Let's see, friends, where did I leave off? Well, after swimming around islands and taking it easy with my flippers, snorkelling gear and set-free boobies, X and I headed to Albania by way of Montenegro. We stopped for one night in the seaside town of Perast in MNE, very beautiful, non-touristy and idyllic. After a quick morning dip, onward to Albania.
After crossing what appeared to be a rather serious border crossing, the first thing we saw? Bunkers. Thousands of them. Big bunkers, small bunkers, graffitied bunkers, bunkers having attempted to be deconstructed. The land of the bunker. We spent only 2 nights in Albania, a far cry from the 7 to 10 that X had planned on. The thing is, Albania was just a little too close to home (being Kosovo) for me. Just hearing the language, seeing the brick outlets on the side of the road and the driving habits only experienced until this point in Kosovo, made it feel a little bit like taking our holidays in Kosovo - a very interesting place in its own right but you know, once you've tasted the good life of Croatia, it's hard to go back to baked beans out of a can, if you know what I mean. Some unremarkable aspects of Albania:
- The dysfunction of the roadways
- The trash, pollution and general disregard for the environment and aesthetic
- The amount of unfinished buildings littering the gorgeous coastline
- The history of the country itself (pick up a book, it's fascinating stuff)
- The appalling quality of the food, despite the gorgeous fruit trees, fertile land and access to Adriatic/Ionian seas (the last night we had overcooked spaghetti with ketchup for lack of anything else to eat)
Anyway, X claims that I've become a woman of high-maintenance due to my desire to head south and quick, but his smile equalled mine when we found ourself in Greece after seeing thousands of hectares of burnt Albanian forest en route.
In Greece, we visited first the Zagorian villages of the north, really just beautiful, right out of Grimm's fairy tales. Next stop was Metsovo and Meteora, a place where monks built monestaries perched atop massive rocks over 800 years ago, many of which are still in operation. And finally, we settled in the Pelion peninsula for a few days, where a string of bad luck hit us like a ton of bricks.
Day 1, in a freak encounter I got stung by a poisonous, potentially paralyzing Weaver Fish. We didn't know until it was too late, when my bones were locked and I was starting to experience numbness in my hands and feet, so X rushed me to the nearest clinic some 45 minutes away through small mountain winding roads to get a cortizone shot.
Day 2, I recovered, sleeping most of the day away, regaining my joint motion.
Day 3, our car got robbed. My camera and all of our holiday photos, gone. 500 euros in cash that I intended to pay for the thai massage course that I'm on now, gone. My sunglasses, gone. The only thing I wanted desperately to get back were those pictures. 4 weeks of stories and joy to remember this trip by, gone. Letting go, letting go, letting go...
Day 4, our car died. On the bottom of a mountain we had to drive over to get back to our hotel.
Day 5, the rental car man appeared totally unprepared to deal with the dead car, so most of the day was trying to help him start our dead car, which never did start. Sadly, we left him and the car at the bottom of the mountain waiting for a tow truck that someone who was kind enough to stop on the side of the road called for us. I wonder if he ever made it back to Skopje.
I'm now recovering from my holiday on the island of Eviia, where I'm taking a thai massage course. It's fabulous so far, but will be an intense schedule starting at 6am every morning. Meanwhile, on an island nearby, X is learning to sail...
More soon.
