Home » Albania » My Albania trips in September 2003

This autumn, I have been to Albania twice. The first time I went there is between the periods 30th of August and 5th of September 2003, and the second time is between the periods 23rd of September and 2nd of October 2003.

My Albania trips in September 2003

Tib
2004-03-13 15:43:21

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is nearby too. We spent the night in Pogradec, at the Lake Ohrid.
The next day we visited Lini, a fisher village on a peninsula, near the Macedonian border. It is famous for its narrow streets covered with vine-arbour, and the mosaics of a roman villa on the top of the hill. We returned via Elbasan to the camp in Golem, and in the afternoon we took our last sea-bath in the summer.

In 1st October, we went to Kosovo. The road goes via Kukes, the centre of West Albania. It is not a long distance, only 180 km, but the journey takes about 6 to 7 hours, because it is a narrow endless serpentine. On the road, we made a by-pass to Orosh. Orosh is a village famous for the Ismail Kadare's roman, The broken April. This was the centre of the blood feud system till 1945. There is a newly renovated catholic church on a remote mountain, a little bit far from the village.

Kukes was our last city in Albania. This is a new city, because the old one is in the valley, on the bottom of artificial lake Fierza. The town is built in a communist way. There is a huge central square at the end of the city, and a lot of block houses.

In the evening, we crossed the border to Kosovo. The situation is almost normal there 4 years after the Kosovo war, which divided this mainly albanian part from Serbia. We can go thorough the border without any permission. At Prizren, the director of the Hotel Prizren waited for us and invited us to a sightseeing and a dinner. He did it not because we were the only foreign tourist there, but he was a friend of my Albanian friend. So now, I have a Kosovan friend too.

Kosovo is calm, and the life is almost like everywhere. Only the UN cars and staff and the barracks of the foreign armies show, that there was a war. In the morning in Prishtina we saw the bazaar, where you can buy food, jewellery, smuggled cigarettes and manpower, because the unemployment is 40-50 % high. We wanted to leave for Serbia in the direction of Nish, which is on the highway between Greece and Hungary, but the Serb policeman stopped us, as we are illegal immigrants in Serbia. Because of we didn't have stamp from the Serbian authorities on the border of Albania. Of course there is no Serbian authority, but to theirs mind Kosovo is yet part of Serbia. So we returned to Kosovo, and via Peja, we went to the Montenegrin border. Near Peja, we saw some destroyed orthodox churches and Serb houses.

Our by-pass to Montenegro was a bit long, as a result, we only returned to Budapest at 3am in the morning...