Dwarfed

Skoder

From Berat we headed north to Tirana, the capital which gave us a quick rest before the long day's travel Kotor in Montenegro.

There weren't many tourist sights in Tirana, so to speak, but it was interesting to feel the vibe of the city just by mooching around in bars. Like many former communist cities, many of the buildings just look like humongous breeze blocks with a couple of windows punched in. In an effort to lift the city's visage, the Albanians had painted the old tenements with crazy bold colours. It really worked. It brought a sense of friendliness to what once must have seemed a cold, hard city.

From Tirana we headed even further north up to Skoder, near the Montenegrin border. We got stuck here for 3 hours or so and we had to set up camp with our luggage at the bus stop. For three hours we just watched cars whizz round the roundabout, avoiding the pedestrians and beeping the horns as they went.

Many cars in Albania are stolen and at first I was surprised to see British plated Mercs and BMWs. After 20 or 30 though you got used to it. Perhaps more amusing were the fruit delivery vans that all seemed to be stolen from Germany. Surely they gave themselves away to the police when they drove past with huge writing on the side that said 'Obst und Gemuse'.

We set off for Kotor.