts which the men seemed particularly fond of and a glass of Raki.  The latter tasted better than I expected, but I found I needed to drink a large glass of water after it as it made me thirsty.  The restaurant had a “traditional” singer, accompanied by another man playing the keyboard who entertained the diners.  Sebina managed to persuade most of the party to take part in the “traditional” dances.

  Fatmir walked us a long way round back to the hotel to show us the biggest church in the Balkans, and the one he said was oldest. I was to find that we would do a lot of walking in the evenings.

  The bed at the hotel was lovely and firm but I didn’t sleep too well – too much to eat I expect.

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Saturday13 October

  We spent the day at the Field Group Meeting for YMCA Albania.  It was quite interesting to see how they work.  YMCA could do with more women on these committees – Lisa and I could see trouble coming about 2hours before the men realised it had hit them.

  After the meeting we went up to the Red Bar.  It was full of wannabee YMCA youngsters – all dressed up and thrilled to be there to meet us.  They were really friendly and spoke English well.  Eventually we went wandering the streets with Fatmir again and arrived at the bar he had chosen for our evening meal.  Again we started with cheese, this time with roasted peppers, followed by beef and chips.  Lovely I thought, just right.  Then they came round again – and again and again…..with more ribs, chops, sausages, far more than I could eat.  We discussed the Roma problem with Fatmir and Arlind over the meal, and made some suggestions to try and get the local students actively involved, like helping fill in the legal forms or helping the Roma get health advice.  We walked briskly through the streets back to the hotel as we needed the exercise by then…

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Sunday 14 October  

  After breakfast we met up in the foyer, checked out and loaded ourselves into a minibus and Fatmir’s car.  Fatmir gave everyone a bottle of local wine (Ian says it’s a good one).  We travelled down the main road and then turned off at Lezhe.  We visited the church (well, the remains of it) where Skanderbeg was buried.  It has been partially rebuilt as a monument.  The curator seemed to have opened especially for us and gave us a short tour.

  Back into the minibus and on we went to Kruje.  On the way we stopped for sweeties – a sort of fruit and nut Turkish Delight – and a traditional yoghurt drink.  In Kruje we visited the castle (another memorial to Skanderbeg) and walked through the old market to the restaurant where we were to have lunch.  John and I bought Traditional Albanian shoulder bags for Kaitlynn and Morrigan and Graham bought a couple of bags for Junior Mission Group.  The Albanians have cottoned on to Traditional as a selling point and nearly everything is traditional, but I doubt the real locals eat this much at every meal or wear the elaborate clothes for sale!

  After lunch we drove in the minibuses to Tirana.  Fatmir bought Sharon fruits for us all on the way.  We settled in to the Hotel Familia again and explored the city.  Guess who’s in the main square – Skanderbeg, of course.

  We had a coffee in the central park and walked down to the large park by the lake.  We visited not only the British war graves but also the Albanian and German ones.  It seems to have been an anti-fascist conflict in 1942 that killed them all.

  We walked back to the hotel to freshen up before we met the others at their hotel to go for dinner together.  We dined at “Era” (pronounced “Ella”), a restaurant in the up and coming area of Tirana.  On the way there we walked past a villa with a guard (we’d walked past it earlier in the day as well).  We were told that this had been Hoxha’s villa, he and all his mates had lived in this area so it was shut off to ordinary people and became known as “The Block”.  The name remains and it is one of the areas that individuals and businesses aspire to.  The meal was really nice and a very reasonable price.  Most of us then walked round the corner to Ian’s favourite patisserie for dessert.  I had ice cream which tasted wonderful but turned out to be a big mistake as I was ill for quite a few days.

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Monday15 October              

  I felt pretty wobbly today but managed by sipping water constantly.  John and Graham went exploring after we had checked out of the hotel while I sat in a small park and watched the world go by.  A number of Tiranese stopped to talk to me – pity I can’t speak Albanian and they couldn’t speak English, but I think we managed to exchange friendly greetings with hand signals.  John and Graham found all sorts of things – a whole street of bike shops for example!   When they returned we walked to the Opera where we met Tim Brookes.  Tim is a missionary with BMS.  He and his wife Helen work at a church in Shkove.  Shkove used to be a small town but is now a suburb of Tirana.  We were told that 10 years ago 200,000 people lived in Tirana, today the number is 1,500,000 and rising!  We walked to the bus stop and caught a bus to Shkove.  You have to be with someone who knows their way around or you’d never find the right place to catch a bus to anywhere.  Buses in Tirana have a flat rate fare of 20 Lek (about 10p).  Shkove is nearly the end of the route.  Tim showed us round the church, where Helen was teaching English classes.  She had 4 children in that morning’s class.  They said they were 12 years old.  Once they lost their awe(?) of strangers they were happy to talk to us in English and try to teach us Albanian.  Apparantly the 2 most useful words to know are “sumi” (very) and “mir” (good).  “Po” is yes ( o as in orange) and “jo” is no.  Any movement of the head – particularly shaking it – will be taken to mean “yes”.  School in Albania is either in the morning or the afternoon so lunch time is peak rush hour with children catching buses to and from school.

  We had a drink with Helen’s class – my first proper cup of tea in Albania – and then left them to their studies.

  As well as being Assistant Pastor Tim teaches computer studies.  He had a class to run in the afternoon so he walked us up to the Roma camp before lunch.  He thought the conditions there were terrible.  They were pretty bad – for example there had been a big fire there which wiped out the middle of the camp but some of the tents which had been given them to replace the shanties would have seemed like luxury compared to what we had seen in Shkoder.  There is a fear that these Roma will soon be displaced.  The land they are on used to be part of the tractor factory.  The tractors and factory were broken up by the people on the fall of communism and it is felt that moves are in hand to reuse the site.  The church has not been able to find out who actually owns the site, which is a problem.

  Tim has a friend who has just moved to Shkoder who wants to work with Roma children but has no contact to “get in” with them.  We are going to contact Fatmir because we’re sure he can help her and use her.

  We returned to the city centre by bus and had lunch (well John and Graham had lunch, I made do with water).  After lunch we walked to the Sky Tower.  Like most things in Tirana this has something to do with Vodaphone who definitely have a monopoly on mobile networks around here.  We took a lift to the restaurant and walked around the balcony admiring the view.  We had been there about 20 minutes when a member of staff approached us and suggested we might like to go up to the bar (which we had expected to be closed) which revolved around the tower.  We happily bought soft drinks and sat there for an hour – that’s how long one revolution takes – before taking the lift back to the ground.  The only charge we paid for this was to buy the drinks and they were the same price as any of the cafes.

  We walked back to the hotel to collect our bags and were presented with a bottle of wine each from Freddie!  Adverts and /or flyers might have been a better marketing ploy.

  We caught the bus to the airport and arrived in plenty of time to check in.  We had a slight problem with our bottles of wine which we thought would be safer in our hand luggage – the airport staff disagreed so we went back to check in another bag.  The airport manager saw us walking towards the baggage area and came to ask if there was a problem.  When told of our dilemma he and a member of his staff went out of their way to be helpful, calling our bags back for us so that we could repack them to include the wine and then recheck them in.  Our’s survived the flight home, I hope Graham’s did too.  (Later we tasted the wine and wished we hadn’t bothered to bring it home, but the bottle from Fatmir was nice!).

  We were somewhat worried that Nick hadn’t joined us, but thought him able to look after himself (probably better than us in Albania).  He had gone for a long walk from his hotel into the mountains for the day.  When he joined us he had excitement to relate.  He had got a little lost on his walk and strayed into a military area (I think).  He’d certainly had an exciting time being lost, hitch hiking and being questioned.  He was looking forward to the boredom of the flight home!

  There was a little excitement as we boarded the aeroplane.  As we climbed the steps staff rolled out a red carpet behind us. Prime Minister Sali Berisha, complete with bodyguards and a military escort was coming on our flight.  I can’t say it made any difference to us, but the booking in staff had spread people throughout the plane so that we had three seats to two people.  This meant we had about as much room as in business class, especially for us as we were sitting by the emergency exit and had lots of legroom.  I slept most of the way home and felt much better for it.

  Jonathan and Julia came to meet us at Gatwick along with an assortment of “Welcome Home” goodies from Jo.  We were spared balloons and banners which Jo had planned because there wasn’t room in the car for Jo as well.  We had a safe and pleasant drive back to St Albans from Gatwick (thank you Jonathan).  The M25 was really quiet which was nice, and arrived back at the manse just after midnight.  John drove us back to Kimpton.  I left the unpacking until morning, collapsed into bed and woke to the alarm on Tuesday morning.

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First impressions?

  Albania is a curious mix of the communistic life as I remember it from my visit to USSR in 1970 and the up and coming, which looks remarkably like the buildings around Malaga!  Most of the Albanians are concentrated into the coastal plain – in fact most of the people live in Tirana – so each town seems to drift into the next village, the population density is much lower outside the “big” towns but there is very little open countryside as we know it on the flat land.  Most of the mountains seem to be “countryside”.  The people are very friendly and keen to be helpful but very insular, they only know things about their own area, not Albania as a whole.  There are a lot of people who we would think of as poor, but they seem to think that they are doing nicely, thank you.  There seem to be a number of people to whom money is no problem as well.  Albanians seem to think of their nationality first and then their money.  Having a car is a definite status symbol, but the age of the car doesn’t seem to matter – they are all expensive.  Fuel on the other hand is much cheaper than here or in France.  The main road from Tirana to Shkoder is now quite good – better than many in St Albans – but the side roads to smaller towns and villages are little more than pot holed dirt tracks.  Suburban roads seem to all need repair or to be being repaired – the only one finished is the main road.  This means that cars get very dusty very quickly and it seems that enterprising people who can’t find other work set up as car wash places.  These range from a bucket and sponge job at about 150 Lek to jet hoses which count as “all mod cons” at 300Lek. (200 Lek =£1.00)

  The Roma live in appalling conditions.  A family of 15 will live in a room about 12 foot square.  They cook outside on a brazier and share one toilet (Turk at that) between about 10 families.  They live on about £20.00 a month for the family which they get mainly from begging.  Life has improved immensely since the installation of the water pump as they can have clean water to use.  Last week the pump was switched off because the Roma people hadn’t paid the electricity bills and the people were taking their water from the river again.  This looked pretty grotty at the bet of times but last week a horse died in it upstream and wasn’t found for three days.  Yeugh!

  I found the dirt, smells and flies really bad and had to make sure I controlled my face.  There were no windows or doors in the Roma village, just the occasional curtain to give a bit of privacy, certainly not thick enough to keep the cold out.

  It is difficult to help people who have got into the begging mind set.  One of the biggest challenges is to persuade the parents to let the children go to school and get some education.  It often seems that all parties would rather be out begging.  On the rare occasions when a child gets a scholarship to state school this isn’t renewed after a year.  This could be a financial problem, or could be that the Roma children don’t put in the effort we expect from our children.  The principal of the school we are involved with says the Roma children have a very short attention span because they are not used to learning, so the staff try to teach through play and activities as much as possible. In Albania this school is doing ground breaking work as no one else has any experience of children like this at all.

by Carol Baughan