Bečići, Montenegro > Shkodër, Albania 83km

[Originally posted Sept 25, 2014]

Albania has been good to us. Better than I expected. From the moment we crossed the border, leaving Montenegro and the former Yugoslavia countries, things were different.

Know Your Roadkill - see Instagram for details.

Sveti Stefan, Montenegro

It's poorer. Much poorer. I've read that the years of communism here were particularly brutal and it took Albania a good 20 years to catch up with the rest of Eastern Europe. I guess this, in part, explains the pigs on the side of the road eating what's spilled over out of the dumpsters, the cattle that wander aimlessly down the highway and herds of sheep taking up entire lanes of traffic. All of this combined with scores of kids running to the side of the road when they see us coming to stick out their hands and give us High Fives as we pass has made for a very warm welcome to a country must Americans would put on the "probably don't want to go there list."

I only know two people from Albania. The first is a fictional character - "Marco from Tropoje", the villain of the movie Taken (with Liam Neeson - the guy with a very special set of skills). The other is Mother Teresa.  Although acquainted with her work in Indian she is actually of Albanian ethnicity, born in Skopje, Macedonia (although at the time Macedonia was part of the Ottoman Empire).  Also, Katy tells me this is where He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named sought refuge to regain his power.  It seems that so far we've had a greater dose of the Mother Teresa version of Albania.

Delicious dinner in Shkoder - grilled eggplant with onions, stuffed peppers, some sort of goat cheese with peppers spread and sausage and steak. All for 10€. Loving these Albanian prices.

After dinner we retired to the hostel, only to find a dysfunctional wifi situation. So Katy started reading about Albania, only to stumble upon a nice little adventure for us, as follows:

This morning we awoke at 5:20 - to a competing acoustic battle of a torrential downpour and a booming Call to Prayer. At 6:15am we got in a minibus and made the 2 hour journey to Lake Komani - a 35 km long lake formed by the damning of the river. The road was windy and bumpy. We boarded our ferry and took off to Fierze. The ferry was no more than an old bus, bottom chopped off and welded to the bottom of the boat. An interesting feeling, siting inside a bus, cruising along the lake. The lake cut through an incredible fjord, steep cliffs rising out of the water and shooting up into the skies.

The Accursed Mountains

Lady begins her long walk home.

Every 20 minutes or so the boat would pull up to a very small trail on the side of the lake and a couple people would get out of the boat (often accompanied with a couple large bags of stuff and always dressed very nice) and would proceed to begin the couple hour trek up to their homes high in the mountains (we often could not see where they were going but were told they lived up there somewhere).
After arriving in Fierze another 2 hour taxi took us to Valbona - a small village up in the mountains. It's great having the warm sun contrasted with the cool mountain air.
Dinner was with two other couples, one French (Basil and Adeline) and the other Swiss (David and Carol), both who are also currently on bike tours. It so happens we've met more cyclists in the last 24 hours than the rest of our trip combined. A great dinner sharing stories of the road and making jokes and asking questions about each other's countries and cultures.

Valbona, Tropoje, Albania

Basil and Adelin

It's now 11:38am the next morning. I'm about to settle into a nap on Valbona Pass. It was a 10km jeep ride this morning and then a nice 2 hour hike up to the pass, which sits between a couple mountains ranges in northern Albania - Kosovo and Montenegro are not far away.  It's a crystal blue sky kind of day, not a cloud to be seen, a warm sun compensating for the cool breeze. In the distance is the small town of Thethi, where we will stay the night. Our hike this morning has got us reminiscing about our days on the Annapurna Circuit in Nepal. The routine of wake, walk, wake, walk might be the only one superior to  wake, cycle, wake, cycle. Something about the quiet grandeur of mountain peaks speaks peace to my soul and puts me in a total calm. Mountains. Warm sun. Afternoon naps. Fresh air. It's heavenly. All in Northern Albania.

Trekking

Peace and Mountains

Panorama

Ibex on the lookout (supposedly sighting these is pretty rare).

Good looking picture.

The journey continues. Just finished dinner at a family run guesthouse in Theth. And by "family run" I mean, as we approached the home after our 6 hour hike, grandma and her son were in the front yard pruning a plum tree (it's always great seeing the elderly using saws and axes - reminds me of my own grandma). The gentleman's wife showed us the rooms (basically the second story of their home) and we agreed on 15€ for the night stay with dinner and breakfast.   After dropping our stuff in our room (we could choose any room in the place - it's september and that means low season - we are the only guests staying here tonight) we went back out to the sunshine - the huge mountains surrounding the small village cause an early sunset and cooler than typical temperatures. Katy enjoyed a warm cup of tea while I helped with the yard work, chopping the remains of the prune tree into firewood size pieces and hauling the scraps out to the perimeter of the property. The family only speaks Albanian and Italian, so our conversations were rather basic and full of hand gestures.

Whistle while you work.

View from Guesthouse

The Tower - read below for significance

Guesthouse

Allow me a slight detour to explain the most fascinating culture we've learned about the last couple days. Hundreds of years ago northern Albania was composed of many tribes, each with their different laws and customs. In an attempt to unify things, "the kanun" or constitution was written governing behavior among the people who lived in the mountains - it is a list of 1,200 or so laws that govern all aspects of life. The most interesting law is this - if a man murders another man, then the family of the murdered man is obliged (required) to revenge their loss by murdering the murderer or his closest male relative (or if the two families can reconcile and reach a truce then the required murdering is allowed to stop). However, once the original murderer is killed, the killing doesn't end. This family must now revenge their loss (even though the murder count is now 1-1). So, a single murder would often spark a back and forth killing between two families that could last for generations.  This practice was always enforced and led to blood-feuds between families for over 400 years, a constant back and forth of killing males (women and children always exempt) between families. The family we are staying with was apart of one of these feuds for over three hundred years. In an attempt to defend themselves they (the people we are staying with's great great great back three hundred years grandfathers) built a large tower in the middle of the village. When it was the opposing family's turn to murder one of them all the males would stay in the tower for weeks or months until they heard news that a cousin or uncle had been killed at which point they could leave the tower and return to normal life (along with planning their revenge). The family here says that over 300 years an estimated 300 murders took place between two very large families until a large truce was reached 100 years ago (it seems that these stories have all been handed down orally and the accuracy of 300 murders may be a bit exaggerated). You would think this savage practice would end, and it did when the communists ruled Albania up until the 1990s, but since then many old feuds are resurfacing. Some young men (I have no idea how many) in northern Albania who belong to these families, fearing they will either be murdered or not wanting the responsibility to avenge family members deaths, have left northern Albania to larger cities (Shkoder and Tirana supposedly have "safe homes" where men will stay for protection) or fled to other countries entirely.

Sounds crazy, I know. You must think then, is it safe to be there? Interestingly, the rules for hospitality shown toward guests as set forth in the Kanun are almost as strict as the rules for blood-feuds. In fact, a very well known blood-feud began when a male visitor assaulted a woman. As the man was leaving town he was killed by some people who learned about what he had done. Since the visitor had no family there to avenge his death, it became the responsibility of his hosts to avenge his death. This led to generations of a back and forth blood feud.  I guess what I'm trying to say is, if anything bad happens to us, we are in good hands. Ha.

The truck ride out of Theth to Shkoder was interesting to say the least.  I'm just glad we are still alive.  Then we had a great dinner with two brilliant British blokes we met on our ride back into Shkoder.  They even paid for our dinner.  Now a good night's sleep and tomorrow back on the bike.

Cool.