havecarryonwilltravel

Dogs. There are stray dogs and cats in all of the cities and towns we have visited. Not over run with them but there are enough. Most people just put up with them. One of our guides told us that they are truly a problem. Her daughter will not go out a night because the dogs roam in packs and are quite scary. I dislike them because they bark randomly at night. Not crazy like in Mexico but still enough to keep one awake. Bark, random pause, bark, bark, bark, random pause. Waiting for the next bark is enough to start one’s mind turning over and no sleep. The cats are just annoying mooches and hang around the restaurants. Their night time mewing is not a bother. A couple of the places had programs to spay and neuter the dogs , leaving a tag in their ear. Good on them.

Breakfast has been included at every hotel we have stayed at. Sometimes it has been a buffet, sometimes it was plated and you got what you got and sometimes it was from a menu. All provided more food that I could eat. The one thing I found weird was the eggs were always cold. Hard boiled, scrambled, fried or an omelet they were cold.

I’m not sure what I expected, I don’t think I had any expectations but the tour here included way too many churches and mosques, and way too much history. Every guide rambled on about 500BC and 500AD and 1000AD and, and, and. About the Byzantines, and the Ottomans and the Germans and the Communists, it is all one big blur, I can’t remember squat. And the churches, there are Byzantine churchs with Muslim interiors and Chistian churches that have both Orthodox and Christian altars so they can serve both. There are churches that serve one religion and oh so many. Every one with a story and except for a couple, most unspectacular. The weird thing is during the communist/socialist/dictator time religion was for the most part illegal and for 40+ years people did not practice so now attendance is very small and the churches are museum pieces.

Pedestrians seem to have the right of way and the crosswalks are strictly adhered to. I noted this about Albania but it seems it is the case in all four of the Balkan countries we have visited.

Earthquakes are a concern in the Balken countries we were in. Being on the coast, Albania and Montenegro are at the worst risk. Albania feels an earthquake every few years. Montenegro has a strong earthquake every few decades. That said, the city of Skopje had a massive earthquake in 1963 that destroyed most of the city and left 200,000 people homeless.

Of the four countries we went to I disliked Montenegro the most. Our introduction consisted of a suspect shake down of our driver for a bribe. He handled it quite well but still had to contact the tour company to pay or the jerk would not give K his papers back. I found the Montenegrins the least trusting of any of the peoples. It was the only place where the hotel sent someone to check to make sure we did not use anything from the mini bar. That was after we were asked by reception and had said we had not consumed anything. It is also the place that was out to take the tourist for every penny. In Kotor, the one place I kind of liked, the hotel had so many rules it was silly. An entire page of don’ts typed in small print. A couple I liked was no food in the hotel room and no laundry in the hotel room.  Instead, you can eat at our very expensive restaurant and have your laundry done buy our service. A polo type shirt is only 3 Euro, socks are a mere 1 Euro and a pair of pants would set you back 6 Euro. Neither of these rules suits our way of travel so we completely ignored them. By the by, we did not choose the hotel, it was chosen by the tour company. Food was more expensive but only if you cannot share meals with your travel companion. The proportions were large which halves the cost. Although they are trying to increase tourism, customer service is sadly lacking.  Everything costs Euro. We were climbing a very steep set of stairs in the Kotor castle and after about 50 vertical meters we were asked for 15 Euro to climb the remaining 3 or 400 vertical meters left to the mosque half way to the top. Nope. The country just gave me bad vibes.

Kosovo was an unassuming place. The people seemed quite shy to me. The places we visited were neither super impressive or boring. I liked the country but not sure what to say about it.

North Macedonia seemed rough. You know like an uncut diamond. I think it had a lot to offer but the people and places were a bit crude. Nothing offensive just not polished.

Albania was my favorite place. It is the country that came from the darkest place after the drastic political changes of 1992. The country hit the ground running and is still on a roll. The people are extremely nice. The economy seems to be on the up and up. They are trying to figure out how to survive in the 21^st century. The places we visited are either well preserved or tastefully restored. It is not expensive and for the most part the tourist is not treated as a mark. The tourism industry has a good handle on customer service. The people are a bit overzealous in their rush to become ‘modern’. There are many, many good idea businesses that have started up and failed, leaving unoccupied crumbling structures on the road side. They soldier on. I felt really comfortable there, no threats, no stress.

Just a heads up. I don’t know if this is always the case and I would imagine it is much worse in the summer but leave a minimum of ½ hour to cross any of the borders between these countries.

What form of money to use is a question that arises every time you cross the border. I did extensive research on the internet and frankly did not get the proper answers. In Albania, cash is king and the best place to get it is at a currency exchange. I found the ILIRIA’98 exchange to be quite fair. The rates for CAD are good. The bank machines charge a big fee and if you use a credit card you get hit with a ‘bank charge’ every transaction. So, use cash. In Macedonia I was told that ATM’s were the best possibility. Nope. The fee was outrageous. I used a credit card everywhere and was not charged a fee. The same is true for both Kosovo and Montenegro. If you have the choice chose to be billed in the local currency. Your bank has a better rate than the one offered in the foreign country.

The town and cities we visited were hit and miss but the country side was fantastic. Changing from plains, to rolling hills to mountains and back again. Spectacular lakes appear over the crest of the mountain range. Olive groves to fruit orchards, farm land to dense forest, deciduous forest to conifers. The thing I did find a bit odd was the amount of unused arable land. There are so many small plots of land cleared by forced labour during the regime that have been left and are not producing. People have left the farms to make their fortune elsewhere.

I have more ramblings I will include later.

All through Albania, I am amused by the spelling of names and words. Our guide say that the Albanian language has 10 extra letters. Here are some examples:

XAXIQI – my favorite Greek dish of tzatziki

Librahzd – a town

Trpejca – a town near Ohrid

Interesting occurrence at a toll booth. Our guide paid the toll to the guy, gets a receipt from someone who didn’t take a receipt ( the time stamp was wrong), guy pockets the toll money. Supplemental income for the guy. C, our guide, tells us there is a lot of corruption in Albania. A contractor will get money from the government to build a park, will start, but will pocket the money and never finish the job. I am not sure how he gets away with it, but C, says it happens all the time. 

Individual houses don’t seem to have solar panels. When we see solar panels they are in the fields or on a commercial or farm buildings.

Our guide tells us half the people in Albania are Muslim and half are Christian. The Christians are split between Catholics and Greek Orthodox. As Murray mentions, very few folks actually attend church. We see many mosques, both Shia and Sunni, but they sit empty most of the time and are mostly used for funerals.

One of the things I enjoyed the most about Albania was stopping by the side of the road and having our guide pick some fresh fruit and then eating it. Pears, pomegranates, red grapes, green grapes, oranges, figs, apples and plums. They all tasted so fresh compared to what we eat at home. The figs were a favourite. The tomatoes I ate had so much flavour! I also enjoyed the food in Albania more than the other three countries. Stuffed peppers, stuffed eggplants, tzatziki, saganaki (Murray’s fav).

When we were in the soup restaurants, Laura and I were the only women. I asked our guide about women in trades and he said, definitely not. Women are clerks, teachers, shop workers. Women are going to university, taking medicine, law and engineering, but it sounds like they are not yet accepted into the trades.

When we travelled through the mountains, in all of the countries, we drove through many many tunnels. We rue the fact we did not start to count them as the number would be high. We went through one tunnel that had a toll. The driver paid 5Euros and the tunnel was 4.189 km long. That works out to 0.84 Euro/km. Expensive!

L, R, Murray and I had a discussion one day about how much we all have travelled and what excites us now. Riding in a boat on a lake and seeing birds we see in Alberta, not so much. In Berat, the houses built up the side of the hill, cool! The hamam (Turkish bath) in Prizren, cool! The original paintings inside the Church of St Nicholas/Church of Ascension in Kosovo, amazing. Three cruise ships in port in Kotor on the day we left there, hated them but were fascinated by them. The views from high up, wonderful! We decided that, since we have travelled so much, it takes extraordinary things to impress us. But that’s okay, I think. When Murray and I scuba dive in Bonaire, we tell ourselves that if we see one cool fish or behaviour in three hours of diving we are doing great. So travelling is the same way. We see many things and a few really cool things, and that’s okay.

We have noted over the last few days that Kosovo and Montenegro are under some major flight paths. You can look up any time of the day and there are at least 4 jet streams crossing the sky.

In all four countries we have been in there is a ‘pedestrians have the right of way’ rule. And everybody obeys them. People on a cross walk are not ignored. If you stand at a curb and look like you want to cross, the next car will stop for you. If the light says don’t walk people come to and immediately stop at the curb and wait. As always there are scoff laws but they are few.

Renewable energy sources are not as visible here as in northern European countries. There are very few solar panels in Albania or Macedonia. We did see a couple of solar panel fields in Kosovo but still very few installations on private buildings. When we crossed the border into Montenegro yesterday, we spotted a few wind turbines and I noted quite a few panel arrays on people’s houses.

The towns and cities we’ve stopped at have been hit and miss. Some interesting, some not so much. I will expand on them later. The part of the trip I have found extremely interesting is the ever changing country side. The landscape changes from flat to rolling hills to soft topped mountains to craggy mountains like our Canadian Rockies. The vegetation changes from olive groves to fruit orchards to prairies. The trees change from cultivated orchards, to deciduous trees all the way to the tree line of the soft top mountains and then to conifers when we reach the craggy mountains.

There are so many derelict and decaying, very large old factories scattered throughout the countryside in all the counties we have visited. Less so in Montenegro than in the other three countries. The communist dictators that lorded over the counties prior to 1992 had the idea that industrialization would transform. They thought that it was the way of the future. Unfortunately, the projects were not properly planned or funded. When the regime fell and the products of these factories had to compete in a capitalist market, they could not last. The people were forced to work in these factories and they were symbols of the dark days they did not wish to be reminded of.

When everyone works for the state and there is no personal gain, a problem is created. Why should I work harder than the other person, is the thought that goes through people’s heads. And so the work ethic drops to the lowest common denominator. No one is willing to take responsibility. So things fall into disrepair. ‘It’s not my job.’ This detail seems to be a legacy that continues 30+ years later. Every hotel we have stayed at has had minor problems that would only require tweaking to this or that to solve. Curtains falling off the rods, door stops broken or missing and the door handle banging into the wall behind, broken tiles that could be replaced, cupboard doors that are off the rollers and jammed so they do not open, shower doors off the rails so water leaks onto the bathroom floor. All of the could be repaired with simple tools and 5 minutes but they are not. ‘Not my job.’

Last thought. Our guide C has told us about the major difference between the communist regimes that ruled Yugoslavia and Albania from the end of WWII to 1992. Hoxha ruled with an iron fist in the manner of Stalin. Ghosting all of his real and imagined political rivals. He kept the people living in fear. There was no one allowed in or out of the country. He took away all rights. People were poor, had little to eat and rags for clothing. The country was in a worse state of isolation even after Stalin died and Nikita Khrushchev personally visited Hoxha and suggested he de-Stalinize his thoughts and run the country in a more humane manner. Hoxha doubled down and the country standards fell even deeper into despair.

In Yugoslavia, of which North Macedonia, Kosovo, and Montenegro were all a part of, Tito ran a sort of hi-bred communism. The people were allowed to own houses, buy cars, have a passport and travel. Tito was more in touch with the western world and tried to chose the ‘best’ parts of both sides. This made the 1992 transition from communism to capitalism less of a jump and people were able to transition much easier. From what one of our ‘local’ guides told me he didn’t even skim off millions of dollars to live in luxury and today his relatives work for a living like most of the citizens of those countries.