We have now driven 7,845 miles, (which sounds even better as 12,626 km) in our RV, Georgie, with me trailing behind in the Smart car. We have gone from the UK, down through Portugal, around the bottom of Spain, and back up through France. We have been to Belgium, across to the Czech Republic, pootled around a bit and then down through Hungary, into Croatia. Now it is time for us to head south to Greece, for the winter.
During that time we’ve seen changes in landscape, signage, and architecture, as expected. Less predictable was the naked-from-the-waist-down gentleman struggling to get into a wrestler’s jock strap, at a cafe by a shopping mall.
Or this rather buxom lady made of concrete, gazing out at us in Montenegro, as we stop to let a build-up of traffic pass by Georgie.
This is me on the walkie-talkie: –
‘Did you see her? on the left?’
Steve: ‘Why do you think I stopped?’
At a roadside coffee stop, a few guys get out of a van and produce a piano accordion. One smiley chap proceeds to play loud, jolly folk songs to the delight of his mates. Other people at the stop are not so pleased and one chap starts yelling at him to be quiet. Smiley ignores him.
The other chap marches up to him and they’re nose to nose as he shouts. We reckon it’s all gonna kick off, but the musician simply raises the accordion and plays it very loudly in the man’s face, then starts chasing him around with it. Shouty guy is furious but I’m rather entertained – I’ve never seen accordion music used as an offensive weapon before.
One of the van mates finds a traffic cone and starts playing that like a kazoo. Shouty man, suddenly realising he is both out-numbered and surrounded, backs away pretending that he’s won that round (in the way that cats pretend they meant to fall off that chair). The accordion player finishes his songs to much applause, climbs back in the van (with the purloined traffic cone), and they drive off.
In the middle of nowhere we park by a cafe, because it is a hot day and Georgie’s brakes need to cool. Around the corner we find a strange little petting zoo in someone’s front garden. We wander around the enclosures of kiwis and ostriches, turkeys, goats and pigs, and then leave a donation. It is both sweet and rather sad.
The roads in Montenegro are a whole new challenge. They are covered in potholes the depth of Ben Nevis, and peter off alarmingly at the edges. It as mountainous, with seemingly endless hairpin bends, around which herds of sheep, or cows, or goats suddenly appear.
The walkie-talkie crackles into life: –
‘Patience, wonder and vigilance‘, Steve advises me.
This phrase is to become less of a mantra and more of a prayer when we enter Albania, five hours later. Steve tells me that there were no cars in Albania until fifteen years ago, which goes some small way to explaining the way they drive.
For example, we arrive just after sunset and no one, I repeat, no one has lights on their bicycles and everyone is wearing black. No one on a motorbike has a helmet either, and most have at least two passengers, one of which is a child (at the front). They often can’t be bothered with lights either.
There is no right of way, and no road markings apart from the central white line, which they take absolutely no notice of. I am a jibbering wreck by the time we park up.
Settled in a restaurant, I use Google Translate to work out what the toppings on the pizzas are. I want to check Sallam Pikant, which I’m fairly sure will turn out to be salami, but as we’re in a new country I think it best not to make assumptions. So I start typing and good old Google starts translating.
S = s obviously, sa = how, which is interesting. Sal = sal, fair enough, and sall = hall, but so does salla = hall. We start getting somewhere when sallam = sausage.
And then the Google Translate, that I know and love, kicks in and it all goes a bit bonkers – sallam p = salve p, sallam pi = I drink more, sallam pik = I have a pic and then sallam pika = I give it a point.
I think Google gives up at this point, because then sallam pikan = I’m gonna drink. But finally, sallam pikant = I’m salty.So, sort of salami, then.
Unable to find a single campsite, we wake up the next day to find we’ve parked in the school bus stop. As it is practically opposite the pole-dancing club, in a grim little shanty town, circa Morocco in 1986, we’d thought we were tucked away. Not so. We set off, nervous about the driving, but excited to see what Albania looks like in daylight.
First we drive along past slag heaps and rubbish dumps, stay dogs, and titty bars, but then we hit the road to Golem. The buildings now are all variations on a theme, the theme being, what can we do with concrete? (We’ve already spotted that the Croatians like a bit of concrete too, but there they’ve decided that greige is the new black.) Albanians prefer to use a packet of refreshers as their starting point, and I particularly like the ever-popular mint and salmon combo.
Then we get onto the motorway. Well, Google Maps calls it a motorway, but I call it a fairly crappy, pot-holed dual carriageway. It has a rather variable hard shoulder, which, it turns out, is absolutely the place to be.
There are lots of loitering men, numerous donkey carts and eleventy billion guys on bicycles, some with as many as ten planks of wood balanced across their handlebars.
There are wizened little old ladies, in white headscarves, waiting for lifts, or buses or, possibly, death.
There are loose chickens and cows and goat-herders. Goat-herders! There are men who wave plastic bags of something brown at me, and another who waves flowers.
At one junction a man has parked his motorbike in the middle of the road and is standing there, bag on the road, no helmet, just waiting. And there are lots and lots of things like this.
We stop for coffee and petrol at a garage called Kastrati. Its logo is a petrol pump filling up, um, a UFO?
And when we look to see if they have wifi, we find it under ‘Shyti petrol’. No word of a lie. There is simply no explanation for Albania.
The road masquerading as a motorway has two solid white lines painted down the centre, which, to the average Albanian, is the thing he likes to drive along best. His favourite place to overtake is, of course, a blind corner.
If he overtakes you, he will drive as far as is feasibly possible on the other side of the road, for as long as he can (even if there is an empty over-taking lane to the left of you). When he sees the on-coming traffic, he will wait until the very last second before skidding in front of you. If you brake and swerve he knows he has done it right.
However, if the vehicle heading straight towards him is wide – a lorry, coach or bus, say – then he will attempt to hold his ground over the central lines and see if he can fit in the gap between the on-coming lorry and you. If he succeeds without killing anyone then he knows he is a God amongst men.
They learn this early on, I think. In one town I witness a young lad pushing a baby in a pushchair along the road – and several feet out from a totally empty pavement. He is coming towards me.
As for signage – that is … variable. Off a roundabout in the busy town of Fier, Steve attempts to follow the sat-nav instructions and all the other cars down a turning. Oh no, people yell, jumping in the way and signalling to him to back out again.
Now, we were already a bit frazzled at this point. Double-parking in single lane roads is a thing here, and manoeuvring Georgie around them has taken every bit of Steve’s considerable driving skill. There are people parked on the sodding roundabout, for God’s sake.
As I drive round the roundabout, waiting to see what Steve is gonna do, I see people stop their cars halfway around, get out, leave the door open, buy a coffee, and get back in and drive off. So I pull in behind Steve while they sort out getting him to reverse back onto the roundabout. Oh no, no, no, they say to me, in mad but obvious gestures.
I have to reverse back onto the roundabout, with all view of me hidden from oncoming traffic by the idiot white van that has parked there! And I have to do it three times because they keep changing their minds about which direction they want us to go!
Eventually we get into the south of the country and head off through the mountains towards Greece.
Here, Albania is beautiful, but it’s got to be said that it’s Mother Nature that’s done most of the heavy lifting. Where the actual Albanians have been involved…. I’d like to say that it’s merely a bit run down, but I’m not sure if it was ever run up in the first place.
We reach the customs on the border into Greece and, boy, are they thorough. Nibbles is only a tiny car and you can see everything through the windows. It is impossible to smuggle using a Smart car, but those guys take no chances – they even have my carpet up.
There’s a family of beggars working the queue of cars. I genuinely have no money on me at all, which really gets their goat. They send in the big guns, by which I mean, the little girl. All I have is a banana, which I offer apologetically. They looked disgusted, but take it anyway. The little girl endeavours (quite successfully) to eat it with as much scornful disdain as she can muster. I wish my car was bigger so I’d have somewhere to hide.
And then we were on our way and driving down the mountains, into Greece, and the Shirley Valentine moment I’ve been waiting for since 1989.
1 Like