Hitchhiking to Tirana: Nero in Albania

And with that one simple gesture, she had floored me. It wasn’t love in the slightest sort, neither was it infatuation, nor a warmth brewing from friendship. But I was filled with affection, and I didn’t know what to do.

Let’s go back to the beginning of the story.

I was standing on the side of the road, in Berat. A few cars had passed me already and though I put out my thumb, nobody paid any attention to it. I was trying to hitchhike my way from Berat to Tirana, the capital of Albania. Not that there weren’t any buses, and neither was the ticket expensive, but I wanted to see if I could hitchhike my way across a country. Tirana would just serve as a pit stop, and the goal was to hitchhike till Kosovo – Albania’s neighbor and the second newest country in the world.

I didn’t mind the cars not stopping. One would, eventually, I figured. What was inconvenient though was the searing heat. It was over forty degrees celcius and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. I tried to let it not bother me. It was, finally, all part of the experience.

Another traveler joined me. He was from New Zealand, and said he was hitchhiking to Tirana too. He introduced himself as Peter. “Nero”, I replied and we shook hands.

 I noticed a man standing on the opposite side of the road, staring at me. I was getting used to it now. None of them had ever met an Indian before. I smiled at him and he walked over to us and asked us where we were from. We spoke for a while and he asked me if I would pose for a photograph with him. So we grinned into his phone, as he took a selfie.

Ten minutes later, a car stopped a few metres ahead and we ran to it, hauling our bags. He wasn’t going to Tirana but he could drop us midway, he said. We hopped in and he started the car’s engine. ‘Falemenderit’, we both told him excitedly,  the Albanian word for “thank you”.

The breeze hit my face, and it was making me feel good about myself. About the hitchhiking that I was doing.

Peter and I started talking and when I asked him how long he had been travelling. “It’s been 9-10 months now” he replied casually.

The man had started his journey from Thailand. After spending some time in the islands, he boarded a bus and headed north. Soon, he had crossed over to Myanmar. After spending two weeks there, he hopped across to India via the Manipur-Myanmar border. Unlike a lot of international backpackers who come to India and do Delhi, Agra, Jaipur, Varanasi and Khajuraho, Peter fell in love with the simplicity and virgin beauty of India’s north eastern states and spent over a month trekking through Manipur, Tripura, Arunachal and Assam. He then moved a little south to West Bengal and flitted through the streets of Kolkata, rode the yellow taxis, and sat at the banks of the Hooghly. Moving westward, he entered into Varanasi and had long smoking sessions with a saadhu. Later, he took the train to New Delhi.

The car suddenly stopped and the owner smiled at us sheepishly and said that he was turning into another town and if we wanted to go to Tirana, it made sense to get down there. He was nice enough to stop at a bus stop. We got down, thanked him and saw him drive away.

Peter told me that he would take the next bus and asked if I’d join him. I shook my head. I was sure I wanted to complete this journey only by hitchhiking. We bid adieu to each other.

Peter’s father was French, and when he had started this trip, Peter had decided to go all the way from Asia to France by land. After travelling in India, he crossed over to Pakistan, Iran, Turkey, Greece and till a few moments back had been sitting in a car with me in Albania. In a few more weeks, he would be in the land of Napolean, Victor Hugo and Zinedine Zidane and his journey would be complete.

The cars whizzed past me. It was hotter now, and I was quite tempted to join Peter on the bus. I finished the last drops in my water bottle and stared at the road. A bus went by. Maybe he was on it. Safe travels, my friend.

Finally, a car stopped. Two young travellers, a girl and a boy, smiled at me as I got into the back of their car and told me they were from Belgium and were road tripping through Albania.

I was very sleepy and tired when I had gone into the car, but there was something in the way the three of us connected that made me just want to talk to them, and not sleep at all. They were in their early twenties. In love. Soft spoken. Interested in visiting India. They had been to Argentina before. And I was interested in visiting Argentina. They spoke of Shantaram, and I spoke of the Tango. We spoke of how beautiful Albania was, and the need to see places which weren’t swarming with pub crawls, and not swarming with a thousand tourists. I don’t really remember what all we spoke about, but there are days when someone says something and you just smile and nod your head and look out of the window and think about what they said, in your head. I don’t remember what all we spoke about but it’s not every day you say something and someone looks back at you and writes down that line in a brown diary. I don’t remember smiling so much in a conversation in some time.

I don’t remember seeing my destination appear and me wishing that we were driving for some more time.

It was so sudden that we reached Tirana that I didn’t really have time to think of anything except to get out of the car and haul out my bags. I had to still complete my journey to Kosovo, while they were spending the next two days in Tirana.

I looked into the window and wished Noam a pleasant journey ahead. Jasmine had gone down from the car and I turned back and smiled at her. We hugged, and as is regular in Southern and Eastern Europe, I leaned forward and we lightly cheek kissed twice. I was about to withdraw, when she leaned a third time and put her cheek next to mine and said in a soft tone, “In Belgium, we say goodbye by cheek kissing thrice, Nero.”

And with that one simple gesture, she had floored me. It wasn’t love in the slightest sort, neither was it infatuation, nor a warmth brewing from friendship. But I was filled with affection, and I didn’t know what to do. I don’t even know why it felt significant.

I just stood there, looking at the two of them and wondering if the three of us would ever meet again. Somewhere I know they were thinking the same. But we chose to keep silent and after a few moments, Noam started the car and I saw it leave.

I walked to a café, my head still filled with the conversation we had and the two of them. It would be stupid to text that I miss them, I thought to myself. “It’s only been fifteen minutes”, I said to myself. The next moment, I got a message “We miss you. If you haven’t gotten a ride yet to Kosovo, come to our hostel.”

I smiled at the message and finished my sandwich. To go back would be to try and capture the moment again. To go back would be stretching a moment. I picked up my bags and went out of the café.

Eventually, some car would stop. And I would reach Kosovo. What was inconvenient though was the searing heat. It was over forty degrees celcius and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. I tried to let it not bother me. It was, finally, all part of the experience.

-------   The End -------

Now read:

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Nero is in Albania

It is half past one in the night, and the guard takes his own time to look at my passport. I stand nervously wondering if all is okay. Finally, he stamps it. I heave a sigh of relief and walk back to my bus, still groggy eyed. When I climb aboard, everyone is staring at me. There is not a single foreigner in the bus. Besides me.

Down the road, a sign reads “Welcome to Albania”.

They are all talking loudly. Finally a girl translates. “Where are you from?”, she asks me. When I say India, there are several “aahs”. One man is rubbing his chin, another is eyeing me. The chatter does not stop. The girl keeps translating the questions. “How far is India?” “Where are you coming from?” “Why are you visiting Albania?” To the last I answer “Because it is beautiful” and when the girl translates it back in Albanian, the bus erupts and everyone cheers. Everyone is smiling. The questions don’t stop however, and neither do the side jokes. And all this at 2-3 am. When I finally get off at my stop at Gjirokastra, everyone waves at me and wish me good luck. I think I will like this country.

It is 330 am.

The bus has dropped me in the middle of the city. My plan was to wait at the bus station till morning to save one night’s accommodation cost. But Gjirokastra, just like most of Albania, has no official bus station. A few men are staring at me from the other side of the road. I nod at them and make my way to an inn. After knocking several times, finally someone opens the door and thankfully I am given a room.

My bedsheet has a print on it. It says “Welcome to Albania”.

Ask anyone if they have been to Albania and mostly they will say “What? Where is that?” or “Is it safe?”. The latter is a valid question. Albania has mostly been at war for hundreds of years. While earlier, it was under the rule of the Ottoman empire, in the twentieth century, it was under Communist dictatorship for over forty years.

I go to sleep almost immediately. I have already been on the road for twenty nine days, first travelling solo and then leading a group trip through Turkey and Greece for two weeks. Now that my group has left, I am looking for some serious adventure and am planning to hitchhike and bus ride my way through the Balkans for a month. Bosnia and Serbia might not approve of my visa, so I am planning to weave my way through Albania, Kosovo, Montenegro, Hungary and Romania.

I wake up the next morning and my balcony opens up to the town on the mountainside. I walk through the streets and my plan is to make my way to Gjirokastra castle.

A lot of people are staring curiously at me.They have never seen an Indian before. Neither had any of the people in my bus the previous night. Can you imagine the gravity of that line? There are 1.2 billion Indians and they haven’t seen a single one!!!

Forget Indians, I don’t see any tourists at all in this town. And it makes me happy. I have been on too many backpacker trails and most travelers keep doing the same things, keep following the same circuits. It is the same cities and countries and pattern that all backpackers follow when they are in South East Asia, and it is the same places everyone does in Turkey. In Greece, the Europeans do a few more islands but we Indians only do Santorini, Mykonos, Athens and sometimes Crete.

Here there are no Germans, no Australians and no Japanese (the countries who travel the most). Here, unlike South East Asia or Bali there are no pancakes and waffles being served and hostels aren’t selling flyers or talking in an American accent. There aren’t any pub crawls in Gjirokastra. And these thirty days, that is how I want to travel. Not through capital cities, not through Europe’s most cosmopolitan cities, but through the countrysides and towns of the nations that most people don’t visit.

Nobody here understands English. But I don’t need to speak the language. I ask “Castle” and they all smile and point in a direction. I keep asking people the same thing, and they keep smiling and pointing.

And such is the beautiful irony in this land. It is not just the land of Enver Hoxha, the Dictator who built 700,000 military bunkers in the country for fear of invasion. It is also the birth place of Mother Teresa, the apostle of peace.

Till the 90s, only politicians were allowed to drive in Albania, and only 3000 cars were on the road. Today, everyone rides a Mercedes. The brand is so deeply entrenched that everyone, office goers, taxi drivers, mini bus drivers, food caterers all drive Mercs.

I walk on and am completely mesmerized by this town. It is as if it was plucked out of the medieval ages and planted in today’s world. 

The houses, mostly in Ottoman style, are painted white and have grey tiled roofs and as they stand next to each other, on the slopes, with the majestic mountain in the background and the castle perched on top, the town looks like a perfect postcard. The street roads aren’t tarred (except for the highway and a connecting road), and are made of white brick and stone and run narrow and curved between the houses. 

I pass a small bookstore and see the name “Ali Pasha of Teplene” on it. Arguably the greatest Pasha of the Ottoman empire, it is he who had added extensions to the castle and brought in advanced firearms and cannons. Earlier, when at the age of fourteen his father was murdered, Ali along with his mother formed a gang of brigands and looted all those who passed the mountain. As he grew older, he was first recruited by the empire to police the region and through way of favour, bribes and marriage, became Pasha (governor) in the region. Ali Pasha was a strict ruler and a vengeful one and his violent acts instilled fear in his enemies. Under him the Albanians emerged stronger and united and his soldiers would do anything for him.

I walk into the castle and fall in love with it immediately. I have always had a thing for stone castles and military fortresses. I can almost hear the horses gallop inside, can almost see the prisoners of war being brought in, can see the soldiers guard the walls. There is so much history in these walls. 

It is fitting that the dials on the clock tower don't work any more. Time, it feels, has actually stood still in this town.

I come out and walk over to Zekate House, an Ottoman house that belonged to the rich Zekate family in and was built in 1812 but was plundered in the early 20^th century. Today, it serves as a modest museum house and though the riches, the jewellery, the paintings haven’t been returned, one can still see traces of what might have been when one sees the large rooms, the divans,  the viewing galleries and the many fireplaces *(in Albania, traditionally a house’s family’s richness was decided by the number of fireplaces in the house I counted nine in the Zekate House). The house is a lovely window into the lifestyle of a rich family during the Ottoman era.

I come out and walk down to Babameto Hostel – a lovely nineteenth century house that is now a hostel but has kept most of its style intact. A French girl is working on her laptop in the lawns and a dog is sprawled on the ground by her side. I sit opposite and we start talking. She has been here for  a month and she loves it. I wish I could just spend a month here, do nothing but read a book, play with the dog and bicycle to the nearby towns. I express that wish to her. An Albanian boy is listening to our conversation and laughs loudly.

“You will get bored here in Gjirokastra”, he says “nothing ever happens here.”

I look around, down the mountainside. Just a stone throw away lies the village of Gardhiq. In 1812, forty years after the men of that village kidnapped Ali Pasha’s mother and sister and gangraped them for days on end, Ali Pasha had his revenge by killing 739 direct male descendants of the original sinners. Actually, I don’t even have to look that far. Gjirokastra is also the birth place of Enver Hoxha, the Dictator. He is also the man who ordered the confiscation of all the materials of the Zekate House.

The boy repeats, “It is boring, nothing ever happens here.”

I smile at him and nod my head.

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