Quite the adventures in the past few days. Good luck and bad luck have followed and carried us equally. So on Saturday morning we made our way out of Skopje via various busses here and there, and found ourselves on the highway to Kosovo. A nice couple picked us up and dropped us at the boarder. We got lots of stares and laughs from the long line of cars heading back to Macedonia (it's not very common to hitch hike around these parts) and we finally got a ride from a nice man who spoke very good English. He took us to pristina, where we got a ride by a local guy in a big truck who works for a water company. I was extremely thirsty and then suddenly he pulled out five water bottles and gave them all to us. We have found that almost no one speaks English in Kosovo and Albania, so it was quite frustrating to try to communicate to the rest of our rides. But every one of them wanted so badly to help, so we found a way. Our next ride was another big truck, who took us up through the beautiful mountains of Kosovo. Vidhe and I were taking pictures at every turn, and our kind driver would stop or slow down at each picturesque area for us to snap a shot. He dropped us off about 20 km from the boarder to Albania. By this time it was getting dark fast and no one was stopping because we were in a city. People have much less empathy for strangers on the side of the road when in a city. So finally we went up to a random parked car and this man took us all the way to the boarder, completely out of his way. He didn't speak one word of English but some how he managed to drop us off right at the boarder of Albania. We tapped on the window of the first car we saw. They spoke our language! Yay! And luckily so, because of what was to come later on.. So they took us to about 30km from Tirana, where the two guys live, and dropped us at a very remote petrol station in the middle of no where. As we were grabbing our stuff out of the car, the guy said he wanted to add Vidhe on Facebook, so he got his name and then drove away. About twenty seconds later Vidhe realized he had left his phone in their car. This phone is his life, with every contact, picture, map- everything we needed to get to Montenegro that night and to make the rest of the journey. I was extremely tired, running off of maybe two hours of sleep and a cold getting worse and worse. We had no idea what to do. The two guys working at the pump couldn't understand us and wouldn't have been able to help anyway. So we decided to hitch to Tirana in hope that the guy would add vidhe on facebook and we would be around to collect his phone. We got a ride, which ended up being some sort of tourist cab and they wanted us to pay, but we just acted like stupid tourists who didn't have any money, but I guess we weren't really acting because that is what we are. They let us off in the center of Tirana and we started wandering around in search of a hostel. We must have looked so lost because a man came up to us and asked to help. He led us right to a hostel across the street in a little alley where we paid 7.50 euros each for the night. I went to get money out of the ATM, but my debit card was on "temporary hold". Of course my stupid bank would think it was fraud after jumping from country to country so quickly. I was so frustrated that the sight of a scruffy little dog walking alone on the street caused me to burst into tears. I went to sleep hoping that I would be thinking more rationally in the morning. I had a frustrating time trying to call the u.s. to try to fix the money situation and there were definitely more tears involved. As of right now, they told me they cannot lift the hold on my card and I must get a new one sent to me. Absolutely ridiculous. I'm going to try back tomorrow. I went for a walk and sat on a bench feeiling depressed. A nice guy came up to me and asked if I was alright, so I got to vent to a random stranger for a while. Then he took my hand and started showing me around the city. He is a tour guide in Tirana, so he knows everything. He took me to the bus station to check busses to Sofia or Skopje (because at this point I really didn't know what I wanted to do) and he said he would host us for the night of we needed it. I got back to the dreaded hostel that we were being kicked out of in about thirty minutes, and just as we were packing up, Vidhe got the friend request! The guy came to the hostel and dropped the phone off and we were ready to go. We decided to walk around a bit, just to pretend to sight see in Tirana a bit. A stranger payed for all our oranges and apples at the super market and another stranger payed for our bus tickets out of the city. Then we began the difficult task of hitch hiking through Albania. There is so much public transportation that it is almost impossible to not get a taxi. I'm pretty sure no one really understood what we were trying to do. We had to shoo away so many taxis and buses and random people trying to get us taxis and buses. They were so worried about us! We got picked up by two old men listening to techno music, then another guy who wanted to charge us money, then we got into a van full of what we thought was a nice family, but was actually a few random people in a taxi. Got out of paying, once again by playing our part as stupid tourists with no money, then got taken across the boarder to Montenegro by two young Albanian guys. Their car battery died at the boarder so we had to push it across. We stood at the boarder in search of a ride to kotor, but everyone kept telling us it was ridiculous to try to go there at that time of night on a sunday. It was only about 8 pm but it was as dark as midnight. The boarder patrol told us we had to leave and take a taxi because we weren't allowed to stand there. I started searching near by for soft ground to sleep for the night, but vidhe said we would be fine. Finally got a ride down the road to a petrol station. The gas pump attendant guy bought me a coffee, kissed me on the cheek, taught me how to say thank you in serbian, and then we got a ride to Bar after about an hour. In Bar we found a lucky ride all the way to Kotor. Fantastichno! They even spoke English, so we ended up having quite a philosophical talk about religion. Hinduism vs Christianity. Got to the hostel at around midnight and now here we are. We are actually couch surfing at this hostel, so everything is freeeee. Strangers can be so nice. Its great learning the ways of being a cheep traveler from such an experienced one himself. Now the next step is to find a way to access my money... You can only be so cheep.
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| Albania |
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| Pleasant ride through Kosovo |
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