A fascinating window into 1994 Albania as it emerges from decades of communism, seen through the eyes of an American solo traveler during his two-month foray into central Albania.
At times hilarious, poignant, terrifying and sobering, Don Yoder's descriptions of his day-to-day adventures navigating Albania will show you a unique perspective on a country just discovering its new identity in a post-communist world.
Quotes:
"Entering the train at Durrës is like entering a 100-foot-long urinal at a Texaco Station in Hell."
"Everywhere I am given. In the taverna at sunset the owner gives me the dark & acrid aperitif they call fërnét; in the morning his wife gives me a cold bottle of water for my walk. In the hills I am given figs, cold water, bread, olives, cheese, smiles."
"We pass abandoned fields, abandoned factories, broken windows, piles of rubble, donkeys asleep in the road, tumble-down gas stations with no gas, winding dusty mountain roads with no cars, then down through the stone & glare to the impossibly blue Ionian Sea and Sarandë. So this is Albania..."
"Officially this road does not really exist. Even the footpath I trekked from Valbonë to Theth merits a cartographic wink-a dotted red line on the map-but this satanic route, this avenue of skulls, the rugged backdoor to Bajram Curri, does not appear on any map. I think the Albanians must be ashamed. It is their Rustic Freeway of Death."
"It is raining now on the black ferocious statue, and getting dark, and the glistening streets are beginning to fill with traffic. Even so, despite the vast breadth of the Bulevardi i Madh, the city except for the hiss & whisper of tires on asphalt is exceptionally quiet. In the dark it is becoming a dreamscape of dim urban shapes erasing itself and its centuries of painful history. The rain, it seems, is dissolving it."
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