volunteer adventures

6 A.M.: time to clean up the tents and start the quest to Albania. In the bus station we get acquainted with ‘toe shoes’, ‘soon to become a big hit and currently popular with fishermen, sailors and climbers’ the World Wide Web would inform me later. The guy who wears them does not react when we stare at his feet and diligently continues tapping on his I-pad. He sits with us on the bus from Struga to Tirana. If I recall well, it is the only bus we drove during these days that was not a Mercedes.

While standing still at the Macedonian-Albanian border we wonder what all these German cars from the 90s are doing there. A(n) (over)load of Albanian folk music and a view of the Albania coast from the bus later, we arrive in Tirana. There we find out that Albanians also take their driving exam in a cream-colored or olive green Mercedes. In the new area of the town, Blloku, which reminds people of the previous block of residences of the Albanian communist leaders, we are surrounded by the newest and most expensive cars. The neighborhood is alive and for a moment we feel like in a Western city. But seeing the children skate down the walls of an impressive building that is called ‘the Piramid’ makes us travel back to reality. The building was designed by the daughter of the Albanian leader Enver Hoxha en was meant to become a museum about his life. But after his death the people did not agree and it became a congress center. Some major TV-stations are also located inside the imposing building. Just a few weeks ago the government of Prime Minister Berisha announced that they want to demolish the building. Despite the protest the building will be replaced by a new Parliament.

A few cities later, in Elbasan, a city close to Macedonia, we finally get an explanation concerning the love for Mercedes cars: ‘Albanians like new things, such as cars and phones, even if that means that there is no gas in them or they don’t have money on them.’ We laugh at this funny clarification, because apart from having seen a lot of Blackberry phones we do not really think that the retro Mercedes cars are quite new. The explanation comes from our tour guide in Elbasan, a very friendly man who feels sad about the bad image of his country. After passionate negotiating with a driver from a minibus we take off to Macedonia again. And how could it be otherwise; we drive a Mercedes minibus!