Bus ride to Sarandë

I was going to write about some of the things I learned about Albanian history and the Albanian language, and I will, but our bus trip was too fun to not talk about right away. I was kicking myself for not spending the extra money on data just to record things as they go. I didn’t , a recap is the best I can do.

It started at the “bus station”. I have it in quotes because it was really more of a large bus parking lot with what seemed like 100 buses (not sure of the exact amount). Some guy asked us a question in Albanian, which I can assume was “where are you going”, so I said Sarandë. We were pointed to a shed where another guy sold us the tickets and then some other guy took our bags. I normally would not let some random person take my bags, but Albania is safer than most places for that kind of thing. So we sat in a cafe for about an hour, waiting until the last possible moment to use the bathroom. There would be no bathroom on the bus and it was going to be a 5 hour trip.

The buses seemed to range from big to small and new to old. Ours was a smaller older bus with very bouncy suspension, as we found out later. The roads we had traveled on so far were reasonably well maintained, although a bit narrow, and full of traffic-circles.

So we got on our small bus with no seatbelts ( not really expecting it) and took off towards Sarandë. Bus stations don’t seem to be an thing in Albania. There is not a necessary a sign for a bus stop. People were waiting by the side of the road and signaled whether they wanted the bus or not. They would get on, the bus would go, and the ticket guy would go collect the fare. It seemed like sometimes they would pick up people or drop them off in the middle of nowhere.

The real fun was the switch-back road going over some very high rocky Mountains with steep cliffs.It was twilight and we were on a very narrow road with tons of hairpin turns. The sheer drop off was very high. Meeting cars on the road was also fun, fortunately people seemed to not be driving too fast. It was at the top of this ass-clenching climb that the driver decided some bouncy Albanian music would be a great soundtrack. So the ride down was double the fun.

We arrived in Sarandë in what I assume was a timely manner. The ride itself had some interesting scenery complete with concrete bunkers -left over from the times of Hoxha and plenty of sheep and goats being herded.