Balkans day 7: Albania

Picking up the pace a bit again today, as I bus across the border to Shkodër in Albania – and back. With a trip of this scope, one country was always going to get a raw deal, and this time it’s Albania. I’m on an Interrail pass, and Albania has, to a first approximation, no functioning railways. That’s very sad, and I’ll have to revisit the country some time, as it has much more to offer than I’ve been able to experience.

Photo of the ruins of an Orthodox church

The bus from Podgorica snakes round a northern inlet of Lake Shkodër to the city itself, the capital of the Gheg part of Albania. I was hoping to see the Accursed Mountains to the north, but they remained shrouded in accursed cloud. The freight-only railway from Montenegro into Albania is our constant companion, mocking me all the way. I get chatting to a fellow Brit, a lady from Yorkshire who’s spent seventeen months travelling all around the world on a shoestring after quitting her jobs. A different way of travelling – and I thought a month was a long time!

Mural on an apartment block in Shkodër

Interior of the Ebu Bekr mosque

The bus is a bit late, and drops me in an unexpected part of town, so I have even less time in Shkoder than I hoped I would. I content myself with seeing the central mosque, and the Marubi photographic museum, a recommendation. Marubbi was a pioneer of photography, an Italian who moved to Albania in the mid-nineteenth century. Under communism the family saw no way to continue its photography business, and donated its substantial photography collection to the state. Now they form a faithful record of the country’s history, and more besides. The incredible photo of Saint Mary’s Church in Kosina above is one of the (modern) images currently on display.

On the way back, the sun has come out, and the lake looks stunning as we roll up to the border post. In this direction the checks are substantially more stringent.

Lake Shkodër, looking northeast, on the Montenegrin side

(An excursus is in order on how I count whether I’ve “visited” a country. The answer is simple, if unsatisfying: my feet have to have touched the ground there. Thus, for example, I’ve been to Lithuania by virtue of stretching my legs in a bus station for two minutes on a coach journey from Riga to Warsaw, but until recently I hadn’t been to Liechtenstein, despite having been through it on the train multiple times. The criterion may seem counterintuitive, but it has the virtue of being easy to operationalize.)

And now I’m back on the rails. Where to? Find out in tomorrow’s instalment…