Go to Albania. Smoke Weed. Visit Berat. End up (almost) Kidnapped
This is my first article here. I write unusual travel stories. I also write other stuff, but mostly I write about my trips around the globe.
I am not a fan of travel guides, travel blogs and worse: travel Instagramers. I never saw traveling as a trend, once I saw it as an escape, but that was it, never a trend. So yes, I don’t write regular travel stories. Sometimes my stories are strange, bizarre and a bit exaggerated.
Once I had the idea that I could live off my writing about my time abroad. I got inspired by Jack Kerouac, by Paul Theroux and many others. I even wrote a book about it, I even got published in some major media outlets. I soon realized that I couldn’t live from it. I lived on 5$ a week in my parents basement. I was fucking miserable.
This is a story that I wrote some years ago. It is about my time in a little country in the Balkans, called Albania. The reactions to it were so out of proportion that I ended up pulling the article from the web multiple times.
But now, I am posting it again. Yes, it is a bit exaggerated. Yes, I didn’t intend to picture reality as it happened. Hey, here it is:
Intro: An Explanation
Albania is in itself a very bizarre place. After you read what follows you won’t believe me, but I did enjoy my time there. Tirana is a fascinating city in its own peculiarity, Berat was great to relax and Elbasan, well Elbasan was truly shitty. There’s no other way to put it.
My experience in this fascinating place got me so excited that soon after I left, I emailed a newspaper reporting my story and proceeded to spend 3 whole days writing non-stop. I wrote on buses, trains and at my friend’s house in Sofia, Bulgaria.
Please forgive my lack of honesty, my despicable judgment towards Albanian people and borderline stereotypical tendency to portray this country as a nest of criminals and mafiosos. If you’re Albanian, I am sorry.
But hey…
It was all Derek’s fault. Because of him I was about to be kidnapped by a taxi driver in a crappy town in the middle of Albania. It was all Derek’s fault…
Let’s go back 24 hours…
I am in Tirana, Albania’s capital.
The sky is cloudy and along with the warm weather, I start sweating as soon as I finish the coffee. It’s 11 am and I have to leave to Berat. Mario, one of the hostel owners tells me that he can drive me to the bus station, well, “not really to the station, but nearby”, he says. I close the door, we shake hands and he disappears in the chaos of the city traffic, full of rotten and noisy cars.
I only have to walk for five minutes and I’m there, right? No, wrong, very wrong.
I walk ten, twenty, thirty minutes and there’s no sign of any buses. This is typical here: nothing goes accordingly to the plan. I have no idea where I am, but it looks like a nice area. There are many cafés with terraces where the Albanian middle-class read newspapers while having breakfast: french toasts, coffee and cheap cigarettes. There is something in here that takes me back to my childhood in the 90’s: local clothing stores, VHS rental shops, and a certain organized craziness sweeping the town, even in the way people dress.
But it is not a strange feeling, not in Tirana at least. In the last couple of days I saw soviet buildings almost collapsing; crossed such a crazy traffic that I could swear I was in India; walked through the financial center that could fit in Berlin; and the street market where I bought my last lunch, fits perfectly in Tehran. Albania is a strange and bizarre country, even the Albanians reckon that.
I reach the next crossroad and approach a police leaning against a wall and sweating bullets. His English is surprisingly good and he tells me that I only need to turn left and walk straight for ten minutes. The only problem is that I walk for ten minutes and don’t see any bus stop. I get tired after walking for over one hour, and ask myself if it isn’t a better idea to turn back and go to the hostel. I could always stay there for some more days, smoking Albanian pipes and giving meaning to the clouds above.
I pass through some other terraces and ask the waiter if he knows where I can find the “Autobus”. He asks me if I want to seat and have some coffee, I say “No”, and he signals me to go away. “Fuck you”, I say in my best native Portuguese. And then I stay there, looking at people walking by and realizing that I’m completely lost. No idea at all. And out of nowhere, I’m approached by two kids in their teenage years.
“Berat….?”
“Yes.”
They signal me to follow them. Well, it isn’t like I have much of a choice is it? I accept their invitation and we walk side by side, through that dusty boulevard. They try to talk with me in their best English-Italian-Albanese, but I don’t understand a thing they say. I can only understand that they are coming back from school and one of them thinks that my hat is really cool. “This is strange”, I think, “Today is Sunday and they’re coming from school? Besides that, they saw I was lost pretty quick. I just hope they don’t belong to some kids gang who lures foreigners and get them in the human trafficking circuit.”
Sometimes they look at me and try to make up conversation, but I don’t really get what they are asking me. It’s funny and we all end up laughing. One of them tells me that the other is stupid because he can’t speak English. It’s even funnier because he also can’t speak. Maybe they are actually cool kids, even though one of them asked me again if he could put on my hat. I pretend that I don’t understand and smile back at him.
By now I have no idea for how long we have been walking, and I’m too tired to care. We’ve already crossed more streets than the ones I can count and they tell me that it is still further ahead. I ask them if their home is nearby and they shake their heads negatively, making a sign to explain that it’s in the opposite direction. Yes, they’re going to the bus station just because of me. I feel a bit tempted to give them my hat…
And soon enough, we reach a crossroad bigger than any other, a crossroad in which every car, engineless beaten down tractor, small bike, and van tries to pierce between the others, through the clear lack of space. There are sudden accelerations and I’ve got no idea how no one is crushed between those old metal cans. The kids crossed it like they were crossing a field of sunflowers, without a worry in the world. I stay still, with the bag on my side, confused and scared with the situation. They signal me to cross the road and start laughing.
I dance through that circling metallic typhoon and arrive at the other side soaking wet. The confusion is general, there are too many people and too much screaming. We pass through some rusty gates and ahead of me unfolds an apocalyptic scene, just like the ones in Mad Max: dozens of men yelling the name of weird cities such as Tropoje, Shkoder, Durres or Vlore. They start to approach me, there are so many of them. One of the kids grabs me by the arm and pulls me out of there. They point to a guy with a shirt that reminds me of a dining table cloth. He comes to us, asks them something and takes my luggage out of my hands. “What the fuck is going on?” They extend their skinny hands, I shake them and there they go home all happy and satisfied. The guy who took my bag is screaming at me. What? I jump quickly around the mud puddles, he opens the door of a van, I get in. This is the worst fucking van I ever saw in my life… There is nobody else in it. What have I done?
To Berat We Go
When the engine started the van was full and among us there was even two old ladies. I was way more relieved when I saw them. But still, I’m not sure whether this is the bus station where I should have ended up. I mean, this is not even a bus, it is a 9 seat van modified in a rather industrious way to fit 16 people. Sat next to me is a 10-year-old kid and on the seat behind a guy about my age that loves gold: necklace, bracelets and one of the front teeth. I can’t help but notice two guys who sit next to the driver and laugh hysterically.
I was expecting it to be a slow ride, but not like this. We have been driving through the country for 2 hours and the roads are the most destroyed, full of bumps and holes that I’ve ever seen. Certain road areas are completely under water and others covered in mud from some sudden flash flood. Our driving speed must be around 20 km/h and I have the imminent feeling that the van will break in half at any moment.
If all of this can already be considered an adventure in itself, we have to add up the fact that the driver stops wherever people ask him to. There was a very old man, and by far the poorest that I’ve seen around here, that left the van and walked across a field: there was nothing there besides the field and some mountains in the background. I thought it was very strange, but even weirder is the number of gas stations that there are in this country: one every five hundred meters, no joke.
But this was not the weirdest. What made me realize that there was something suspicious going on was the number of times that we stopped at the side of the road, one of the guys in the front would get out, run through a field and return with a plastic bag. That was something that I couldn’t understand and so, I tapped the kid on the shoulder and asked him what was going on.
He says:“Drogsta! Drogsta! Airoplane. Italy. Shiqperia. Drogsta.”
If I understood him correctly, those two guys in the front seats were picking up packages of drugs. Good, I am in a van of a drug smuggling operation. I can’t think of a more random situation to find myself in. I look at him with the dumbest face that I have and without giving me much attention he goes back to his cell phone game. I try to hide my anxiety. We slowly leave the country landscapes and some houses show up here and there. This looks, at least to me, like a small town.
As soon as we get to the town center, there’s a buzz inside the van. Suddenly, all I see is people rushing to close the curtains, and the kid leans over me and pushes our curtain. I can’t help but ask “What’s happening?”, and the golden tooth guy tells me, in a whispering voice, that it is illegal to travel that way. If we’re stopped by the police, we get fined. He signals me to be quiet and to hold the tip of the curtain. I hold it and my heart beats fast.
Again, I can’t conceive a better situation to be in than in a closed curtains van, in an illegal way of transport, being the only foreigner, not speaking Albanian, and having no idea where I am, besides being close to a guy who’s trafficking drugs. Everything can go wrong…
I am able to reach Berat without being arrested and ended up not paying for the trip. The driver stopped right in front of the hotel, took my bag out and wished me safe travels. It could have been worst…
Today I am going to stay in a hotel. I have been sharing bed bunk rooms with too many weed smoking, drinking-beer-out-of-the-can and sweat smelling Australians. Besides that, there isn’t a single hostel in Berat. The only hotel employee is sat next to me and we both drink beer while looking into the green mountains in front of us. I would like him to be quiet, but that won’t happen, he talks about everything that one can talk about Berat: that big white building, the olive trees, the supposed oil that was found in a nearby region. I don’t really care about any of that and thank God when the door bell rings and he has to run down the stairs. There aren’t many people here and that feels good.
Below this big open terrace there is a walk only boulevard, sided by the river and an old garden. It seems that every single family from this town is walking from one side to the other. It’s evening already and it’s Sunday. The sun hides behind the hills and I take a deep breath, thinking if it was worth to come to Berat. Was it? Of course not! Besides the castle and the One Thousand Windows Houses, there is nothing and even those picturesque houses are not that great. There is a small restaurant, a small bridge and the river. That’s it and that is not worth 4 hours closed in a fucked up van with drug dealers, driving through the worst roads of Europe.
To Elbasan then…
It’s just after 9 am and I am almost by myself in the breakfast room, I say almost because there is a silent Asian couple in another table. I wish them a nice day but they don’t say shit back. Fuck’em, I think, I need to get out of here. I walk to the place where all the taxis are parked and agree on a price to take me to the bus station.
From what I’ve seen last night, I have to go to Elbasan and from there take another bus to Ohrid, in Macedonia. When I arrive at the terminal, I realize that, after all, not every single bus station looks like a post-apocalyptical war scene.
There’s WiFi, croissants, hot coffee, a nice terrace and smiling waiters that are enchanted by a foreigner. I’m instantly in a good mood. I might be the only tourist in this place in the last forty years. I like it.
The journey to Elbasan is just like the one to Berat: slow, full of people coming in and out of the bus in random spots and with many missing parts of what a road looks like. I finish reading a book and look outside the window: the landscape is pretty, but it doesn’t come up any close to being breathtaking. And it is among some mountains that I see a grey blur. There are some factory chimneys and small pyramids of recycled metal. Some street signs read Elbasan and I start to assume that the big gray blur must be it.
Since I arrived in Albania I’ve seen quite a lot, but nothing like this. This is the limit that I conceive for a European city. As soon as we approach the edge of the city, I feel a cringe in my stomach. It is a visceral feeling and I ask myself why am I there.
We pass through, what I assume to be, the city’s main avenue: there are buildings crumbling down in front of my eyes, there are donkeys pulling carts, there’s a ridiculous amount of people outside and the sidewalks are full of old discardable stuff to sell: from beds to cookers, shelves to sofas. There are men with big mustaches who spit on the floor and sell old VHS recorders and outdated television sets. I have a difficult time processing everything that’s going on. This is the image that I’ve from old and vibrant countries, but instead of being colorful and joyful like in the touristic brochures, it is gray, noisy and with a toxic smell all over the city.
The bus stops in a random place where everybody gets out. Having no idea of what is going on, I get ready to follow them, but the ticket guy signals me to wait and tells me there’s another stop. I wait in my place, only the three of us, strangers in a big empty loud bus. There’s a strange poetic tranquility in here.
We stop again, this time I step out of the bus and the guy waves me goodbye. If this is a bus terminal it is a very strange bus terminal. I’ve got no idea where I am. To start with there aren’t any buses, and second there are too many guys leaning on old vans. In a few seconds I become the center of attentions and conversations. I get in a ticket vendor stall and tell him that I want to go to Ohrid, he says that it is in the next stall. I go there and he says the same thing. Next one. I ask in every single one of them and no one sells tickets to Macedonia. You can buy a ticket to London or Paris, but not to a 100km trip.
I look around and feel way too exposed. I also ask myself if the guy from the bus tricked me. In these situations, I’ve a certain tendency to become paranoid, but luckily my instinct speaks louder: through a rush of adrenaline I feel the urge to get out of there and quickly!
As soon as I think this, two guys start walking in my direction and in their faces a smirk is shaped. I can read their thoughts: “Let’s steal this guy” or perhaps “Let’s stab him, it will be fun.” I start walking before I have my back against the wall and out of nowhere another guy comes and asks me if I want to go Macedonia. I’ve no idea who this guy is, or his intentions, but I say yes.
He says something to the other two guys and they walk away while cursing me, I guess… He points to a black car while saying “Taxi”, and his friend opens the trunk. After seeing my carry-on bag, he points to the backseat. I understand that the first guy tells him I want to go to Macedonia. He then tells me that from there, his friend will take me to another bus station, because only there I can go to Macedonia. I have no idea of what’s going on, but by now I am used to the feeling. He starts the engine and we leave that bus terminal. I breathe in relief.
The taxi driver can’t speak any English. He asks me if I want to go to Macedonia by taxi, — in that one way that two people who don’t share a common language talk. I thank him but turn down the idea. He speaks about stuff that I can’t minimally figure out. After five minutes we are on the other bus station and he keeps insisting on taking me to the border. He points to some shit in the gates and I squeeze my eyes to understand to where he is really pointing at. He is right, I can only read the hanging plate in the closed gates: “Ohrid -> 11.00, 22.00”
Through the Albanian Highlands
I take a while to process all the information. Is it right? I look at the watch and again, I have no options. Right now, everything I want is to get out of this town, to leave this country. A country that in some way doesn’t want me to go.
“Macedonia, yes. Go.”
He smiles like I’ve never seen a taxi driver smile, and repeats several times “Let’s go, my friend, let’s go.” Maybe, it is a good idea to agree on a price before we start the journey, here you never know. I ask him and he takes the cell phone out of his pocket and writes a number on the screen that looks totally random: 2 million something. I frown my eyebrows and tell him that I don’t get it. He erases that number and shows me the screen: 80.
“Leke?”
“No, euro.”
I wave the finger in the air telling him that it is a no go. I have no euro and even if I had I don’t like to be robbed, it kinda ruins ones day. I try my best to make him understand that I only have Albanian currency, that I don’t have euro. But he doesn’t care, he repeats the word “euro” like a scratched vinyl disc. He shows me the screen one more time and now there is an even stranger and more random number. I suspect that if I keep on talking we’re going nowhere. I take all the leke bills in my pockets and show him, then I take the rest that I had in the wallet and hand him the money. He counts it and signs me “more”. I don’t have more, I tell him. I take the rest of the loose coins in my pants’ pockets, give him those and signal that I don’t have more.
He looks at all the money that I handed him and I can see him thinking. He tells me again that he wants euro and I tell him again that I don’t have any. He shrugs his shoulders, smiles and gives me a thumbs up. He starts the engine and we start rolling through the Albanian road.
I try to count the money I gave him, spread near the stick. It isn’t more than 14 euros and that, for 100km, is really cheap. I’m a bit more at rest as soon as we drive at a normal speed, even though I think it was a bit strange for him to lock the doors when I handed him the money. But it must be normal, safety measures, I guess. Paranoia is fertile.
I try to talk with him, you know, just to make the experience a bit more pleasant. I ask him if he likes living in Albania and if he lives in Elbasan. He starts talking and just like any other taxi driver, he just keeps on talking and talking — all they really need is just a short question, from there on it’s their game. He understands me way better than I understand him, as I can’t understand a single word…
“Official taxi. Document”, he says pointing to the glove compartment.
I signal that everything is okay and smile. I don’t get his point, but he repeats “Good taxi, document, see”. It’s only after a while that I understand the driver’s purpose on showing me the document: the car doesn’t have a single sign identifying it as a taxi. Nothing. So, after all, the guy was being quite nice. Yeah, I get it. I give him a thumbs up, that universal sign that everthing’s good. He repeats that he has the documents and opens the compartment by clicking on that little bouton.
He keeps talking, but I can’t hear a thing. Do you know that high pitched whistle that rings in your ears and for some seconds you are deaf? That was me. I look inside the compartment and alongside a series of papers, I see what seems to be a pistol.
Fuck… After all the guy wasn’t being nice, he wanted me to realize what’s going on. I know that in Albania there are 3 guns per inhabitant, but I wasn’t expecting this. To make things worse, we’re in a totally isolated area: there are lots of pine trees, mountains and hills, one shallow river or another… nothing else.
I can’t grasp any sign of civilization besides this road and this car. If this guy is from one of those human trafficking gangs, I can say that I am fucked. If he wants nobody will ever hear a thing from me again. Nobody knows that I have been in Berat or that I stopped in Elbasan. I feel like screaming, but it goes silent in the inside. I feel like getting out of this taxi, but stay quiet.
I am a deer frozen by the lights of a high speeding car.
The guy keeps talking but I can’t hear anymore. The idea that he can get out of the main road and drive into a dirt side road anytime, is too scary for me. The car, the speed, the music on the radio, the road, it all seems off the ground, it seems like a nightmare and I’m in one of those parts where you already know you’re dreaming and all you’re doing is waiting to wake up. But I don’t think that I’m going to wake up this time.
I say something again, only trying to make him understand that I’m just a guy traveling around Europe. I am writer, for fuck’s sake, I am not rich, perhaps even poor than you. I want to say this, but nothing really useful comes out of my mouth. I talk about football, about Portugal, about Cristiano Ronaldo and Barcelona and all that kind of nonsense. He voices his opinion which I don’t get and again I hear my thoughts louder than his words. I could think about my friends talking about me, long after I disappeared: “Do you remember Joao? No, not that one. Peter’s friend, that one! Dude he was kidnaped in Albania and nobody ever saw him again. For real!”
There are very few houses, I see an old woman walking alongside the road, and we pass through a restaurant. The only comfort that I’ve is that from every few kilometers there are signs with “Macedonia” written on. We cruise through what they call a city but to me it looks like a village. More broken bricks, many more gas stations and people crossing the road wherever they feel like.
The Point of No Return
We stop at a red light and he starts talking with a guy on the sidewalk. He puffs the cigarette before throwing it out the window. The other man says something, he points to me and they start laughing. He tells me that the other guy is his friend, I can’t figure out wether it’s a good or a bad thing.
“Macedonia. 20km”. He keeps on driving and the anxiety level rises. We leave the village behind and drive up the hill, cruising through each corner. I can’t speak anymore, I don’t have anything to say that he can understand. The road gets much worst, there are more holes and in certain areas the road turns brown. There’s too much dirt on it or maybe not enough tar.
I take some photographs with my cell phone, internet clouds can be truly wonderful, mostly if I’m never seen again and some asshole connects this to the internet. I put the cell phone in my pocket and I can see the border, maybe four hundred meters ahead, no, less than that, two hundred. I survived.
I’m still breathing in relief, when suddenly, I’m thrown to the middle of the car by the inertia of the steering wheel being turned full lock to the right. We drive to a side road surrounded by pine trees and small bushes. Few meters ahead he turns the keys and the engine is off. He opens the glove compartment and screams:
“Euro! Euro! Pistol!”
I feel beyond scared. Less than one kilometer from the border and I’m locked in a car with a mafia related taxi driver. He keeps screaming “pistol! pistol!”. Freeze, flight, fight. I am in the first state of survivalism. He says that he wants euros and I suddenly wake up from my mortified state and start to match his tone. I have no euros, I already gave you all my money. I scream Macedonia like I’ve never screamed for my own country and by now we are both screaming at the top of our lungs.
He moves the coins around and throws them to the floor. He points to the pistol and screams “euros” one more time. I don’t stop my frantic rant for one second: I show him the pockets, I take off the jacket and turn it inside out to show that I don’t have a thing in there. And in the same way that I realized that I couldn’t show him how scared I really was, I realized that if I keep screaming nobody would get out of there.
I stay quiet and stare at him “Calm! Calm!”. I signal him the same and he also shuts up. I point my index and middle finger to my eyes and then to the wallet. I pretend to look for more money in there, and then I open it in front of his face so he can see that I really don’t have any more money.
He says, once again, that he wants euros. I repeat the same eye signal, but now pointing behind the seat. He sticks his thumb in the air. I sign him that I have to get out of the car and check it through the door. He says that I can turn back. I point to the pistol and make one of those “c’mon man, I am not stupid, be reasonable” kind of expression. He sits on that decision for brief seconds and I can see how reluctant he is in opening the car doors, but I also see that he doesn’t want to take this any further. He understands that I really don’t have more money and that nobody wins if he points me the gun one more time.
He says some shit in Albanian and pushes a button, unlocking the doors. I see everything in slow motion, the seatbelt is off, the door opens, I take three steps to reach the rear door, I open it, run the bag’s zipper and I tell him, with the most näive face I have, that I can’t find a single bill. Then I reach the point of no return.The violent collision with reality…
I close my fist around the handle, turn my body in the opposite direction and run for my life. I don’t look back, I never look back and run like I’ve never run until I reach the main road. There, I turn right and keep running. I am in the middle of the road, I don’t care if there are cars coming my way or not, I barely feel my feet touching the floor, the bag is already hanging on my shoulders. With all the adrenaline rushing through I don’t even feel tired or breathless. I just run.
I come close to the car queue before the border. I pass through the cars and slow down, feeling my heart beating so fast that it feels like it’s going to jump out of my mouth. I take the passport out and enter the small border office. There aren’t many questions, while I smile nervously she stamps the passport with a big red Sun.
“Welcome to Macedonia”.
It is just a border, I know, but I’ve never been happier to cross a border in my life. In certain moments I thought I’d never get out of Albania, a country in which I stayed one week when I had planned to stay no more than three days.
It sure is a bizarre place, although the people are beautiful, nice and they love foreigners. I don’t blame them for what happened to me, bad things happen all the time. I ended up being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Nothing else.
Even that taxi driver, as I cross the border, I can see that he’s only a human being and he just wanted some money — which I do have more than him, anyway. It would be unfair to blame him for it all, while there are so many bad people in the world doing bad deeds, he’s just another one. Nothing more.
“Taxi? Ohrid?”
Yes, please, taxi to Ohrid. I feel strangely liberated, I feel free from the fear that consumed me, I am a buddhist monk who attained moksha. I could have died, but I’m alive. It can’t get any better than this, can it?
It is only 4 pm and still, it’s all Derek’s fault…
