Third World Europe (Albania)

One scene to sum up Albania:

We’ve just waved down a minivan which shuttles people between different parts of town, like a poor man’s bus, and we are heading into the coastal city of Durress from our beach front suburb where the buildings crowd in an ad hoc fashion which suggests a complete rejection of town planning. The minibus is dark from the curtains everywhere but the windscreen, which has a spiderweb crack that spreads from one side almost to the other. At the first traffic lights we hit a baby is fed into the driver’s side window and takes hold of the steering wheel and steers for five minutes to the next lights. Arms come in and take the baby back out, and then are replaced by the open hands of beggars who walk between cars stopped at the lights. The light goes green and the car in front of us nearly crashes into another car that speeds around it on the left to make a sharp right. I just sat there wondering if I was still in Europe. Sure, Eastern Europe was edgy, but this was something else – I’ve seen more civility in poor Asian countries. This was Third World Europe.

One day to sum up Albania:

The buses don’t leave the capital city Tirana from a designated bus station, so we get up early and walk 40 mins with our heavy packs to a quiet street where the buses going south take off. We hadn’t been on a bus in Albania that hadn’t broken down at least once, so we weren’t expecting a smooth day, but we had no idea what we were in for.

We had 290kms to get to the southern town of Sarande. Firstly, we drove halfway there then the driver said there was a problem so we waited in a café for 2 and a half hours. It was hot, we didn’t know where the hell we were, and we weren’t sure if we were about to be abducted from those baddies from ‘Taken’ who come from Albania. Turns out the buses don’t run between towns unless there is enough people, and there’s no such thing as a sure timetable. It’s a nightmare if you’re on a tight itinerary.

We ended up back on a bus but were hardly relieved because at first it was just me and Erin and the two men driving/attending the minibus. Also, we were heading back the same way we had come. Soon two police got in, and I knew not to take any comfort from that. Not in Albania. Erin and I looked at each other and trip to figure out a plan to escape, and realising there was none I reassured her that they might not want to murder us. They might just want to rape us.

My shoulders relaxed when more people hailed down the bus from the side of country road and soon we had even swung around and were heading south again. We were at Sarande by 6. It took 11 hours to go 290 kms. And the cherry on top is that when we got there we couldn’t find our accommodation so we asked a local to call the number of the hotel, only to be informed that the hotel was now closed. We had a booking!

 One shake of the head to sum up Albania:

It neighbours Greece and is a short ferry ride across to Italy, but Albania might as well be on the other side of the planet, nestled in next to Cambodia and Laos. This is the first country to make Atheism the national religion. It's where the baddies come from in the movies, and where Voldemort went into hiding. This is where the bins on the beach aren’t actually bins but piles of trash on the waterline. It’s pathetic in so many ways, assumedly thanks to a soviet hangover. I feel sorry for the people; their neighbours are first world and they are so close but so far away. That sort of close range comparison must be painful.

We came in from the north, trailed down on dodgy buses to the coast, the inland to the capital and then down to the southern border town, which looks directly across at the Greek Island of Corfu. In the Capital, there is a pyramid shaped mausoleum that the former dictator built for himself, but has gone unused and has been trashed. It’s one of the key sights of the capital.

 In the north we visited castle ruins on top of a hill, and pretty much had the whole thing to ourselves.

If nothing else, their flag is interesting (up top). Also interesting is the KFC rip-off AFC, standing for Albanian Fried Chicken. I’m not sure you could get away with this in too many other European countries.

 

It would all be forgettable if it wasn’t so fucked up. But as I’ve said, it’s the ordinary that can have more of an affect rather than the extraordinary. And that’s the only case Albania can plead.

Get your fruit on the beach.

A Little Visit to A Little Country (Montenegro)

After starving ourselves in Dubrovnik and only eating the cheapest food we could find, we were eager to get into Montengero and order a feast on the cheap. We both needed some protein, and as soon as the bus dropped us off in town, we went and dumped our gear then searched for a place we could find a steak. We sat down and ordered a T Bone steak each. What came out was two pork chops, so undercooked that we could only eat the edges, and for the rest of the day we were looking at our watches wondering when the food poisoning was going to hit.

Our first stop was in the Bay of Kotor, which is a flooded river valley like Hawkesbury River. This means the water gets very deep, very fast, and as such has allowed large ships to come in and pull right up onto the shoreline in these nice, tucked away crevices of the valley. Kotor is the main town within this bay, and has long been a port town. Above the city and stretching up the mountain is the ancient fortifications which lie in ruin, but they can be climbed for a great view of the bay, the mountains which loom above it, and the town below.

We stayed right in the middle of the ‘old town’ area, giving us great access to explore all the quiet and narrow cobblestones streets and back alleys. Museums tend to bore me quick, but the Maritime museum here with old model ships was really cool.

 

 

 

 

Compared to Dubrovnik, this placed seemed to be deserted, and it was great to be able to get a cheap meal, right on the central square, right next to the grand cathedral, while watching the local boys played soccer on the pavement. Dinner and a show.

 

 

 

 

 

 

We caught a bus down along the coast and saw other interesting parts of the coastline.

 

Montenegro is a tiny country. You could fit it six times over into Tasmania and it has less than a million people. It’s not part of the European Union yet but sure seems to be on the way. When planning this leg we only put two stops in Montenegro, which is really doing ourselves a disservice, but something had to be cut because Rinski’s time was a factor, and in retrospect I’m glad we did Montenegro on the lean so we could spend more time elsewhere.

The second stop was in a beach town called Ulcinj, with an Albanian majority. There’s not much to say about this place really. There’s an old town overlooking the sea, a poor man’s Dubrovnik, the beach was polluted and full of umbrella’s, Eurotrash everywhere I looked, stray cats that looks a few gasps away from death. Still, we had a good time here. We bought Tuna to feed sickly cats, we went for a swim in the filthy water and it was somehow refreshing, and we had a great meal in a restaurant sitting right on the edge of the cliff in the ‘old town area’ watching the sunset over the Mediterranean and seeing the purple dusk wash over Montenegro’s craggy coastline.  

And we waited at yet another bus stop to go somewhere new…

Comfy Croatia (Croatia + a bit of Bosnia)

 

Of the countries that I’ve visited this year, I would say Croatia is the place where I could live my life happiest. It’s relaxed, orderly, and as of two days before us entering, it’s part of the European Union. It’s pleasant. And that usually means a place is boring or dull. But there was nothing dull about what we saw.

 

We flew into the capital Zagreb. It’s got a cool name and a Lord of the Rings pub that we had a drink at, a nice street culture, with pleasant avenues and parks. Oh, and one of the most impressive gothic churches I’ve seen this year. It’s a cool city of less than a million people that I could happily live in.

Next we caught a bus to Plitvice Lakes National Park, known for their cascading lake system and bears. Yep, lots of bears. God dam, these lakes were idyllic. They looked like something out of Lord of the Rings. It’s a whimsical thing to say, but they looked magical. The small turquoise ponds, the bigger lakes, the waterfalls, the colour of the water, and even the temperate forest away from the banks. One of the highlights of the year for me. And here’s my inadequate attempt at capturing it on camera.

 

 

 

And our homely guesthouse:

Next we went up and over the Dalmatian Mountains, beginning of the Balkans which we would follow down to Greece. Immediately the scenery was different, a shift to more rocky and bare landscapes with the Mediterranean below. We stopped at the town of Split, which has an ancient old town area that we stayed in, and in the centre is the world’s oldest cathedral. Here we swam, ate Italian food (because Italy is next door neighbour and the dominant food culture here) and explored the old town.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We caught a bus down the coast in what was one of the most scenic roads I’ve been on all year. We were on narrow roads halfway up the Dalmatians overlooking the sea and the small towns and crystal clear beaches below.

Soon we arrived at passport control and handed over our passports to be stamped into Bosnia, only to drive on for about 40 minutes, take a short break and a couple of photos (right), and go on through the border to the small parcel of land that is Croatia’s most southerly point; Dubrovnik.

I remember seeing this town on the cover of a Lonely Planet magazine lying around the house six months ago. I thought it looked pretty nice, and to be dramatic I said to Mum and Dad; ‘I’m going to go to Montenegro and go here this year.’ I thought it was in an entirely different country but nonetheless I made it. And it was as perfect as the magazine showed it.

 

An ancient port town which is very much in tact, it’s one of the coolest towns I’ve ever seen; this too looked like something out of Lord of the Rings (actually it’s a filming location for Game of Thrones). It was nice to swim and snorkel in the clear waters of the Mediterranean and look up and see the ancient city in front of you.

It was all starting to feel like a holiday, which isn’t really the point of this year. But I reminded myself, soon enough we’d be going in Albania. I should enjoy comfy Croatia while I could.

 

Rin and I shared a bottle of wine and watched the sun go down over the coastline.

 

 

 

Back to Istanbul (Istanbul/ Gallipoli, Turkey)

I was back in the city that put me on edge just a couple of weeks before and within twenty minutes I was already on edge again. When we checked into our hotel, the manager was going on about how we can save money if he calls the administrative company who we booked through and says the credit card was a fake, so the booking would be cancelled and we could each keep the 10% admin fee if we pay cash. Then, going out to buy a bottle of water the clerk short changed me. Jesus.

 We went to collect Jac from the airport, and grew increasingly concerned as an hour and a half after his flight landed he had not yet come through into the arrivals hall. Finally, he came out, looking a little wired from the flight and the fact he couldn’t find his luggage until the lost property attendant was taking it off an empty carousel. But he was here, in Istanbul! One hell of a city for Jac to begin his travels. While its quiet westernised and developed, the mosque dominated skyline, the muslim majority, and the general chaos on the streets make it an interesting and possibly confronting place to start. Erin, Jac and I had a week together here, and I think it’s safe to say the city that I had gone through so much in just weeks before put on their best manners for the new arrivals and succeeded in blowing their minds.

 

It is officially, politically and geographically, the place where East (meaning middle east) meets West, the binary separated by the massive river ‘Bosphorus’ which runs through the middle of the city, speckled with ferrys, tankers and military ships. There’s heaps to see here, and we covered it all;

The Mosques; epic and alien, spread throughout the whole city, Asian and European side.

 

The Grand Bazarr; big old market place selling everything from turkish carpets to lamps and decorative plates.

The aqueduct; Old roman structure to store water for the cities occupants

The Spice Market; herbs, spices and Turkish delight.

Taksim Square; the people squares – cleaned up and back in the hands of the authorities.

Galata Tower; view over the entire city, and the great Bosphorus that runs through it.

The Grand Palace; beautiful old rooms and some historical artefacts. I was especially impressed by Mohammad’s sword and Moses’ staff. Yep, that’s right, the Moses from the Bible (and Koran).

(Sidenote: I also did a trip up to the Black Sea last time I was in town. Although I didn’t get to see the fabled vampyr mermaid.)

One day we did a tour down to Gallipoli. I wasn’t overly keen, with the nationalism and those southern cross tattoos that a lot of (simple) young people are identifying with these days, I didn’t feel particularly obliged to make the pilgrimage down to Anzac Cove. But I’m glad I did, because it was surprisingly interesting and a very informative day. I learnt more about the Anzacs in one day than I did in high school (helps being at the site where it all happened I guess), and even got a glimpse into the Turkish perspective of it all. Highlights included Anzac cove (seeing the huge hill they had to climb to fight the enemy), the Beach Grave and Lone Pine (where the important battle took place).

During our time in the city we ate well. Very well. Even Jac tried a few new things. this place below was a favourite of mine when I was here alone a few weeks ago. It was cheap, good, and it was just poor local men who ate there - in other words it was real. Erin and Jac referred to it as the 'soup kitchen' and they wouldn't go back.

Kebap, Lamachan, Shish, Iskender, Baclava…

 

Sadly, one night after a great meal, the bill came out and it was very different to what we were expecting. Beyond double, in fact. We went down swinging and took some arriving tourists with us.It was touristy, we should have known better.  It’s just a shame you let your guard down for one meal and you get ripped off.

 

 

My personal highlight of the city is the Galata Bridge. It’s a small bridge that crosses the inlet of water known as the Golden Horn. It is two levelled; below is restaurants and bars, and above is the road, tramway, and locals fishing off the bridge. Lots of them. To me it was the perfect symbol of the city; you’ve got a huge influence of the upmarket west, but above that there remains the local man doing the same thing his grandfather was doing 60 years ago. It was daggy clothes and hungry belly’s directly just above expensive jewellery and nightly feasts (I liked that it was above). And to me, that sort of diversity and contradiction in a town that is the meeting point of East and West is its defining characteristic. 

Having Jac and Rin with me was a highlight of my year. I felt happier than I have in all my travels. We had a great week together and it was sad to see Jac off at the airport. But he had places to be and so did we…

Dreams of Mars Landings and Cotton Mountains (Turkey)

 

I went to the airport and by strange coincidence met a pretty young girl who had glorious ideas of traversing the Turkish terrain. She had come all the way from Australia and her name was Rinski. I couldn’t take my eyes off her, and every word she spoke was poetry to my ears. So I said, Yeah, of course I’ll be joining you. And finally, after months of being apart, we were together again. It felt like a dream.

We travelled around Turkey together. These are the places we visited:

Selchuk

The town is very quiet and laid back – perfect for what I wanted after Istanbul. Rin and I had a great time exploring the ruins or a citadel in Selchuk and the following day walking 3 kms out of town to reach the bigger ruin complex, which hosted an impressive ancient Roman amphitheatre. The history, which I won’t detail here, was quite interesting. But to me the point of travelling is not to see what people were doing way back when, but to see what they are doing now. I am usually affected more profoundly by the ordinary as opposed to the extraordinary, though the latter can be usually be well worth the entrance fee. That’s why, when Rin and I stumbled across a market with locals selling veggies and homemade clothing etc., I was pleased to see the locals living their interesting and different lives in the now. We bought some Turkish delight and some nuts off an old lady, and some fruit off an old man.

As turkey is a Muslim majority country, the Mosques throughout the town and the countryside in reaching the town were very impressive, and the call to prayer (an Arabic song reciting the Koran) that sounds several times a day makes these small towns so much more exotic. 

 

Pamukkale

 

As we got closer to Pammukale, which translates to Cotton Mountain, the white mass that looks like its snowed on just one section of a mountain slope got bigger and bigger. Exploring the natural phenomenon, I remember thinking it was somehow a combination of a ski slope and a cave. The limestone feature is, as the photos show, pure white and crystalline, and looks completely surreal in the landscape. Add the pools, which punctuate the slope, and the streaming water which constantly flows over the slope and allows this feature to continue to grow, and it soon looks like the set of a sci fi movie. It was great to walk around barefoot and take a dip in the pools. And a cherry on top is the ancient ruins just above where an ancient peoples set up shop to take advantage of the nice pools and great scenery.

Fethiye

My first swim of months of swims in the mediterrean, and a great place for it. Also, here we caught a bus up into the hills to visit an old Greek town that had been cleared out and abandoned when the Turkish government kicked all minority Greeks out of the country. To this day it remains as a ghost town. From there we walked 10kms back into town in the 38 degree temperature.

 

 

 

Antalya

The town has a nice ‘old town’ area but trying to explore it during the day where temperatures were a sticky and humid 38 degrees was a bit painful. Nonetheless, there was some nice coastline scenery with waterfalls pouring over small cliffs into the calm Mediterranean sea, and crystal clear water. And Antalya was the place of one of my fondest memories this year; each night we’d head down to the pebbly beach after the sun had gone down and the air cooled off, and swim in the clear water as the sky turned pink and the growing moon rose over the sea horizon. To make it more perfect there are enormous mountains to the right of the horizon which were painted in soft blues and purples that time of day, and to the left a steady stream of planes taking off into the evening sky. It felt surreal. Floating on the dusk…

                         (no photo because we never wanted to take valuables down to beach)

Konya

As I previously mentioned about the ordinary being more satisfying than the extraordinary, Konya was one of the highlights of Turkey for me. There’s not a lot to see or do here but it was a fascinating place to stop because it was not touristy at all and Erin and I were getting looks from the locals. This town is one of the most conservative Muslim in the country and the majority of women cover up. I had to put on long pants in the heat and Rin had to cover herself up a lot, just to be respectful. When we went to visit a mosque, she had to cover everything, including her head. But hilariously, in a market place we saw a stall selling all sorts of lingerie, some of it quite kinky, by a lady in full black headpiece. It really makes me wonder what goes on under those burkas.

In this town we got to see a performance of the dervish twirling dance, which is a Sufi dance that connects the dances to god as they spin endlessly and go into a trance. It was cool to see.

Cappadoccia

The most highly anticipated stop here and it didn’t let us down. It’s a strange landscape of white and pink rock  jutting rock and ‘fairy chimneys’ pointing into the sky, some of which people have hollowed out to live inside. We stayed in a cave hotel and did lots of hiking. Walking through this bizzare landscape and hearing the Muslim call to prayer in the distance just made the whole thing more alien.

The highlight was getting up at 3.30 in the morning to do a balloon ride over the landscape at dawn. This was extraordinary, and as I said, sometimes it’s worth the entrance fee. We floated in amongst the valleys of the mars like landscape and then high into the air as the sun rose and the moon went down. That blew my mind.

The air was so calm that our driver landed the balloon on the trailer and we didn’t get to crash land (which I was looking forward too).

 

Antalya

The capital city of Turkey. I guess it’s like Canberra in the sense that there’s not much going on. We made a stopover just to have a look around and while there wasn’t much to see in terms of sights, it was nice to walk around and see people go about their business. Also, there was still tension between protesters and police, which made me a little concerned about heading back to Istanbul…

                                                     (above: Fethiye, below: Feasting)