Bermon Tirana

Kruja was a short day trip out of Tirana. <br><br>There is a well preserved fortress that has now been converted into a museum on Albania history of Skanderberg - a prominent Albania figure in 14th century who lead ...

... und von ein** B**gstadt aus den Ottomanen ein kleines Reich abgetrotzt. In 25 Schlachten mit den Ottomanen ging ** als Sieg** h**vor und sein Reich wurde **st 26 Jahre nach seinem Tod von den Ottomanen besiegt (in 1479). Die Alban** sehen sich als Rett** des Abendlandes, waren die Ottomanen doch zu ihr** sta**ksten Zeit in Schlachten mit Skand**b**g beschaeftigt statt die Truppen gen Wien zu schicken. <br><br>Albanien macht keinen sehr islamischen Eindruck, die ...

... that exchange but the way that they do it is your book is worth 5 Euro regardless of how good it is, there books are worth between 7 and 9 and you have to pay the equivalent, so they are making money just off that alone. In our backpackers you simply just swap your book with one that is there and that is the done thing, the whole place is just a bit of a joke to be honest, I am glad I left. Anyway that's enough *****ing about my accommodation. I made it back to Albania ...

... the melodic cry piercing the semi-darkness. Of course it would get annoying if you lived near a mosque, but I think it's almost a reassuring sound. I went back to Skanderbeg square and sat on a bench- only to fall straight through it and be stuck for several minutes. Luckily I managed to pull myself out and choose another, safer, bench. The sun had risen by this point and the traffic had began to pick up around the small park cum ...

... In the evening we were in a third country on that day - Montenegro. At the boarder there we met 4 Polish students of medicine (also hitchhikers) and we hitchhiked with them to the town of Podgorica. We had to walk a couple of km from the railway station in Podgorica where we were dropped off. It was already dark when we found a meadow where we pitched our tent - for the first time on that trip. Smart of us, it was raining at night. And we felt safer as well...

... to tell a story it would go on forever and by the end of it would have no relevance to anything we had been talking about previous to that. Don't get me wrong they were both nice people but you don't always click with everyone you meet in life. When you're traveling around and staying in hostels you're guaranteed that there is one thing that everybody will have in common, a love for travel. Concentrating on that will get you through. Even if I don't particularly enjoy somebody's company ...

... I am forced to wonder how this country feeds itself. Three-quarters of the land is hills and mountains, and these aren't verdant, green, fertile hills, but rather rocky, sharp, cliff bearing hills. Hoxha terraced a lot of them (leading to massive erosion problems) but I still don't see where they grow their food. No matter, the mini-van is finally off, charging along the mountain ringed shores of Lake Ohrid, after half an hour of waiting and another half hour wandering town trying to ...

... someone would get off and someone else would get on, but sometimes, the bus would just stop and sit there, in the middle of the road, for no obvious reason. The furgon business is obviously a competitive one, as our bus driver 'stole' passengers from another smaller furgon, and then we got to watch the two bus drivers duke it out and argue. There was clearly a winner and loser, as the driver of the smaller furgon drove off ******. We arrived in Tirana around ...

... the concert at 6:40. (advertised to start at 7pm) Took our oh-so-comfy stone seats and waited. And waited. They ended up starting promptly at 8pm, so presumably they'd been told to advertise an hour before they actually had to start. There were loads of kids there though, and kept staring at Matt's dreadlocks, asking if he was a boy or girl- not sure they'd ever seen them before. A couple of girls came and sat next to me, trying to practice their English. One girl, Viola, was my age and ...

... of the blackness. The police car was parked, facing the opposite direction, and just turned on its headlights and flashed its red light. They played good cop/bad cop with the bad cop resting the muzzle of his gun on the window sill of the drivers side while talking to us and the good cop kept trying to get us out of the car so that he could inspect it. I was sure that they just wanted us out of ...