Balkans Tour Day 4
I knew this day was going to be long. After the delays in Croatia, I didn’t have much extra time to spare. At this rate, if I went straight from Tivat to Athens, I should arrive just about the same time as Justin, Manuel, Mitch and Iggy. In case I got refused at the border and had to try to reenter from somewhere else, I wanted to leave myself a little wiggle room. As such, I would be spending the next 24 hours on a bus.
I left the hostel in Tivat at 7, having paid some random Canadian guy cleaning the bar, him promising he’d give the money to the owner while making change out of his own pocket. The bus I had to catch came at 7:30 and I only had to walk about 1.5 miles to get there. As I was walking down the main road at about 7:20, no more than 100 yards from the bus station, my bus passed me, en route to the stop. I knew this was just a stop, not a break for the driver, and as soon as he had loaded and unloaded, he was likely to take off. So I started running. I caught up just as he was closing the doors and banged on the back one so he would let me on. Stupid busses being early. The next one wouldn’t have come for 45 minutes.
I rode from Tivat to Budva, the nearest larger town, where I wasn’t 100% sure but I was pretty sure I would be able to get a ride to Shköder, a town in Albania, just on the other side of the border. However, I was wrong. From Budva, I was required to get a bus to Bar in Montenegro, where I could then get another bus to Ulcinj, still in Montenegro. From Ulcinj, the woman in Bar who barely spoke English explained that depending on how long my bus from Bar to Ulcinj took, I might be able to get a bus to Shköder but I might be too late (at noon) so I might have to take a taxi across the border. Fortunately, once I got to Ulcinj, I booked mysef on the last bus of the day (at 12:30 PM) and spend a half hour relaxing in a really nice café at the train station with an English speaking (and good looking) waiter and a television playing MTV in Spanish. Not too bad.
This is where the trip got interesting. After meandering our way across the Montenegrin countryside and into Albania in a large charter bus taking over most of the barely two lane road we were driving on, we pulled up to what appeared to be a rather large town. All of the sudden, the driver just stopped in the middle of a roundabout and explained to us that we had arrived in Shköder. I looked around me at the other confused passengers as we all disembarked and stood around looking confused. We were literally standing in the center island of a roundabout. A taxi man then came up to me asking where I wanted to go. The bus station, I guess, where I thought I would have been dropped off by the bus.
^—Actual Roundabout photo as taken from bus because I couldn’t believe this was where we were stopping.
No, he explained, without using any words in English. Where was my final destination?
Athens, you dick, wanna drive me there?
Ok… so that was a bit harsh, but I was pissed off and confused at this point. I don’t like being confused. The man finally explains to me that he is driving to Tirana, which is precisely where I needed to go next. I had heard that there were tourist offices in Tirana offering rides all the way to Athens. So I needed to get there. He said he’d take me for €8. A 2.5 hour journey.
Fine.
What I didn’t realize is that this is how things apparently operate in these parts. The guy had a 7 passenger car and a sign in the front window saying “Tirana” and we drove through town picking up random people along the way who also wanted to go to Tirana. I had stumbled my way into a shared cab and I didn’t really know how. But I got shotgun and only paid €8 so I didn’t care.
My new friend cab driver, who spoke no English other than “Me take you to Tirana” and “€8 please” pointed everything out to me as we drove. Watermelons, chickens, farmers, mountains, airports, airplanes. I have no idea what he was saying but he talked a lot and pointed at random mostly inanimate objects even more.
Regardless of the shadiness of this situation, homedude dropped me of 2.5 hours and one watermelon later at the tourist office on the main street in Tirana.
Success!