Who in the sunshine, who in the night time, Who by high ordeal, who by common trial...

And who shall I say is calling?

--Leonard Cohen, "Who By Fire" 

Our trip was nearing its end. And I admit, I had gotten a little burnt out from the elaborate planning we'd done to get ourselves through five countries and many, many destinations in two weeks. So when it came time to book accomodations for our one night in Milan... I just... didn't. I kept meaning to. I looked on couchsurfing. I looked on Air Bnb. I considered various hostels. But at the end of the day, what it came down to, was that I was sick of planning. We were gonna wing it for our last night in Milan.

This was a stupid idea.

Our plane was one of those board-a-bus-to-go-50-feet-onto-the-tarmac-then-get-off-the-bus-and-walk-up-the-stairs kind of planes.

Hustlin it through the airport in Milan to catch a train.

By the time we arrived in Milan, around 10, we'd woken with the hot Mediterranean sunrise, (Jo even went for one more swim before leaving), driven about 4 hours on mountainous, narrow, oceanside highways, almost faced the prospect of being stuck in Krujë and missing our flight because our car was planted in the back of an expensive Mercedes, flown about 2 hours back to Milan, gone through customs, gotten our bags, found the train and only just caught one of the last ones going into Milan proper. When we emerged from the train station and gotten our bearings, I was completely exhausted. I hadn't liked Milan that much the first or the second time I'd passed through, and I didn't feel excited about being back for a long night without any place to sleep. But I had talked Jo into skipping the Duomo on her way in because I had been in a hurry to move on to Venice, so that's where we headed.

   

After bathing in the otherworldly majesty of this crazy ornate church we wandered over to the edge of the square where we found an outrageously overpriced restaurant and settled in to one more pizza and some well-earned alcohol. Afterwards we felt more relaxed and optimistic, so when I suggested we head back to Ostello Bello, where I'd had such good luck the first time around, we figured why not.

Dinnertime view with our companions, Big Boy Blue and Jo's pitifully unnamed pack.

The moment when Joanna realized she could no longer pretend she didn't need glasses: when I observed the statues at the top of the spires on the church and she remarked that no, there wasn't anything up there. I gave her my glasses and she had to admit defeat; couldn't see half the detail on the church. (These photos are mostly courtesy of Jo!)

This was a good idea.

Not only did they have a bed for me (which I didn't end up using, but I paid for just on principle, because I liked the place and because they were good to us), they let Jo and I hang out in the common room/bar all night and they gave us both their customary free welcome drink even though only I paid for a room. They also gave us free shots of Limoncello and t-shirts because it was their 10th anniversary. So we forwent sleep and spent the night laughing and drinking with like-minded wayfarers and the employees, and soon after the sun rose we rode the metro back to the train station, where Jo headed for a train to take her to the airport. Her flight was leaving bright and early but mine wasn't until late afternoon, so after as emotional a goodbye as we have ever had (I couldn't have asked for a better travel companion or all-around friend) I headed back to the hostel to shower, get some free breakfast and coffee, pack up my things, mail those stupid Albanian postcards, and head off to the airport myself.

There isn't much left to tell of the amazing adventures I had last summer. It was a long trip back from Milan: first to the Budapest airport, then on the bus to the closest metro station, then onto the metro into the center of town and Nyugati Station, where another train waited to carry me on my quiet, dazed way back to Göd. It felt like a lifetime and a half had passed since I'd left; I felt the way Bilbo Baggins did upon returning to the Shire. It's hard to explain the weirdness of waking up in one country, in a tent, by the beach, and falling asleep in another, 1300 km away, in (temporarily) your own tiny couch-bed. It feels so utterly alien and jarring that maybe for a couple minutes you close your eyes and you feel the warm Hungarian night's air rush in through the train's open windows and you block out the voices of the passengers around you and you feel completely dislocated from all time and space. You just are, without location, without age or past or future, just the purest present tense you will ever know. It's what it is to travel, I guess. Here's to many more summers like it.

Crushin' It in Krujë

The next day we woke to the heat of late-August Albanian sunlight and the clamor of a hundred backpackers packing up and shipping out. We devoured our free toast, jam, and instant coffee with minimal complaints and after drinking real coffees we purchased at the bar, we hit the road. We still had about 4 hours of driving and we were determined to wring one more Albanian city out of our trip before heading to the airport: Krujë.

We couldn't resist stopping here to capture a few more shots of the seaside mountains. What I wouldn't have given for one more day, to sit around and just soak this in. Alas. It was at this stop that we thought to document our valiant chariot. Behold, the Opel Corsa:

Just a lovely country lane. Also a national highway.

Passing Fier, making progress, taking in some Albanian hotties.

Finally, in early afternoon we found ourselves in Krujë. We made it! Our timing was good! We even had time to wander through the famous-for-its-souvenirs bazaar in the town. We parked the Corsa facing downhill, wondered briefly if that was a bad idea, put on the parking brake (an absolute necessity in the Balkans), and headed off to shop.

The Krujë castle in the distance. After we'd done our part for the local economy we headed back to the car, ready to make our way to the airport. Once again we hadn't sent our postcards but otherwise we'd done almost everything we had set out to do in Albania and we were feeling pretty good about life. And then: disaster. Or: almost disaster. I'll let the email I sent my parents relate the harrowing tale,

I have one story to tell you guys I want to get down before I forget... Jo and I went to the town of Kruja, where the national hero Skanderbeg was born [edit: not true, and I don't know why I was laboring under this impression] and where there is a very impressive bazaar full of souvenir goodies, and when we parked we did so facing downward on a hill behind a pretty nice-looking Mercedes. We realized our mistake as soon as Jo pulled in behind it and we took a minute to wonder if we should move the car then but decided instead to go to the market with the hope that the car would move by the time we got back. 

It didn't so when we returned and Jo tried to reverse away from the car we found that our little hatchback's engine just didn't have what it took and we were rolling closer and closer forward, toward the car. We didn't know what to do so we thought maybe if we let it slide as gently as it could into the Mercedes we might be able stabilize enough to back away and so with a VERY upsetting crack, Jo let it roll into the back of the Mercedes (I was outside trying to give her an idea of how close she was). Thankfully both of our bumpers were plastic so there was no damage but we were pretty distraught to find that even resting against the other car the Corsa just couldn't get back up the hill in reverse. So we both stood there, kind of devastated and at a loss, until an old man who had been walking by and had turned to see where the noise of our collision came from, walked back around and very calmly picked up a big rock from the side of the road and put it in front of our front wheel. So simple. In retrospect, so obvious. But so completely crucial in getting us out of that bind. And so Jo was able to back the car up, let it rest on the rock, back it up, rest on the rock, until Jo could pull it out from behind the Mercedes.... 

For both of us it was just a very memorable thing because this old man who had no stake in our fates showed us such a simple but completely life-saving trick that got us out of a mess. We had several encounters kind of like that. People who didn't need to helping us in ways that completely saved the day.

This is why I'm gonna go back to the Balkans. This is why I'm not done with Eastern Europe, and it's not done with me.

We made one more terrible mistake that day: we returned our car to Hertz, which was in walking distance of the tiny airport, before we mailed our postcards. We realized our mistake when we got inside said airport, where I think it was totally reasonable to expect there to be a post office, only to find that not the case. We flirted with the idea of one or both of us tempting fate some more and taking the bus back into Tiranë to mail them, but we realized we'd probably just about used up that day's portion of luck. That didn't stop us from feeling a little bitter about our mistake, though, especially when the airport taunted us thusly:

It sure did have some fancy chandeliers, though. 

So we settled in to one of the three cafes and ordered some mediocre sandwiches and whiled away our remaining hours in one of the most frustrating, beautiful, HOT, and incredibly generous places I have ever traveled to. Soon enough our flight appeared on the board and we headed towards the security check. I can't speak for Jo, but for myself, I felt that the trip was winding down and that surely our adventure in Krujë had been our last. Milan had other plans.

You say Βουθρωτόν, I say Butrint, let's call the whole thing off!

Once we escaped the labyrinthine backstreets of Sarandë, it only took us about an hour to get to Ksamil, where we couldn't resist the lure of the beautiful water nor that of hot coffee and omelets.

This is not to be a view to be ignored. It went perfectly with breakfast, the only downside (upside?) being the proliferation of hairy middle-aged European men in Speedos.

Finally, finally, FINALLY, we arrived at Butrint. (In Greek: Βουθρωτόν, or Buthrotum) This was a place Jo and I had found early on in our research into things we wanted to see in Albania. Initially we ruled it out when we started reading about just how long it takes to get yourself around Albania by bus. But it stuck with us, and eventually we started throwing around the car rental idea in large part so that we could get ourselves down to this island. 

What's the big deal with it? I suppose it was the fact that this place is a ruin-filled archaeological record of most of the major empires that passed through the Adriatic, from the Greeks up to the Ottomans. It passed hands from Corinthians to Attics to Romans to Macedonians, survived a devastating earthquake, saw the Ostrogoths pass through then was taken over by the Byzantines, Angevins/Venetians, Bulgarians, the Napoleonic empire, and finally the Ottomans before falling into ruin and becoming nothing more of a fishing village with a few hundred citizens before finally finding the nationality it still has today, Albanian. This is a place that has seen some motherfucking shit. This is not a place to be ignored.

Map of the island and pictures showing its progressive development through the ages.

Tree-lined lane leading into the main Roman settlement.

Remains of the Roman marketplace/theater/town center. The theater is believed, because of certain architectural details, to have been converted from a Greek religious altar.

Former walls of the town.

Remains of a grand medieval Venetian home. 

Tree. (If these trees could talk, though....)

Remains of medieval protective walls that run along the outer edges of the settlement from those times.

Byzantine church remains.

Mr. Cool Kid Sunglasses.

 I mean, look at that view. I probably would've tried to invade the island as well.

Remains of the Medieval (I think) cathedral.

Most of the tile in this and the Baptistery was kept covered by silt to preserve it, but they left one corner exposed so that visitors could see just how intricate and beautiful the mosaic work on the floor of these places is.

Jo, being an artsy hipster.

Remains of the Roman development out into the harbor, which I think was used for religious and business purposes? But fell into disuse after the island was passed onto the Venetians.

The Lion Gate, that was supposedly referenced in Virgil's Aeneid. In case you can't read what it says on the plaque, I'll copy it here:

I saw before me Troy in miniature
A slender copy of our massive tower
A dry booklet named Xanthus... and I pressed
My body against a Scaean Gate. Those with me
Feasted their eyes on this, our kinsmen's town.
In spacious colonnades the king received them,
And offering mid-court their cups of wine
They made libation, while on plates of gold
A feast was brought before them.

The steps behind the gate.

I mean, what more can I say? Even just as speculation, how many times in your life will you be able to visit a place that may or may not have been founded by fleeing Trojans?

Some more information about the gate.

The other very famous fate, the pig gate (not sure but I don't think that's the official name). I think the theory was that this was the entrance to a marketplace.

Alcove inside the pig gate.

More pig gate-adjacent remains.

Stairs.

Castle built by the Venetians (That's SO Venetian, right? Europeans and their castles, I swear.)

Bust of Livia.

View from the Triangle (Venetian) Castle.

Tourists (it was surprisingly crowded, especially in the Roman theater area, but not detrimentally so).

Museum with some artifacts which we tried to enter only to find the lights turned off, the surly guards grabbing peoples' phones and cameras who they saw taking photos, and who finally shooed everyone out after about 10 minutes. I still don't fully understand what happened in there but I suspect it may have been their lunchtime.

Re-emerging from our immersion into a couple thousand years of history, slowly easing ourselves back into modern-day Albania.

And then it was time to get back on the road. We had a campsite to find. See, we knew we wanted to spend our last night as close to the beach as possible. Jo had read about a place called Sea Turtle Campground but information online had been inordinately difficult to find and even armed with my very capable Hungarian cell phone, we hadn't been able to find a working phone number for the place. So we were heading back out and up along the coast, to Dhërmi, with nothing more than a speculative address we'd found while rifling through what we believed to be Sea Turtle's facebook page and Jo's GPS.

But first we had about 4 hours of coastline driving, of which I can only say this: Joanna B. is a goddamn champion and if you ever see her, buy her a beer for the driving she did that day. Not only were we constantly honked at, aggressively tailed, and dangerously passed by countless Albanian drivers, but our Opel Corsa almost gave up the ghost on several of these hairpin switchbacks that headed down, down, down and then just as steeply up, up, up, hugging the relentlessly sharp mountains of the waterside Balkans all the way up to Dhërmi.

This van not only passed us, it then slowed to a crawl and drove for about 500 meters with its door open. What was it doing? If we ever figured it out, I don't remember. Maybe someone inside was having a series of vomit false-alarms. Maybe they were threatening to evict a passenger. Maybe the door was broken. Maybe they were just messing with us. Maybe Jo remembers.

Finally we approached Dhërmi and passed it, heading out onto several access roads where we fruitlessly searched for our hallowed campground. On one of those desolate lanes we saw this, one of Hoxha's many, many bunkers that litter the country.

One of the inclines I wasn't entirely sure we'd be able to climb. Seriously, Jo is a saint. Not only did she deal with all of these driving elements, she also dealt with the stress of not being able to find this place and my never-ending distrust and contempt for our rental car.

Finally, we stopped to get some coffee and cool off in a restaurant. It was abandoned, as most restaurants in post-Soviet countries are during the day, except for what looked to be a birthday party where the parents gathered at one end smoking and gossiping and the children ran circles around the dining room. Some things are universal. We asked them there about Sea Turtle, and they looked at us a little strangely then pointed in the direction we'd just come from, where we'd turned back after losing heart that we'd ever find it. We decided to try one more time, go just a little bit further than we had before, and sure enough, down the hill and round the corner, there emerged from nothing The Sea Turtle. I will say this: for how hard the place is to find, it is worth it. For $10, we got a spacious tent, sleeping pads and pillows with sheets, towels, free dinner and breakfast, bathroom and shower facilities, a pretty reasonably priced bar/lounge patio area, and free WiFi. Not to mention the best part: a 5-minute walk to the (stony, but still) beach.

This is her "started from the bottom now we're here" face.

The chairs, umbrellas, and cabanas were free for all to use. There was also a very convenient plywood path so we didn't have to be like the scene in The NeverEnding Story where Atreyu and Artax are trudging through the Swamps of  Sadness. Also, nobody succumbed to sadness and let themselves die. Caution: that link will lead to palpable heartbreak and, if you are a 6-year-old named Emily who takes movies waaaaay too literally, psychological scarring.

Then Jo took my camera for a stroll while I laid back and did nothing but soak up the late-summer sunset and read John Steinbeck's A Russian Journal and this stuff happened:

Possibly my favorite picture from the entire vacation. I want this movie to happen: road-trip film starring a crotchety, aging Albanian man in a Speedo and his companion, a mischievous white street dog. Why? Why is this not a movie we already have?

This dog can be in the movie also.

Back at the camp, where you can see just how many tents there are. Warning: this place is a bit disorganized. First of all, bit of a tangent, when we were looking for it we found another place that would not directly say whether or not they were Sea Turtle but seemed so totally disinterested in us that finally I vetoed them just on principle. So if you find other camping places in Dhërmi and you're good with that, more power to you, but Sea Turtle is clearly marked so if you're some place that's not, you're in the wrong place. After we found the joint, we headed to the bar which was the only place we saw any identifiable employees. We told them we wanted a tent and they told us to sit down and wait for the owners. After about 30 minutes Jo went up to inquire and another guy who may or may not have been the owner seemed surprised to hear that we wanted a tent, and took us to one immediately.

It really was impressive though. I would guess there were probably a couple hundred tents, neatly set up in aisles with outdoor electrical plugs, trashcans, and outdoor showers/hoses every hundred meters or so. It was pretty great. The free dinner and breakfast, not so much. Dinner was a plate of overcooked noodles with cut up hot dogs coated in what, even on my most generous day, I would hesitate to call tomato sauce. Ketchup would be more accurate. Oh, and bread. We sampled some of that and then decided to go find ourselves some fresh seafood. We wandered down to a somewhat hopping (lights on, some generic Eurobeats pumping, young people roaming aimlessly, mostly empty bars) street right off the beach and settled on a place that advertised their specialty in seafood. I can't honestly say what Jo had but I had what was probably one of my best meals during our vacation: fish of the day. I have no idea what kind of fish it was. It was white. It came with the skin still on, eyes staring up at me from its roasted face. But its flesh pulled away from the spine perfectly and it was probably the saltiest, most delicious fish I've ever eaten. So good job on that, Dhërmi/Albania.

It had been an exhaustingly, excitingly long day. It was probably the most stressful and also the best day I had in Albania. And the next day we had to head to Tiranë to make our early evening flight back to Milan. But not before we braved some more perilous, coastline mountain driving and an almost vacation-ruining stop in Krujë, home of one of Albanian hero Skanderbeg's militaristic victories against the Ottomans and site of our near-calamity with our rental car.