The Underbelly of Europe: Hellllllooooo Albania

Clearly, there are very stringent traffic laws in Albania

My 90-day tourist visa in the Schengen Area has officially expired. For those of you who don't know, the Schengen Area covers 26 countries in Europe that adopted free travel between their borders. At first, that sounds great — who doesn't love free borders? (you know, besides the United States...) But the Schengen Area is actually the bane of any backpacker's existence. That's a bit dramatic, but basically it just means that you get way less stamps in your passport (and, let's be serious, that's everyone's favorite stamp collection) and they kick you out of the best parts of Europe after a measly 90 days.

Aussies are subject to the same restrictions, but always seem to overstay their visas (I met one guy who has been in the Schengen Zone for 3 years). Once a colony of law-breakers, always a colony of law-breakers. The Americans I've run into, however, seem to toe the line...  I guess we're just a more law-fearing people. I certainly am. They can ban you from the area for THREE years for overstaying, and I'm sure as hell not gonna let an extra three days in Estonia bar me from Europe. Trust me, it's just not worth it.

My original plan was to fly from Tallinn, Estonia to Lima, Peru and continue the second half of my trip in various areas of Central and South America. It really would make sense seeing as how half of my time at Yale was spent in classes about Latin America, attending guest lectures about various issues in Latin America, eating the free food at said lectures, and generally just trying to pretend that one day I would be able to convince someone (presumably someone very stupid) that I'm originally from Colombia and that I enjoy chewing coca leaves with my grandfather whenever I revisit my hometown of Cartagena.

Camel-sponsored smoking lounge at Munich Airport

So after all that build-up, you would think that I'd be all for finally getting myself to South America and seeing first-hand all of the things I have studied. But, I'm not one to use my education in any practical sense whatsoever.

Also, you know those moments when you can tell you're just about to push your luck...? Well, that's what I was feeling. I kept having these flashes of getting myself into a little bit of trouble with the infamous South American "machismo." So I cancelled my flight. Yes, I cancelled my flight on account of overreactive feminism. HOLLA.

And where did I decide to go instead? The only logical choice — Albania — the land of the stolen Mercedes.

AFC: Albania Fried Chicken...
Sound familiar?

My flight to Albania was quite tolerable as far as 6am flights go. For starters, on the first leg of the flight, I was going from Estonia to Munich, so everyone on the flight was German and superbly organized (what a cliche), so we took off FIFTEEN minutes early. Now, I've been on quite a few flights in my life and very few of them have left early. Incidentally, very few of them have had a majority of German passengers on them. I'm thinking there's a connection.

In a rare change of character, I rejected the flight attendants offer of coffee and he picked up an open bottle of wine and smiled, "Red wine then?" What a gem — an 8am wino. Then, the man next to me offered me a banana. DAWWW, what a giving people. After a short connection in Munich, I headed off to my final destination: the Mother Teresa Airport in Tirana (the capital of Albania). Needless to say, I was on my best behavior for various reasons.

Tirana ain't pretty

I hopped in a bus that took me to the city center and quite enjoyed the ride as the bus driver did some seriously professional bobbing and weaving around massive potholes and other cars that were apparently going too slow. Once we reached town, he began looking into his mirror and yelling something at passengers in the back of the bus and then every now-and-again someone would yell something back to him, he'd bring the bus to a screeching halt, and the person would jump off the bus with remarkable speed. Basically, there was just a whole bunch of driving maneuvers that would have landed him in jail back in the US. Thankfully, my stop was the end of the bus line so I just sat there and enjoyed the chaos.

Little did I know at the time, but this bus was actually one of the classier buses in Tirana...I guess they want people to have a good first impression of the city when they arrive from the airport. It's the intercity buses and the "furgons" —ah, the furgons— that are my new favorite cultural experiment. I'm pretty sure the city of Tirana just stole them out of an enemy country's museum. Instead of employing the "yell and see if anyone wants to get off" method, the inter-city buses just perpetually leave the front door open. If you wanna get out before a designated stop, just jump and run across the street before someone hits you.

We'll come back to my favorite transport — the furgons — in a moment, but first, let me tell you that Tirana is perhaps one of the ugliest places I have ever visited. This was actually quite a refreshing change. Seriously, everywhere I have visited in Europe is so pretty that it's a little overwhelming. So the sheer ugliness of Tirana was a breath of fresh air. And it's not just ugly, it's quirky-ugly, which is the best type of ugly. Y'all know what I'm talking about.

An example of "quirky-ugly"

The mayor of Tirana, Edi Rama, seems to agree with me — he also thought the place was pretty darn ugly. Thankfully for me and my incessant need to be entertained, Edi Rama loves to paint. So, when he looked upon the city that he had inherited as mayor in 2000, and saw rows upon rows of gray, drab Stalinist apartment blocks, he decided to do something about it; he created the Greening and Painting Initiative. One of the projects of this initiative was to paint various buildings throughout the city with various ridiculous rainbow, leaf, stripe, and star patterns as an attempt to make the city more colorful, and, presumably, happier. Anyone who says that this was a good idea, or a "city-wide masterpiece" (as I've heard it referred to), is absolutely lying. They're just straight-up lying. The only reason that it was kind of a good idea is that it turned out so poorly that it's almost funny.

This one's quite nice, no?

Now, I'll admit, some of the buildings look kind of fun, but many of them have not been maintained and the colors have begun to weather and bleed into one another. There is also no reason to paint and entire building green. Completely unjustified. The main problem, however, is that while Mr. Rama was spending all of this money to paint buildings obnoxiously "happy" colors, the city of Tirana still only had access to water for six hours a day. And, did I mention the potholes? I think we may have some bigger issues than painting rainbows on buildings where — I can assure you — there are no gay couples living.

Rainbows & roundabouts!

Let's get back to the furgon system. So, the "furgon" system is what Albanians use to get from one city to another within Albania. This is how they work: you go to the furgon "station" (re: an abandoned, dirt lot), someone says "where?" and you answer with where you want to go. They answer "yes, yes" and shuffle you into yet-another stolen 1970s Mercedes wagon, and then they go out and find people who want to go to the same city as you. Thirty minutes to an hour later, the driver (who may or may not be licensed) finds enough people to fill the van and you head off to your destination. At some point, the driver gets thirsty and you stop at a roadside cafe for some milk. Ten minutes later, the driver gets back in the car and you continue bobbing and weaving potholes for a couple hours. At some point you arrive at a city that is not your final destination, the driver calls his friend, and then his friend drives you the rest of the way until you get to where you want to go. All for under three dollars.

I'm convinced that the Albanians have set up this system really just to teach us all a little patience and faith, and at this point I am very accustomed to jumping into the stolen cars of perfect strangers.