It's 9pm and we are sat at the balcony at our hotel in Kruje after a long day of travelling. The view from the balcony is absolutely stunning since it is over looking all of Tirana from the top of one of the mountains surrounding the city. We are literally on the mountain side and Kruje is a very small town with very steep winding roads. It's a funnily mixed town where old meets new.. there are cobblestone streets with a small bazar selling the usual tacky souvenirs next to newer roads with fancy electronic gadget shops. As with the rest of Albania there are millions of little bars and cafes where men hang out, drink coffee and play domino. The women I guess must be at home - we don't see many of them out and about unless they have an errand to run.
Right now there is a wedding in the downstairs restaurant and the music is pretty loud. We just saw the married couple arrive - her in the biggest white dress I think I have ever seen trying to climb a flight of stairs with her husband. The husband had a very hard time avoiding stepping on her dress and falling over. Quite amazingly they did make it to the top without incident. This kind of brings back memories of last year in Novi Pasar.. I think our goal should be to be invited to one of these weddings instead of just watching them from afar.
Our journey to Kruje which is the town where the national hero Skanderbeg was born, started this morning after another night with broken sleep. Saya kept waking up and in the end Kristian laid down beside her in the hopes that it would give us all some rest.. it did partially, but because of the stuffiness of the room and I guess the quality of the beds, we just didn't get any proper rest anyway. Saya woke up early and exclaimed as the first thing "I want to sleep alone!" She never has been the one for sharing her bed.. with anyone!
Kristian got up early then and Saya managed to go back to sleep for a bit longer and so did I. I finally crawled out of bed around eight and found Kristian sat at the computer translating the blog into Danish whilst Saya lay on a lamb skin on the floor watching cartoons with a sheet over her.. total bliss!
We packed our bags and got ready for our journey north. Dorian picked us up at 10 and walked us down to the bus where we said our goodbyes. He was a nice guy, but his moods where clearly marked by his unfortune in life. Perhaps Kristian wrote about it in his entry yesterday, but Dorian has a degree in History and Geography and is also a skilled electrician, but can't really seem to find any work with any of it, Instead he is minding his sister's house that we rented and doing the odd job here and there. Both his sisters are living abroad, and Dorian dreams of far away places, but isn't able to go anywhere due to his financial situation. If life had been a little different for him I think he would have been a lot more fun to be with - he was kind and extremely helpful and had lots of interesting knowledge, but was just kind of.. I don't know which word to use.. well life hadn't dealt him the card that he had hoped for.. well at least not yet.
The bus was luckily one of the big busses and not one of the small furgons. We managed to get a seat next to the door in the middle and the overhead window. We had given Saya her medication for motion sickness, and it knocked her out as soon as we started driving. We discussed whether we should try and give her a smaller dose than what is recommended, but we are just afraid that she will get sick if we do so, This whole driving sickness thing is really one of the big challenges on our trips. We hate having to dope her which is unavoidable with the medication, but the alternative is worse. We of course also use the acupressure bracelets for her, but they don't seem to be enough on longer trips. I really hope that she will grow out of it eventually as bus and car journeys can be quite a challenge for all of us!
She was asleep for perhaps half an hour of 45 min on and off and the woke completely feeling full of energy. The last of the trip to Tirana was spent trying to entertain her with various things.. we read books, made drawings, tickled each other, looked out the window, made up silly games etc -all in the space of two seats! Lets just say that we were pretty relieved to get out of the bus after just under three hours of driving. Saya needed to go to the toilet before we went on the next bus, so we went into a cafe at a petrol station near the place the bus had dropped us off. (Dorian had arranged with the bus driver to tell us when to get off so that we didn't have to go all the way into Tirana just to come back out again.)
After a coffee and a toilet break and a grumpy Saya that would have none of the juice offered to her, we asked the lady in the cafe if she could tell us where the bus was leaving from exactly as we were a bit unsure. She spoke absolutely no English as with most of the people we have come across in Albania, but with lots of hand gestures and talk in Albanian, we managed to make out that we had two options for catching the bus to Kruje. One was to go into the center of Tirana, the other one involved her showing us where the bus stop was. We weren't quite sure if this also meant taking us in her car of whether she would walk us there. We decided to go with the flow and see what would happen. We waited... and waited, and started to become unsure of whether we had misunderstood her completely when she turned up with her little handbag and made a notion for us to follow her. She walked us 5 mins up the road where it turned out that the busses where leaving from. She stayed with us till the right one came along and till all our bags where safely stored in the minibus as it turned our to be. We were very uncertain of whether we should offer her money for kindness or whether that would be deemed rude. We decided to offer her 200 leke. After all she had left her job in the cafe to take us to the bus. She however refused promptly to take our money and once again we were reminded of the extreme kindness and hospitality that we meet wherever we go in the Balkans.
The trip to Kuje was a pretty short but very hot one and Saya was growing impatient and tired.
The road to Kuje was going up the mountain and as I said earlier, the town itself rest on the mountainside and consists of steep winding roads and houses scattered all over the cliffs. It's beautiful!
We got out of the minibus and Saya just collapsed on the pavement with no intention to get up. It was clear that if she was going anywhere it would mean by us carrying her or pushing her in the trolley.
We sat there on the pavement. for a little bit just taking it all in and Saya had lots of cuddles. She was then out in the trolley and we pushed it to the top of the mountain to our hotel only to find that it had a massive flight of stairs leading even further up. I grabbed Saya and Kristian grabbed the trolley and we finally made it to the reception of the hotel.. sweaty, but happy!
We were even more happy to see that the room is a beautiful big room with a great balcony over looking like I said all of Tirana.
We relaxed for a little bit in the room and then went down to eat in the restaurant in the hotel. Food was delicious and very cheap. We then went back to the room and chilled out for a bit, showering, reading books and playing games. By the time we finally felt revitalized enough to go out it was early evening, so we went for a short stroll around the neighbourhood and finally ended up back at the restaurant at the hotel ordering more food. I think that the waiters in the restaurant must think that there is something wrong with us considering the amount of food we have eaten today. But then.. it is really difficult to know how much food you should order in Albania as the sizes of the dishes vary extremely! In Sarande you literally got a piece of meat if that is what you ordered and nothing else, in Berat the so called starters were the sizes of a main course and here it is pretty much the same.. you just don't know. I do feel bad though when we have ordered way too much food and gave to leave half - it just seems greedy and impolite.
So now Saya is tucked in after a long day, Kristian and I have shared some of the wine we bought at the winery yesterday and were both ore than ready to go to bed. We are staying here till Tuesday from where we still don't know where we are going to. We have decided that two days each place is a minimum, as the travelling will otherwise be too intense and tiring.
Tomorrow is going to be a chilled out day, there isn't great deal to see in Kruje, so there will be plenty of time to play with Saya and enjoy the beautiful views.
Right now there is a wedding in the downstairs restaurant and the music is pretty loud. We just saw the married couple arrive - her in the biggest white dress I think I have ever seen trying to climb a flight of stairs with her husband. The husband had a very hard time avoiding stepping on her dress and falling over. Quite amazingly they did make it to the top without incident. This kind of brings back memories of last year in Novi Pasar.. I think our goal should be to be invited to one of these weddings instead of just watching them from afar.
Our journey to Kruje which is the town where the national hero Skanderbeg was born, started this morning after another night with broken sleep. Saya kept waking up and in the end Kristian laid down beside her in the hopes that it would give us all some rest.. it did partially, but because of the stuffiness of the room and I guess the quality of the beds, we just didn't get any proper rest anyway. Saya woke up early and exclaimed as the first thing "I want to sleep alone!" She never has been the one for sharing her bed.. with anyone!
Kristian got up early then and Saya managed to go back to sleep for a bit longer and so did I. I finally crawled out of bed around eight and found Kristian sat at the computer translating the blog into Danish whilst Saya lay on a lamb skin on the floor watching cartoons with a sheet over her.. total bliss!
We packed our bags and got ready for our journey north. Dorian picked us up at 10 and walked us down to the bus where we said our goodbyes. He was a nice guy, but his moods where clearly marked by his unfortune in life. Perhaps Kristian wrote about it in his entry yesterday, but Dorian has a degree in History and Geography and is also a skilled electrician, but can't really seem to find any work with any of it, Instead he is minding his sister's house that we rented and doing the odd job here and there. Both his sisters are living abroad, and Dorian dreams of far away places, but isn't able to go anywhere due to his financial situation. If life had been a little different for him I think he would have been a lot more fun to be with - he was kind and extremely helpful and had lots of interesting knowledge, but was just kind of.. I don't know which word to use.. well life hadn't dealt him the card that he had hoped for.. well at least not yet.
The bus was luckily one of the big busses and not one of the small furgons. We managed to get a seat next to the door in the middle and the overhead window. We had given Saya her medication for motion sickness, and it knocked her out as soon as we started driving. We discussed whether we should try and give her a smaller dose than what is recommended, but we are just afraid that she will get sick if we do so, This whole driving sickness thing is really one of the big challenges on our trips. We hate having to dope her which is unavoidable with the medication, but the alternative is worse. We of course also use the acupressure bracelets for her, but they don't seem to be enough on longer trips. I really hope that she will grow out of it eventually as bus and car journeys can be quite a challenge for all of us!
She was asleep for perhaps half an hour of 45 min on and off and the woke completely feeling full of energy. The last of the trip to Tirana was spent trying to entertain her with various things.. we read books, made drawings, tickled each other, looked out the window, made up silly games etc -all in the space of two seats! Lets just say that we were pretty relieved to get out of the bus after just under three hours of driving. Saya needed to go to the toilet before we went on the next bus, so we went into a cafe at a petrol station near the place the bus had dropped us off. (Dorian had arranged with the bus driver to tell us when to get off so that we didn't have to go all the way into Tirana just to come back out again.)
After a coffee and a toilet break and a grumpy Saya that would have none of the juice offered to her, we asked the lady in the cafe if she could tell us where the bus was leaving from exactly as we were a bit unsure. She spoke absolutely no English as with most of the people we have come across in Albania, but with lots of hand gestures and talk in Albanian, we managed to make out that we had two options for catching the bus to Kruje. One was to go into the center of Tirana, the other one involved her showing us where the bus stop was. We weren't quite sure if this also meant taking us in her car of whether she would walk us there. We decided to go with the flow and see what would happen. We waited... and waited, and started to become unsure of whether we had misunderstood her completely when she turned up with her little handbag and made a notion for us to follow her. She walked us 5 mins up the road where it turned out that the busses where leaving from. She stayed with us till the right one came along and till all our bags where safely stored in the minibus as it turned our to be. We were very uncertain of whether we should offer her money for kindness or whether that would be deemed rude. We decided to offer her 200 leke. After all she had left her job in the cafe to take us to the bus. She however refused promptly to take our money and once again we were reminded of the extreme kindness and hospitality that we meet wherever we go in the Balkans.
The trip to Kuje was a pretty short but very hot one and Saya was growing impatient and tired.
The road to Kuje was going up the mountain and as I said earlier, the town itself rest on the mountainside and consists of steep winding roads and houses scattered all over the cliffs. It's beautiful!
We got out of the minibus and Saya just collapsed on the pavement with no intention to get up. It was clear that if she was going anywhere it would mean by us carrying her or pushing her in the trolley.
We sat there on the pavement. for a little bit just taking it all in and Saya had lots of cuddles. She was then out in the trolley and we pushed it to the top of the mountain to our hotel only to find that it had a massive flight of stairs leading even further up. I grabbed Saya and Kristian grabbed the trolley and we finally made it to the reception of the hotel.. sweaty, but happy!
We were even more happy to see that the room is a beautiful big room with a great balcony over looking like I said all of Tirana.
We relaxed for a little bit in the room and then went down to eat in the restaurant in the hotel. Food was delicious and very cheap. We then went back to the room and chilled out for a bit, showering, reading books and playing games. By the time we finally felt revitalized enough to go out it was early evening, so we went for a short stroll around the neighbourhood and finally ended up back at the restaurant at the hotel ordering more food. I think that the waiters in the restaurant must think that there is something wrong with us considering the amount of food we have eaten today. But then.. it is really difficult to know how much food you should order in Albania as the sizes of the dishes vary extremely! In Sarande you literally got a piece of meat if that is what you ordered and nothing else, in Berat the so called starters were the sizes of a main course and here it is pretty much the same.. you just don't know. I do feel bad though when we have ordered way too much food and gave to leave half - it just seems greedy and impolite.
So now Saya is tucked in after a long day, Kristian and I have shared some of the wine we bought at the winery yesterday and were both ore than ready to go to bed. We are staying here till Tuesday from where we still don't know where we are going to. We have decided that two days each place is a minimum, as the travelling will otherwise be too intense and tiring.
Tomorrow is going to be a chilled out day, there isn't great deal to see in Kruje, so there will be plenty of time to play with Saya and enjoy the beautiful views.