Back to the capital

At the usual breakfast in the hotel café, we find all my relatives coming to say goodbye to us. Our chit chat attracts the attention of the other hotel guests. Everyone is commenting about yesterday’s event and they want me to promise to return soon.

When I am ready to pay the hotel bill I find that it was quietly settled by one of the cousins, Pjeter D., who reminds me that I should send him the old family poems, written in serbo-craotian, for translation into Albanian. He is a retired professor, who is still very much involved in publishing old literary works as a hobby.

At 10am the large archival panels we had transported here are loaded and we begin the short, half hour, ride to the border (Hani i Hotit) in two cars.

After a passport check, we say good bye to the ones that are not allowed to come across because of lack of passport, and we walk the distance between the 2 border points still under a light drizzle and dark clouds reflected in the calm waters of nearby Shkodra Lake. The mountains we see on the other side of the lake, which is very narrow at this point, are already part of Albania. Edmond and Gjoka carry across the border our luggage and load it onto our transport, which is waiting to bring us back to the Albanian capital: Tirana.

When we all embrace I have a difficult time keeping in check my emotions!

While traveling south from the border we take a side road trying to find supposedly an old relative, whom, I was told, lives alone in the small town of Gruda e Re, a few miles north of Shkodra. This detour turns out to be a real adventure, due to the extremely bad road we embarked on. For a few miles our driver slowly, but masterly, navigates this obstacle course full of large potholes, full of rain water, and uneven pieces of broken pavement, which seems to lead to nowhere. This is a very agricultural area, with sparse large 2 story homes surrounded by walled in lots and main gates giving access to the properties. Our search is abandoned after many unsuccessful queries and we resume our trip toward the nearby city of Shkodra. Here we stop again at the residence of Pertefe’s brother and are served a delicious hot lunch, notwithstanding the great inconvenience of lack of electricity.

One and half hour later we reach Tirana’s suburb of Kamza, where the traffic is absolutely incredible. Cars, vans, trucks, motorcycles, buses, and cement mixers are lined up on both sides of the only road crossing the town, which is in complete disarray! We spend more than 45 minutes in this messy situation, which, to my great amazement, every driver, however, manages to navigate without incidents. The backlog of cars, however, is producing so much smog and fumes that breathing becomes difficult and continues to be so all the way into Tirana proper. Unfortunately, this capital is now experiencing a 20% mortality rate from pollution, and several projects are under way to change this extremely dangerous, medical situation.