country of miracles

That's what the bus conductor in Tirana called it. A tangible goodwill is great understatement; the Albanian people are the most friendly and forthcoming I've yet encountered. I emailed dad that I expect something to be different in Greece, that the Balkan friendliness gradient would somehow level off. I'm not sure where that hunch comes from so it'll be interesting to see what's different, if anything. But the Albanians! Funny that in almost every country I've passed since Austria I've been warned about the place - wild West: they'll rob you - with GUNS etc etc. But of course I find them scrupulously honest - smilingly returning my ignorant over-payments - and I've never felt more comfortable leaving my bike outside shops. If I'd accepted half the proffered cigarettes I'd be a twenty-a-day man, but I take the cold drinks. I only have to ask if I might camp in somebody's garden and I'm guest of honour at a dinner party; spare room and new clothes thrown in. There is something a bit 'state of nature' about the place, too, which I like. Apparently wild camping (sorry to always come back to this) is quite legal here. I'm not sure what's illegal, infact. For instance I've spent three days cycling intermittently on the motorway. When I asked a police officer standing below the restrictions sign just North of the capital if it was OK for me to be cycling there he laughed incredulously, gestured flatulence at the sign and waved me on, saluting. This morning I did 30 miles along virgin highway, still closed to traffic - two smiling workmen helped me lift my bike over the impassable three-lane steamroller. The busier highways have a regulation and aesthetic quite their own: families perched on haystack wagons, high-fiving roadside rabbit-sellers, teenagers gangster-leaning tractors, helmetless superbikers on mobile phones, ever larger mammals somehow melted sadly Daliesque and two dimensional in the asphalt before endless smallholdings cropping corn, watermelons and sunflowers; sharp mountains, salt plains and sea. Of course my digital compact fails to capture, but I've been enjoying it. 


Yesterday I was driven off the road by a too-close artic and from nowhere a police car blue-lighted ahead to tick him off. Passing what looked just a friendly remonstration, sheepish, my main concern was the truck now needing to overtake again..: but when I, savvy, scrambled onto the verge the driver was all wide-berth, smiles and waved apology. Incidentally I've seen police cars with supermarket adverts on them, which rather reminded me of the Tesco Police at home. But it didn't upset me like that, or like the huge banking billboard on a Viennese cathedral front. Why not? - that level of corporate muck should surely be verboten in super-regulated Austria, and same rules at home. But whilst my tourist sympathies are suspect one feels, as ever in poorer countries, that a kind of aspirational innocence vindicates the market here, just a little. So easy to patronise when you're just passing through! Still, the Albanian police are so un-fearsome you don't worry so much about who's paying them. And it is aspirational, in a lazy kind of way. Tirana is famous for its all night cafe-culture (reads the official tourist brochure  evidently lifted straight from wiki-travel) and walking around I've never seen evening streets so busy with all-aged walkers, loungers, cafe bar idlers; it felt strangely more 'continental' than anywhere I've been in France or Spain, Italy... An unfettered optimism; 47 years of communism not so long ago and now the future is al fresco.

chips with Grzegorz

small contingent of the Very-Welcome Committee, Albania (in my gifted shirt)

Tirana

the Albanian Riviera...

matey helping me switch a cheap Czech tire for an expensive German one

famous and old Ottoman bridge

dead-smart Albanian hair cut