The Fateful Autumn Trip
Before the upcoming weekend trip begins - it is changing. Originally there were 3
couples traveling to Montenegro but for various reasons the others bailed out.
I started taking an intestinal medicine and couldn’t drink for 5 days. However,
around mid-day on Friday, Peter and I left Tirana, headed north, anticipating a
relaxing weekend away from the city. As we approached the border and were
chatting away, we noticed that the road was deteriorating rapidly and climbing
steadily. Pulling out the Ipad, and using Google Maps, (you gotta love the
internet), we found ourselves heading up a very rocky secondary road to
Vermosh, Albanian’s most northern village. The road was one lane, a very large
grade of gravel but stunning in its rugged rocky vistas. The 68 kilometers take
3 hours in the best of conditions, crossing two passes and driving through the
Kelmend Valley. There are fantastic panoramas, opening up with fold after fold
of rock to the north and the gravel road zigzagging steeply down in dozens of
hairpin turns. Climbing up again, through huge rock fields, the dusty road
allows for plenty of vistas and a bumpy ride.
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| See the road below us |
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| Pedestrians on the road! |
We accepted our fate, ready to experience this much talked
about village where winter snow, up to 3 meters, keeps the 58 inhabitants
insolated from the outside world for 3 months of the year.
With an hour to go, Peter stops the car (there is no place
to pull over, really) and gets out. A curse or two later, he tells me we have a
flat tire! Not good. He opens the back of the car and begins to unscrew the
bolts that hold in the car jack. After prying it off the hinges, he looks under
the car and wonders where is the safest place to put the jack. He did not major
in mechanics! I, meanwhile, can see that there is about one hour of daylight
left. Two small farms dot the hillside
below. While he figures out the jack, I start down a path from the “main road”.
I venture forth to see if anyone has a room for us. Passing the first farm, I
spy a woman crossing the pig yard, carrying a burlap bag with freshly picked
grapes. Trying my best Albanian that she absolutely doesn’t understand, we each
repeat our phrases over and over with neither of us understanding the other.
Finally she offers me a bunch of grapes and motions for me to follow her
through the poop from four kinds of barnyard animals. Just then, fatefully, I
hear a horn and see Peter driving down the road toward me. As fate would have
it, the one minivan that makes the daily 8 hour trip from Vermosh to the big
city of Shkodra each day is thankfully making its way back to the mountain
village. When they see the problem, 8 people jump out, take over the tire
changing operation and in minutes, are on their way.
One man, residing in
Vermosh, agrees to escort us there. I thank the pig woman, who stills doesn’t
have a clue why I am standing there in her yard, and get in our car. By now the
full moon is rising over the mountain peaks illuminating the rocks high above
us.
An hour later we arrive in Vermosh. The full moonlight shows
off the stone structures that are boxy and have deep slanted roofs to keep off
the winter snowfalls. Our escort has us stop briefly at his house to unload his
bags of produce from the big city and then directs us into “town”. We leave the
gravel road, go down a steep incline and rumble along a river bed (good thing
it isn’t spring!) to a rather dark guest house set in the hillside. Here we are warmly greeted by a young couple with
their 3 year old daughter, offered a warm bottle of beer and conversations
begin between the escort and the woman of the house. She gives me a big hug and
in her somewhat good English has us enter.
Throughout the night the hanging light bulbs, in the living room, dimmed
occasionally but never went out. This main room had plain white walls, an
overstuffed couch with 2 matching overstuffed chairs and a table.
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| Our host |
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| The night before add four more people to this chair to skype |
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Dinner was
served as two middle age Italian men entered the room. They were guests as well
and had been hiking the surrounding trails for three days. We each received a
plate of food consisting of a 3” medallion of bologna, a well fried pork chop,
fresh sliced tomatoes, fried potatoes, a big hunk of feta cheese and big soft
homemade rolls. No wine, (thankfully I couldn’t drink alcohol) but Peter
availed himself of another warm beer. While it wasn’t gourmet, in the
context the chatter, the environment and our good fate to be indoors, it was a
meal to savor. While we ate, the family of now five all sat on top of one
another in one overstuffed chair and skyped with an Albanian family living in
Greece. In walked 4 men, newly arrived house guests. The talker of the group
immigrated to Detroit, Michigan years ago and comes back to visit Albania each
year. He owns a construction company and we had some rousing debates about
Obama. He admitted that Obama had saved the auto industry and that Detroit was
booming but he would vote for Romney because he thought Obama showed a terrible
weakness by apologizing for the recent anti-Muslim film. I think this is a male
Balkan thing. Add that to Obama’s stand on abortion and Mr. Detroit was going
to quickly cancel out my vote this November!
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| The Raki making apparatus |
Homemade Raki was then produced and shot glasses filled
multiple times. The host makes his own Raki from plums in his yard, fermented
and bottled in reused 1.5 plastic liter bottles. At 10:30 we excused ourselves,
climbed up to our room, opened the windows to let in the cold fresh mountain
air and looked out at the valley, now illuminated by the full moon. We hugged each other and did agree that we
had a remarkably fateful day.
The following morning we awoke to the early morning light,
showing off the village houses, dotted between fields of vegetables and
livestock pens. Being “shut in” for three months each winter requires the
putting up of much food.
That particular Saturday a group of townspeople were coming
over to our guest house to pick potatoes from the field.
We were served a
hearty breakfast with cheese being the main attraction. After paying for our
meals and lodging ($31/pp) we exchanged hugs and more hugs and left over the
river bed to the main road out of town, east, toward Montenegro.
Saturday provided clear sunny weather. Aren’t all days
around here sunny? I wish I had a video to show the sights we saw on our 8 hour
ride that seemed like 2 hrs. The vistas of forests, small village towns with tidy
houses, the mountain top roads above the tree line, and the deep rock gorges
with rushing rivers. My fearless driver, Peter, thinks nothing now of taking
our 4 wheel drive car on “secondary” roads. As bad as the road was leading into
Vermosh from the west, when we left in the daylight on Saturday morning, we
were astonished to find a well paved two lane country road to Montenegro (16
kilometers away) heading east. Everywhere, and I mean everywhere, we saw people
cutting, hauling or stacking wood for the long winter ahead. Additionally we
passed repeated fields of potato pickers, hauling in the winter supply.
Our car climbed up and down mountains, down steep gorges and
on the dirt paths clinging to the mountainsides. We passed a small ski area. Basically
there were no cars or people for long stretches of time. Fall colors covered
the exposed sides of the mountains where something can grow. This was certainly
our fall foliage tour.
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| Who says only Vermont has fall colors??? |
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The final hour of our day, as daylight was fading, we
descended down the Stygian Platije Canyon, in and out of tunnels, some lit and
some not. The river, where the sun never reaches, lies several hundred meters
below, while across the gorge and high above, the railway races between the
city of Bar on the coast and Belgrade in Serbia. This could be another trip by
rail for us. We arrive in the small capital of Montenegro, Podgrodica, tired
but full of photographs. We found a hotel, ate dinner on the hotel terrace by
the river and crawled into bed from sensory overload.
Sunday was basically the journey home, stopping for a dip in
the Albanian sea and a late lunch at a castle near Tirana. Luckily no more flat
tires!! Fate was, once again, very good to us.
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| Oops, a monastery on its side. I can't find rotate! |
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| Typical Albanian highway scene...We're home! |
