Sarandë, Albania

On the weekend of August 21-24, a group of Peace Corps volunteers traveled to Albania to celebrate the 30^th birthday of my site mate, Motwani.  He had organized this trip even before he turned 29, so we were all excited for this vacation.  For me, this was the first time that I would travel outside the country since April, so I was happy to experience a new place and culture for a few days.

On Thursday, we all boarded an privately-arranged kombi to travel to Albania.  According to Peace Corps rules, it is illegal for any PCV to drive in a country where the Peace Corps exists.  Since the Peace Corps is serving in Albania, we could not rent a car to drive to Sarandë, so ordering private transportation was our best solution.  Since we were picking up volunteers from Bitola and Struga, we took the long way through Albania to arrive to its Southern coast, which probably threw our driver off guard.

A little bit of history

Compared to Macedonia and Yugoslavia, I know very little about Albania.  The first time I learned about the country was when I was a kid from an episode of the Simpsons.  Bart is forced to participate in an foreign exchange program, where he is sent to France, and the Simpsons in return host a kind Albanian boy, who later turns out to be a spy.

Historically, Albania played the diplomatic game far worse than Yugoslavia.  It was under a Communist regime that stuck to its Stalinist roots even more so than Yugoslavia or the USSR.  Hoxha, the dictator of Albania for so many decades, closed off its borders, creating a closed economy and a somewhat ruthless regime.  For many years, Albania rejected its former allies (Yugoslavia and the USSR) since it felt that these powers rejected the purer form of Communism, and otherwise relied on China as its only trading partner and source of domestic investment.  As China started to reform its ways, the Asian power slowly dissolved its special relationship with Albania, leading to this small country’s decline to poverty.  In the 1990s, Albania instituted its first democratically elected government, thus ending its years of Communist rule.  After the conflict in Kosovo, relations with the US and the West have improved greatly, since NATO directly aided the ethnic Albanians who were experiencing genocide in the then disintegrating Yugoslavia.

Albania holds two of its leaders as national heroes of the state.  Skanderbeg was an important Albanian leader who led a resistance against the Ottoman Empire in the 1400s, allying himself with Christian kingdoms like the Venetians and the Papacy.  Ali Pasha was an Ottoman ruler who was born in Albania, but ruled within the Ottoman Empire in the late 1700s.  He ascended so high into the Ottoman regime that he ruled one of the largest janissaries of the Ottoman army.  However, in the early 1820s, he decided to lead an insurrection against the Ottoman Empire, claiming Albania as an independent state, but the rebellion eventually was quelled.  The resistance of these two men helped the Albanian people to think of themselves as Albanian versus Ottoman.

A Few Notes on Albanian Culture

There were a few things that stuck out for me while driving through Albania.  I had never witnessed anything similar to these points in Macedonia, so I figured I would write about them here.

1. As soon as we drove over the border, we noticed that many places had hoses running.  Albania is a dry place, so at first we assumed that they were used to reduce the dust in a construction zone.  However, we soon learned that car washes are extremely popular in Albania.  Part of the reason may be that Albanians love to wash their cars.  Another volunteer mentioned that a local told him that owning a car wash creates a tax rebate, and thus it is easy for a household along a major highway to set up this small business, thus reducing their tax burdens.

2. Driving by half-constructed buildings, I noticed that stuffed animals hanging from a corner of a building or scarecrows sitting on lawn chairs on the building’s roofs were common.  I wondered why this was the case, and an ethnic Albanian told me that they are there to scare off the evil spirits that would otherwise inhabit the half-built buildings.

3. Flocks of turkeys were a common site while driving through the Albanian countryside, and farmers herded them as they would goats or sheep.

4. We could see pill boxes were everywhere along our drive through Albania (especially at the borders and coasts).  Hoxha was extremely paranoid about invasions, so I assumed that many families were forced to help build their own pill boxes to help with the country's defense.

The Sun and the Sea

In my opinion, Sarandë was just like any other city in the Balkans, except that it was beautifully located right on the sea.  The city was undergoing quite a bit of development, especially on the Northern side of the city near our hotel.  However, the cost of living was quite comparable to Macedonia.  A beer would cost about one Euro, and dinners (even fish!) were pretty cheap.

Port of Sarandë

Since we took the long way to Sarandë, we arrived to our hostel well late into the night.  Like Macedonia, addresses simply do not function in Albania, so we were lucky to call and find our hostel.  Unfortunately, there was an issue with the communication reserving the space, so Ted, Jake, Husted, Kelly, and I would stay in a flat just down the road toward the center.  Before we moved into our accommodations, we went to a nearby restaurant where we enjoyed some of the freshest fish we had eaten for a long time.  Ted, Husted, and I stayed up late into the night talking with the host of the hostels, discussing Albanian history, Hellenic thought, and ideas about religion.

Since we did not sleep at a reasonable time, we were unable to join Kelly and Jake to the Blue Eye, a natural wonder near Sarandë, which essentially was a small spring with crystal blue waters and cold temperatures.  Upon waking up, we made our way to the center to have a nice Albanian meal.  After enjoying a quick, surprisingly authentic meal near the beach, we returned to our hostel to go for a swim.  After a 20-minute hike north of our hostel, we found a hidden beach near a hotel that was mostly enjoyed by locals.  We plunged into the cool Adriatic Sea and immediately rinsed ourselves of the hot Mediterranean sun.  Relaxing near the ocean was an experience Macedonain PCVs rarely experience, and we cherished our afternoon swim.  Afterwards, we purchased some fish and returned to the main hostel to enjoy a BBQ among company.  Ted, Spencer, and I had to gut an clean the fish at a nearby beach, and we joked that even thought this activity seemed token for us, many PCVs from other countries considered this a daily activity.

Our little hidden beach

Some pill boxes from the Communist times

Spencer teaching me how to gut a fish 

At Mango Beach

Later that night, many volunteers attempted to find the birthday boy by heading toward their hotel, which was in the opposite side of the city.  We arrived at Mango Beach, only to discover that Motwani and the other guys who were staying with him were not there.  Not at all disappointed, we enjoyed clubbing among other Albanians at this beachside bar.

Butrint and the End of Our Trip

On Saturday, many of us visited the UNESCO heritage site at Burtint.  Butrint is an old Greek city that was later inhabited by the Romans, and partially by the Venetians.  Since Butrint was located near the juncture of a lake and the ocean, it offered the perfect haven for boats, trade, and farming.  The city thrived throughout the Roman times, but an earthquake in the 4^th Century destroyed much of the city.  As the Byzantine Empire began to decline, the city lost its importance.  Eventually the Venetians took hold of the city, but it never again regained its prominence since the Venetians focused their commercial and administrative activities on Corfu.

Butrint was a short bus ride south of Sarandë, and it seemed almost secluded on an otherwise beautiful and touristy Albanian coast.  It was fun to be able to climb over ruins and the old city walls, and being located in a beautifully forested area helped to mystify the ancient site even more.  Remaining among the old ruins were the bones of a cathedral, broken segments of a once thick, encompassing wall, an amphitheater, and a rebuilt Venetian fort.  After touring Butrint for about 2 hours, we took the bus to Ksamil, a local beach resort that was much smaller than Sarandë.  This area is popular among Macedonians, so it was not too surprising that we heard Macedonian while swimming on one of the beaches.  

Sunset in Ksamil

As the sun began to set, we took the bus and made our way back to our hostel.  We ate our last Albanian meal, played on the bumper cars, and tried to get a good night’s rest before our ride back to Macedonia the next day.  Unfortunately, since many of the people we were riding with were departing in Skopje, the party decided to take the long way around Macedonia and ending in Prilep.  Thus, what would have been a 9-hour bus ride back to Prilep turned into a 14-hour bus ride.  By the end of the trip, I was both fascinated with seeing new sites and exhausted from sitting in a car for so long.  However, this was a warm-up holiday before my trip to Istanbul and Greece with my brother.