Doro Hotel Tirana

Hallo zusammen,

von B**at ging es wied** zurueck in die Hauptstadt (**neut 45in Wartezeit und etwas ueb** 2h Fahrt, wenigstens sind die Strassen in Albanien recht gut). Hatte dann nur ein paar Stunden Tageslicht, ab** das reicht aus, um Tirana zu sehen.

Das Nationalmuseum ist ganz nett und etwas groes** als das Museum des Kosovo. Die Geschichte Albaniens ho**t mit 1945 auf, man schein noch nicht b**eit zu sein die kommunistische A**a zu bew**ten. Das ...

... Stempel in meinem Pass, entweder von der Ausreise aus Mazedonien oder von der Einreise in den Kosovo, ist so schwer zu entziffern.

Die Strasse auf der Albanischen Seite war erstaunlich gut, teilweise bereits ausgebaute vierspurige Autobahn, teilweise noch im Bau. Wo das Geld wohl herkommt? Ich nehme an, aus der Tuerkei.

Gruss
Ralf

... in my life time. On the way to Tirana the bus decided to brake down so we were hanging around on the side of the road for an hour until the next bus came along to pick us up and take us to Tirana. The trip was around 9 hours long in total and going through the narrow windey roads does churn your stomach up a bit I must admit! Anyway tomorrow is another day another country. I will be off to Montenegro. I have heard great things about it but I must admit I am starting to ...

... were imported legally I'm sure) that was to be for the rest of the day. With it came the honking. Honking your car horn it's just an irritation is a habit right across the Balkans, but Albanians take it to excess. In fact, if you go ten seconds without hearing a horn, chances are you're not in Albania. It really does seem to symbolise everything for them- agree with something? Honk your horn!, disagree with something?, Honk your horn ...

... itself is out of this world. I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of my time there but I can honestly say that if I had someone else with me, someone else to share the awe and magnitude of the place my experience would have been even better. Backpacking is not all glamor all of the time, sometimes its difficult but I feel that with being a backpacker you are in this kind of unofficial club. We should look out for one another, advise one another on not just places of interest but of ...

... Albania (Thanks again Lisa!). The one thing the LP guidebook does say is to expect to pay 10 euros at the border to get in. Lisa also reminded me of this, so it was a nice surprise when the border guard said "1 euro" upon entering, of course when I gave it to him he put it directly into his pants pocket still it was the highlight of the day --- that and after over 2 weeks in the former Yugoslavia I finally saw a Yugo, which I soon realized wasn't that big of a deal since the ...

... the power is out. "We'll do check-in later," the man explains. I have heard of this problem, and that the power cuts can be scheduled or random. During my first five hours in town, I experience three outages, or perhaps it would better described as two periods when there is actually power. The outages each last between thirty minutes and an hour, and walking down the street, I see most businesses have generators chained outside to combat this problem. The more expensive restaurants ...

... that day, after having started in Montenegro around 8am. But our day was far from over. Again, the transportation system in this country is totally unorganized to anyone other than a local. We struggled trying to find people that spoke enough english to point us in the correct direction. On top of that, Alex realized that he left his cell phone on the bus we had just gotten off of, so he ran off after the bus and luckily was able to chase it down and get the ...

When I arrived in Tirana airport, my bag came through quite quickly, and I just had to go out and look for the 'Sarah' sign that I'd been promised would be waiting for me. Guess what... 20 minutes later, as more and more people met their friends and family and left, I tried to think of an alternative plan. Didn't have the phone number, address, or even the number of the person in England ...

Albania, or Shqiperi as the natives call it, is a much maligned part of Europe. Everybody else seems to hate Albanians, especially Croatians, Serbs and macedonians. We have been asked why we would bother coming to such a poor country full of thieves and beggars. OK, so it is polluted, there are piles of rubbish in many areas, especially the countryside, loads of building work taking place, nobody speaks English, people really like to pick their nose ...