Shqipëria – before going to google.com – do you know what it is?

True. Albania in Albanian language. This week the national football team of Sweden played Albania trying to qualify for the World Cup.. That got me thinking. Thinking about my trip to Albania in 2005.

This trip is the most stupid thing I have ever done. But also the thing I am most proud of doing. I went there to meet a guy I had met on the internet.. in a football forum..

Before my departure I e-mailed the Ministry for Foreign Affairs in Sweden asking for their travel recommendations. They recommended me NOT going to Albania on my own. Did I listen? Nope. My family was not hysterically happy about my decision either but did I listen? Nope. Maybe I should also add that I had not told my family about my previous so called relationship, they didn’t get to know until about 2007. The Ministry for Foreign Affairs politely demanded me to make copies of my passport, plane tickets and names of the hotels I should stay in to leave in Sweden in at least two different places.

I wanted to do this trip to prove to myself that I was capable of taking care of myself and that I could take charge of my own life. Noone should ever tell me how I should live my life.

One early morning my parents drove me to the airport. On my way to Tirana I had to make two stops. Stockholm-Copenhagen-Vienna-Tirana. From Stockholm to Vienna I got to sit next to a man that was a veteran of the Swedish Airforce. If you know how afraid I am of flying you’d know how safe I felt. He explained everything that happend and also got me to think about other things than what-the-hell I was actually doing.

Oh dear, there are so many clashes of culture I could tell you about I don’t know what to choose. Mother Teresa Airport is one of the smallest airports I have ever seen, comparable to Norrköping Airport. Albania only had (at least in 2005) one airport, this one and there were guards with fully loaded automatic weapons in every corner.

There were beggars everywhere, both old ladies with no teeth and young children that looked like they’d never seen a shower.

Tirana is the capital of Albania. In 2005 the tourists and charter travellers had not yet been allowed to start visiting the country, Albania opened up for tourists in 2006. Therefor the options of hotels with leisure as a major selling point weren’t that many. The guy I visited had been to Saranda before so he suggested we’d go there. And we did.

250 km by bus, not such a long trip. In Sweden it takes about 2 hours. In Albania it took us more than 8 hours (!). In a Mercedes bus from mid 70’s. No aircondition in outside temp of 40°C (if you don’t consider the front and backdoor open to be an aircondition unit). A food break juuuust after we’d passed a house that had a freshly killed donkey hanging at the doorstep, blood still dripping. Needless to say I only had a croissant to eat that day.

Arriving to Saranda was like arriving to paradise. Not only because we were let out of the bus but the country is beautiful. Really beautiful.

The bus station of Saranda was a combined fruit market and bus station under a metal cage with tin roof. Oranges, melons, bananas and mangos inbetween the buses. To get the melons transferred between fruit stands they swung them on the floor like a bowling ball.

One thing I deeply DEEPLY regret is that I didn’t use my camera more frequently. In retrospect I wish I had snapped away A LOT more! But for some reason I thought it was embarrassing to take pictures. I felt stared at. Which I was actually. Me being in a country with mostly darkhaired people I stood out a bit with my blonde hair (allthough I had a more darkhaired look cause I had it dyed). Anyhow, I was the odd thing sticking out. I was also the odd one being a female out in the streets. One could only see men sitting out on cafe’s and walking on the streets. Felt surreal.

As I said earlier I am so happy that I have been there. It was an epic journey that lasted only a week for real but started something inside of me that will last much longer.

Picture from Saranda

Picture from Butrint Castle

This entry was posted on Friday, October 16th, 2009 at 9:57 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.