Hitchhiking trip from the Netherlands to Albania

The idea of visiting Albania originated some 18 years ago, when I was about 9 years old. My sister and I got this family game called Travel through Europe. This game consisted of a map of Europe and a couple of dozen cards. Each card contained a city in Europe and some information about it. Each player had to draw 10 cards, the first card you had drawn would become your begin and end point of your travel. The point of the game was to organise the 10 cards in such a way that you would get the quickest and shortest route possible and beating your opponent by returning to your base before they would. All places could be visited over land (2 dices) or by air (6 dices in 1 zone). Except for Albania. Though it shares borders with Greece, Macedonia, Montenegro and Kosovo, in this game the only way to get there was by plane. Flying in and out of place only seemed a good option if the places you were visiting were to far apart. The changes you would throw a 6 to get in and a 6 to get out were quite small. Not long after we had this game, we hated Albania. It was a time consuming business to get there and away and the card didn't tell anything interesting about Tirana. After a while it was clearly visible who had drawn the Albania card, since this person would make a horrified face. 'Hehe, you have to go to Albania, right?', we, the lucky ones, would comment. In short having to go to Tirana meant you had already lost the game. There was no way you could make up for waiting 26 turns in Belgrade to fly to Tirana and another 26 to get out of there. My sister and I played this game numerous times without using the Albania card at all. When I asked my mother why it was impossible to get there over land, she explained that Albania was an isolated and closed country. In general foreigners were not welcome to visit the place and she thought this was symbolically made clear in the game, by having no land routes. Since then I've been extremely curious about Albania and how the place would be like.

I've tried before to get there, but each holiday something would get in the way. Such as the pyramid scheme in 1997 and the Kosovo crisis two years later. Last year I decided I had waited long enough and thought of a way to get to Albania. I didn't want to fly in. Even though that used to be the only option in the game, I thought it would be too much of a shock to get there fairly easy. I knew I just had to go over land. Busses in general drive me nuts. Lack of space and stopping for breaks are reasons to avoid busses. I've hitchhiked a lot in and outside Europe, so I thought it might be a good practical joke to hitchhike to Albania during the Christmas vacation.

Preparations

Once I had decided to hitchhike to Albania in winter, I had to take a closer look at my gear. My backpack dated back to my trip to Nepal in 1993 and had been mended and bended over the years. It was also a bit too big for hitchhiking. When hitchhiking it's wise to keep your bag close to you and not in the trunk or back seat. It needed to be replaced, so I bought a nice 25 liter backpack. I soon found out all my traveling stuff was over 10 years old and I really had to replace most of it. Thank god my light weight sleeping bag was and still is in good shape. And so were my hiking boots. That cut down expenses for great part. What I needed was new thermo underwear, a new jacket, a new compas, updating my medical kit, a travel guide and a couple of new woolen socks.

Having sorted out my travel materials, it was time to plan route to travel. I bought a huge map of Europe and put it on my bedroom wall. I would first travel from venlo to Trieste in Italy or Koper in Slovenia, about 1200 kilometres. I had figured this would take me about 24 hours. In Trieste it was possible to take a boat to Durres, a coastal town in Albania. This would be my first option. Hitchhike to Trieste and try to get on a freight ship there. Alternatively, in case this wouldn't work, I would move on to Reijka in Croatia and on to Dubrovnik. If I would end up in Dubrovnik, I would stay there for a few days to see the town, befor entering Montenegro. This posed a bit of a problem at first. The Yugoslav embassy in The Hague wouldn't issue a visa to me, since I needed an invitation and a pre-arranged travel initiary. I didn't had either one of them and my application was declined. Officially one needs a visa to enter Montenegro, but soon I read numerous travel reports from people who had been there, without a visa. The Montenegrin border patrol would let anyone in with a European Union passport. I took the risk of being turned away at the border and planned this alternative route via Podgorica. From Podgorica I had to get to the Albanian border, get cleared and continue to Shkoder, a town in northern Albania. I couldn't estimate how long I would be on the road, because once in the former Yugoslav republics, road conditions are very bad. I decided I would take my time and find out myself how long it would take me to get there.

Day one: Venlo - Reijka

Hitchhiking in the Netherlands is not really an option if you want to get anywhere within reasonable time. Dutch people aren't very keen on taking hitchhikers along and I haven't quite figured out why. I'm not sure if it is because the hitchhiker gets a ride for free or whether they consider all hitchhikers to be bloodsucking murderers. To avoid long hours of wating along the highway just a few miles from my home, I took a train to Venlo, which is about 150 kilometres from The Hague at the Dutch-German border. German people are great when it comes to hitchhiking and they hardly hesitate to take you where you want to go. From the railway station I walked to the Texaco gasstation at the border and looked for a ride. It was 9:30 in the morning and traffic was low. It took less than 10 minutes to get a ride with a truckdriver, Rudy, to Wurzberg, Bavaria. Rudy was very, very silent and didn't really want a chat. I still wonder why I gave me a ride, probably to help me out. He was much more focussed on the traffic information for Southern Germany. This got our conversation going for at least an hour. When I set off for my trip I hadn't thought of the upcoming Christmas holidays. Of course I knew Christmas was not far away, that's why I left Holland in the first place. But it didn't occur to me that may be a couple of million Germans and Dutch people thought of the same thing. Though we only encountered slow traffic at two places on the road, the prospects were terrible for the South of Germany. Apparently there was at least a 30 kilometer car line from Munich to Salzburg. We arrived at Wurzberg Gas station without too many traffic hazards and I got out and wished Rudy a great Christmas.

On my way to the toilets I noticed a man was looking at me, while he went into the station's shop. I figured he thought I was a hitchhiker and he probably wanted to ask me where I was heading to. My first priority however was getting rid of a couple cups of tea and water. When I returned to the gasstation's shop the man was gone. Bummer. I walked towards the parking lot hoping to meet any southbound people. Halfway down a car stops next to me. It was the man I saw in the shop! He drove a brand new Audi TT. He had to go to Ingoldstad but thought it was boring to drive alone. If I needed a ride? Of course! Everything looked fine, so I got in and off we went. His name was Jens and he was a salesman, driving around Germany most of the time selling mechanisms for agricultural equippement. Unfortunuatly he would only go to Ingoldstad. A couple of times a month he would drive to Zagreb in Croatia to do business. Well I still considered myself lucky to get a ride in such a fancy car. We got along just fine and reached Ingoldstad in no time. By this time it was getting dark and I was getting really hungry. Since I always ask people to let me off at a gas station, I was able to go to the restaurant and eat some filthy, half-raw chicken to satisfy my stomach. That was a bit of a mistake. After dinner, I really wanted to get a bed and a shower and sleep for a few days. Very tempting, but I dragged myself to the parking lot to look for truck drivers.

Here's were I met the Austrian truck driver Robert. We got along immediatly. Apart from being a truck driver, he was a very well mountenair in a rescue team near Salzburg. He had some great stories about tourists getting in trouble and he and his team trying to get them out of it. He had been to Nepal as well and it was great exchanging travel experiences and compare the differences of our trip. God was on my side, since the horrific traffic chaos had dissolved when we drove south towards Salzburg. In Austria it was really winter. Not like in Holland where we have 15 degrees celsius and some drizzle. In Austria there was snow on the streets! Just before Salzburg Robert had to disconnect the container from his truck, because he didn't want to drag it along the tiny roads in the mountains to his house. We went to this truck parking lot trying to release the container from the truck. It seemed stuck. We tried for half an hour in the cold but it was useless. He would have to take the container home. He than drove me to a gas station on the highway to Italy and insisted he waited for me to get a good ride out of Austria. It was just past twelf in the night and very quite. Apparently there had been weather warnings over the radio and most truck drivers seemed to spent the night at the petrol station. We walked around the parking lot and Robert talked to some of the drivers. Finally there was a Turkish couple, not very keen on hitchhikers, but Robert knew them and he convinced them everything was oke. They would take me to Villach. I said goodbey to Robert and we exchanged telephonenumbers to stay in touch (and we do). The Turkish couple lived in Austria and was going to Istanbul to spent the upcoming hollidays with their family. The weather didn't turn as bad as was predicted and the roads stayed clear. By this time the driver's wife and I had been talking about Turkey for a while and my trips there and she suggested I could come as far with them as Udine in Italy.

At 4 o'clock in the morning I'm let off at a gas station just outside Udine. It's bitter cold and again very little traffic. Most drivers are heading for Venice to take the boat to either Greece or Turkey. I wait outside the station's shop just below a 'forbidden to hitchhike' sign. Can't help it. There are no busses here, so I ignore the sign. Finally a Turkish truck driver, on his way to Trieste, offers me a ride. A bit of mistake as it turns out. After a couple of minutes he takes out a huge bottle containing some orange ooze. I thought it was alcohol, so I politely declined the offer. It turned out to be some disgusting cologne. He pours the foul smelling ooze generously over his hands and rubs them over his neck and throat. He makes enquiries about my occupation. Since 'cultural anthropologists' doesn't mean a lot to most people, especially not when you're only able to have a basic mutual understanding, I tell him I'm a doctor. This always works just fine. Internationally everybody knows what a doctor is. All of the sudden he pulls out a huge knife from the back of his seat and starts waving with it and making cutting moves. I'm a bit puzzled. He wasn't threatening me with the knife, he was just waving with it. I've triggered something because all of the sudden he enthousiastically talks to me in Turkish. After a couple of seconds I got the point. He wanted to know whether I was a surgeon. Damn, didn't see that one coming. Usually people don't ask any further. Now we've sorted out that I'm, apparently, a surgeon he wants to know if I have a boyfriend. I don't have a boyfriend, but I told him I had. My driver decided we had spend enough time with little chit chat and suggests sex in the back of the truck. I pretend I'm a bit offended and politely decline the offer. He now thinks he has the aces because he's driving and I need to get to Trieste. He tells me "no sex, no Trieste". I completely agree with him and tell him I'll get out at the next gas station. He hadn't really expected this, so I took the initiative of changing the subject. I had seen a sign for a petrol station and knew we would get there in a couple of minutes. When we arrived at the station I was glad to get out of the truck. I went into the restaurant and ordered a real cup of tea. I didn't want to rush into the next disaster, so I thought I relax a bit first and eat something as well. After a greasy pasta meal I went outside again to look for a possible ride. Another turkish truck driver presented himself. This time it was a young boy whose truck looked like he was traveling with his mother. The place was spotless. Mehmed was on his way to Trieste as well, to take the boat to Istanbul. Everything went fine, until a few kilometres before Trieste. He had to stop to take a rest. We ate something and he wanted to take a nap. I didn't want to go into the back cabin, so I stayed in my seat dozing a bit. After one and a half hours he turned on the light and started stammering to me. I had no idea what he was talking about at first. Than he took a deep breath and asked for sex. My god. In all the years I've hitchhiked in my life I've never had such direct proposals for sex. Again I declined firmly and told him I could walk to Trieste if he wouldn't go back to sleep again. He was a bit surprised but went back to sleep after I told him he was very tired and that he reallly needed the rest. Thank god he only slept for another half hour and than we continued to Trieste. I hadn't noticed because of these weird situations I had gotten myself into, that I really needed to go to the toilet. Really bad. When he dropped me off in the harbor area I started to look for a toilet. It was 6 in the morning and everything was closed. Truck doors opened everytime I passed them and people gazed at me. Some wanted to know what I was doing there. I told them I was on my way to Albania. One truck driver thought that was so amusing he gave me some oranges and whished me good luck. Finally I managed to find some kiosks and ask the people if there were any toilets around. None seemed to know any, so I had to keep walking. Salvation waited for me at the top of the small hill, where I found an open cafeteria. They had a french toilet, but I would have given all my money for it to use it. Being able to think again, I walked back to the harbor to find a boat to Durres. Trieste's harbor area is not too large and it didn't take long before I had found the right boat to Albania. Unfortunuatly for me, I could see it leaving the port when I walked on the key. Change of plans. I went back to the highway and managed to get a ride to Reijka in Croatia. A Croatian couple living in Switzerland were on their way to family near Reijka and didn't mind taking me along. It was only a 2 hour ride and they were kind enough to drop me off in the city center. By now I really needed some sleep.

Day two: Reijka - Dubrovnik

Getting a hostel bed was an option and I would get some decent night rest. But most hostels were away from the center and I was too tired to go out and find one. I walked to the busstation and bought a ticket for the slow bus to Split. This would be an 8 hour busride, enough for me to get some sleep. The bus wouldn't leave until 20:30 and I spend the rest of the day chilling out at the seaside. The bus stopped in every village, but I missed most of it. It was good to sleep for a while. In Split I had some breakfast before setting off again. Luckily the bus had dropped me off at a transit point and there was a lot of south bound traffic. Most of them were truckdrivers having breakfast as well in the road restaurant. The temperature was quite nice, not as cold as in Austria. It didn't take long for me to catch a ride with a German truck driver on his way to Montenegro. It was tempting to ride with him all the way to Podgorica, but since I would pass Dubrovnik I really wanted to get out there and see the city first. After all I was on a holiday and not in a rush really. Martin had a bit of different taste for music than I had, so we spent a full day listening to "Die Banditen Queen", apparently a German Schlager song. Martin's main concern was getting into Montenegro during daylight. Armed robberies on trucks and cars during the night are not unheard of in this area of Europe and in Northern Albania it happens during the day as well. For some reason the compulsory resting time for truck drivers doesn't apply once in Eastern Europe. His excuse for not resting properly was that traffic was very slow and we were talking all the time, so he claimed this would not make him tired.

Croatia's coast is really beautiful and it must be great in spring and summer when people are on the beaches. Below Zadar, Bosnia sneaks in to grab a tiny piece of beach for herself. Construction workers are working on a new highway from Reijka to Dubrovnik to shorten the trip. But the road just above sealevel, partly through the mountains is amazing. Martin had made this trip several times before and he never really looked around him when driving. A very wise thing probably. But he didn't really care how Croatia looked. For him it was just a country he had to pass through in order to get his cargo to Montenegro. In the evening we arrived in Dubrovnik. I got off and Martin decided to drive to a guarded parking lot near the Montenegrin border and spent the night there. I thought I was alone at the seaside, trying to get my travel guide out of my bag, when suddenly a woman approached me. Her name was Ranya and she rented rooms to tourists. At this point I thought I was in some suburb for away from the city center. But it turned out to be the harbor area. I couldn't really care how the room looked, as long as she had a shower with warm water and clean sheets on the bed, I would except it. After 48 hours of hitchhiking and bustraveling my standards had dropped considerably. Not that they're very high normally, but I would have shared the bed with this 60 year woman, if it was the only way to get some sleep.

Day five: Dubrovnik - Podgorica

Dubrovnik is indeed a great place. I spent two days here and it was really worth it. It's not that big and I saw most of it on the first day. Keeping in mind that I really wanted to get to Albania now I was so close. I couldn't leave yesterday since it was Christmas Day and there was no traffic at all. I thought people were joking when they told me, but they were right. No traveling during Christmas. I got up early and walked back to the highway junction where Martin had let met off. I'm happy to see some Albanian trucks, but most of them have their families with them and don't have any place for me left. But only half an hour later I get a ride from a woman to the border. This is the first ride this trip I get from a woman. She is a Croatian schoolteacher and never picks up hitchhikers. But she was curious what I was doing there. She thought I was a tourist and she took the risk. The border was only a two hour drive from Dubrovnik and she let me off half a mile from the check point.

Since the whole journey went pretty smooth, I didn't expect any thorough checks from the Croatian border patrol. However they thought it was necessary to turn my complete bag inside out. I spent about 3 hours in a wooden shed explaining the things in my bag. Especially my medical kit was examined very careful. I am from the Netherlands and they were convinced I had stashed away some drugs somewhere. Every pill and needle in the bag was carefully checked and so were my arms. The tricky thing is that I give bloodplasma to the bloodbank every month and those needles leave some marks behind. It took the bloodbank ID card and fifteen minutes of explaining before she understood I was not a heroin junkie. I still can't figure this one out. If I was a heroin junkie, than why on earth would I go all the way to Albania, if I can get it in Amsterdam, probably for half the price? When the Croatian border patrol finally cleared me through, I walked to the Montenegrin side. Now I expected a thorough search by them as well. To my own surprise they waved me through without any hassle.

The road at the border was a difficult one to start hitchhiking on. It's just a two lane road in the montains and for most traffic it's too dangerous to halt for you. I walked a bit down hill and saw the road below was in an open space area. When I got there the first car I flagged down stopped and brought me to Budva. Because the road conditions are extremely bad and worsen even during the winter months, travel was very slow. It took me about 16 hours to get from Dubrovnik to Podgorica. Montenegrin people turned out to be very friendly and helpful, though a bit suspicious about hitchhikers. Since I didn't had a visa for Montenegro I questioned myself a couple of times, whether it was wise to hitchhike. May be I would draw the attention of federal army personel. Because they get their orders straight from Belgrad, there was a possibillity they would arrest me or take me to Belgrad. I carefully asked some of the drivers I got a ride from, what the current situation was, concerning visa stuff for EU citizens. Basically the government of Montenegro has lifted the visa requirements for us, but Belgrad is officially still enforcing it for the Republic of Montenegro. I didn't plan a stay in Podgorica because of this. It turned out I would have no other option.

I arrived in Podgorica in the evening. It was dark and raining very badly. A Croatian truck driver had dropped me off at the busstation, which was still open. Inside it was dry and warm and I took out my guide to see if there were any hostels in the area. Unfortunuatly all of them were at the other end of town and I was left with the only hotel in the neighbourhood, who knew this and overcharged everybody. For a moment I thought of taking the bus to Tirana, but I didn't want to arrive in Albania in the night. I had never been there and didn't know my way around. I negotiated over a hotelroom and finally got a reasonable price. Taking into account that I hadn't had a real shower in a few days and could really use one. And indeed the bathroom made it all up for me.

Day six: Podgorica - Shkoder

After a good night sleep I headed to the busstation for information about busses leaving for Albania. It was considerably colder in Montenegro than it had been in Dubrovnik and instead of raining, it was snowing now. At first I thought of going back to the highway and get a ride, but since travel was extremely slow over the roads I thought I might run the risk of getting stuck halfway in the middle of nowhere in what is not the safest part of Europe to be for an independent traveler. Better to be safe than sorry, I thought it was wiser to bus about a bit. There was one planned for 8 o'clock, but only one passenger showed up so far, so they weren't sure whether the bus would leave at all. I had to wait half an hour and check if more passengers would arrive. They didn't. I thought of heading to the highway, when the only other passenger asked me to stay, or he would not be able to get to Albania at all that day. The busdriver arrived and said he would take us to Shkoder instead all the way to Tirana. I got in and I'm not sure what would have been safer. Hitching a ride or driving with a suicidal busdriver. The Albanian border was only 35 kilometres away, yet it took us close to 6.5 hours to get there. Asphalt had been brought to this place once and never maintained since. At the border the driver decided he was far enough from home and told us to get out. Thank you mister busdriver.

The albanian border officials made up for the busdrivers gruffness. I'm sort of a curiosity to them. A policman with a huge militairy hat invites me into the office. He wants to know whether I work for the Red Cross, UNHCR or EU. I explain I'm a tourist and show him my travel guide. Apparently he thinks this is very funny and can't stop laughing. He asks more people in the office and tells them I'm a tourist and all of them are laughing now. They come over to me and shake my hand and pat me on the shoulder. I'm quite small and one of the officers almost hits me back in my chair. I get a cup of tea and have to tell them what I intend to see in Albania. I mention the castles in Shkodra and Kruja, the archeological sites in Butrint and Apolonnia and the national museum in Tirana. They're surprised I actually want to see something in Albania, but still think it's really funny to see a Dutch woman on her own at their border check point. When I tell them I have to get to Shkoder befor dark, they agree with me and walk me out of the office. The man with the huge hat, stops a couple of drivers and finally finds one who can take me to Skhoder. He assures me everything will be fine, because they know I got into this car, so this family won't play any tricks on me. I don't think the family who gave me a ride ever intended to do so. The couple was very nice and they lived in Lezha, a town in North-Albania. Now and then his wife and I had to get out of the car to navigate her husband over the rubble and potholes in the road. Road conditions in Albania are one of the worst I've seen before. At 8 o'clock that night I finally arrive in Shkoder. I ask around for a place to stay and find myself a guestroom in an appartement. I made it. I'm in Albania and I can't wait for the next day to really explore the city.