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In Which I Don't Cross A Picket Line.. Sort Of

September 12, 2008 by Mike

Preveza

Route: Sarande - Butrint (Albania) - Igoumenitsa (Greece) - Preveza

Stay tuned. There's a bizarre border crossing coming up after several paragraphs of waffle about Albania:

There's a good reason why Sarende doesn't feel Albanian. It lies a couple of miles off shore, in full view: Corfu.

I've spent two holidays on Corfu -- possibly the triumph of hope over experience -- and both times made a pilgrimage to the northeast shore so I could stare at bleak, unlit, empty Albania. The first time I saw this country, all tourism was strictly prohibited. It was completely cut off from the rest of Europe. The second time, there was limited tourism: you had to travel on State-organised tours. No doubt there was some kind of political vetting. And as I mentioned a couple of days ago, anyone with a beard or long hair would be marched in to an official barber before being allowed to enter. Some of the haircuts I've had would have benefited from an official Albanian barber. Hey ho, you live and learn.

What on earth did the Albanians, isolated, stuffed full of propaganda, make of Corfu?

Way back when, I'd probably mouthed some silent platitude to myself -- 'OK for now, Albania. I'll see you one day.' Turns out it was this day.

But the proximity of the holiday isle has brought a lot of money to Sarende. Day-trippers arrive on constant ferries. They buy souvenirs and booze. Some will stay. There are lots of hotels. Some, clearly, buy apartments or villas here.

We didn't invade with sub-machineguns. We invaded with credit cards.

At which point it behoves me to introduce you to some basic Albanian.

'Hello' is meer-DEET-ah
'Thank you' is fally-man-DER-it
'For Sale' is Shitet

And in a country where everything seems to be for sale, cars and apartments and petrol stations all have the word Shitet (or, more often, SHITET) displayed prominantly.

It had to happen, I suppose, 20-odd countries and languages into the trip, I find a common foreign word that sounds like a swear word in English. Although, it occurs to me, back when all property was theft, the idea of anything being 'for sale' would have been frowned on, so shitet was a no-no in English *and* Albanian.

Heading south. Fantastic weather: it's blazingly hot.

Albania is a country where families keep a single cow. That's the kind of thing that happens in fairy tales; and history books. About old, old history.

The houses they live in -- the people, not the cows -- at least I think they live separately -- look like they belong in history books too.

I've seen extreme poverty of this order before: in Goa. And in Mississippi.

Interesting, eh?

There's an ancient Greek/ Roman city close to the border: Butrint.

The road there may not have been mended since the Romans left.

Albania's centuries of poverty and isolation meant that Butrint existed outside the archaeological mainstream. Also outside the tourist mainstream. It's now very well presented and preserved and a delight to observe. Sun-dappled paths between the ruins; kids hawking little souvenirs and volunteering to protect the parked Bonnie for a fee; walls dating back to the fourth century BC and a gate into the city that Virgil describes in one of his epic poems. The very gate! It's almost enough to make me wish I'd read Virgil. Or any poetry at all.

From the Ottoman castle that sits on top of the Ancient Greek agora, look south, past the Venetian fortress -- it's a bit of a jumble of history, bless it -- and you'll see a thin, red dirt track. It's the road to Greece. You'll notice that something's on fire. Of course. In Albania, something is always on fire. But before you have the delights of that track, you have to negotiate yr passage on this little ferry:

"Don't pay any more than 100 lek!", I was repeatedly warned.

"They'll rip you off," I heard. This was Albanians telling me, incidentally. "The price is 100 lek, no more!"

The ferryman forgot to charge me. I had to wave a 100 lek note under his nose.

Not surprisingly, there are more pillboxes than ever before as you get closer to Greece. It would be comic if it wasn't tragic. No. Cancel that. I can't deny it. It is comic:

And at the risk of overloading you with pictures (you know they're all available at my Flickr pages, don't you?) here's the last part of the Albanian highway to the Greek border. It's not quite finished yet. And no, it isn't very busy either:

I approached the dusty, oil-splattered old men planted at a table outside the last petrol station in Albania, 20 miles from the nearest tarmac. It's been a long, tough, fatiguing ride. The bike and I were hot and bothered.

The bike got a full tank. I drank three cans of Ice Tea, one after the other, without pausing for breath. The old men were suitably impressed. They looked rooted to this ground.

"This village has been unchanged for centuries, cut off up here in these hills. Now the way of life that you share with your parents, and their parents, and generations of your families before them, all will disappear with the coming of the road. Are you happy with this new highway?"

"Hell, yeah. Are you kidding? We can't bloomin' wait." That was the gist of our conversation, though I've tidied up the translation from the original Albanian.

Now for my bizarre border crossing. Finally.

The Albanians let me through easily enough. (nb I didn't get a Customs Form on entry and wasn't asked for it on departure -- which is a change from recent practice, as far as various message boards have it.) But the Albanian border guard was being mischievous.

"Micro porta. Use micro porta," he insisted, waving towards Greece. I promised I would and rode on 50 metres or so to where the road was blocked by a locked gate. On one eend, on the pavement, there was an unlocked pedestrian gate. Micro porta - 'little gate'. See? I'm learning Albanian faster than you think.

Mind you, I had to take one of the panniers off in order to squeeze through the space:

The gates were closed for lunch, I reasoned. It's a quiet border post at the best of times.

Now in Greece, the road turns back on itself in a U-shape, so that when you pull up at the Greek border post, you can see the top of the Albanian buildings a little way up the hill. The Greek post seemed deserted. The shutters were down. Bollards and a red and white barrier blocked the entrance to the Customs lane. It was ridiculously hot in the sunshine. I started to fume. It's what the British do in thse circumstances.

"I'd expect this kind of thing from the Albanians," I thought to myself. And then.. "I would have expected this kind of thing of the Albanians before I arrived there. Now then. Should I expect this kind of thing from the Greeks? Err, yes I should."

Eventually I tracked someone down on the other side of the complex, standing with a cigarette in his hand outside the Greece-to-Albania Customs window.

"What are you doing here?"

Unusual, I thought, but here goes: divorce.. mid-life crisis.. Murmansk.. 21 countries.. blo-- I mean diary.. Triumph Bonnev..

"No, I mean what are you doing here? Today? We're on strike. You can't come through!"

Which would explain the locked gate, the empty border post.

"Those damned Albanians. They shouldn't have let you through. The micro porta, you say? Typical! This is impossible. All the Customs officers in Greece are on strike until 9 o'clock tomorrow morning. No motor vehicles allowed through. Pedestrians only."

Hmmmm.

It's three in the afternoon. It's 18 hours until the border opens. And even if the bike could go faster than a portly Greek customs officer who smokes 60-a-day can run, which I doubt, I don't cross picket lines.

I told him as much. "Look, I'm not going back into Albania. It's more hassle than it's worth, and the road is tough. Let me put my tent up here, on the land between the gate and your border post. I can walk down to the village to get food. How far to the nearest shop?"

"About 20 kilometres."

Hmmmm.

I was having second thoughts, and started to think about that last village in Albania. I hadn't insulted anyone. I hadn't run over any cats.. or grandmothers. It didn't look like there was a hotel, or campsite, but someone would put me up in a room for some Euros. I can try to convince those men that not all progress is good.

But the Greek Customs officer was having second thoughts as well. We had walked as far as the Bonnie now, parked in splendid isolation at the blocked entrance to the 'Nothing To Declare' lane.

"We can't let you back in to Albania. It's dangerous." (Interesting that the hoary old Albanians-eat-children-and-prey-on-helpless-tourists stereotype exists as close to the country as the border post itself!) "And you can't stay here. Listen, do you think you can push your motorbike past the Customs window?"

He was serious.

"We are only allowing pedestrians through. So if you walk into the country.."

Which is why, when I come to calculate how far I've ridden since leaving Murmansk with 6764 miles on the clock**, 26 months ago, I'll have to knock off a couple of hundred yards that were walked, not ridden.

(Phil B, is my conscience clear on this, or have I betrayed the class struggle? The picket line was only for motor vehicles ... motoring? And please remember how hot it was today, and how far to the shop, and that it was his idea not mine)

(**33,418 miles and counting so far, if you're interested.)

Comments

By phil | September 30, 2008 12:55 PM

I was going to grant you my holy blessing till you dissed Dubrovnik. Now I'm not so sure. You ought to prostrate yourself a few times just to show your true penitence.

Beside the Seaside

In Which I Don't Cross A Picket Line.. Sort Of

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