Friday, December 11, 2009

Today’s stats:
Distance traveled today: 70.91 km
Total trip distance: 2682 km
Max speed: 40.5 km/ hour
Average speed: 19.1 km / hour
Total time biking: 3:42
Total days biking: 46
Spending: 4740 leke (or $47)

The hotel bathroom:

We got internet this morning on a beautiful pedestrian street in downtown Shkodra:

When I checked our website, I found a surprising comment on our blog. I ran out excitedly to Richard, who was outside guarding the bikes from a barefoot crazy woman roaming the street. I was unaware that she had been assaulting Richard, smacking him on the back and calling him an ‘Artist!’ or something that sounds like that in Shqipëri, the word for Albanian in Albanian. (The name Albania is a invention by European geographers who named it after “Alpine” for all its mountains, but the country is actually called Shqipërisë).

“There’s another cyclist in Albania and he wants to meet us!” I screamed.

Rob, an American, had been told there were two other cyclists just ahead of him (small world!) and was looking out for us. We arranged to try to meet him, excited to have someone else to share our stories and adventures with. We were a rare breed in Albania.

As we rolled out of town, people on the main street stopped whatever they were doing in unison, staring unabashedly at the site of a female foreigner traveling through their country on a bicycle in spandex.

We passed a boy on a bicycle on the side of the road who seemed to want to join us. “Tirana?” he asked of our direction. “Yup!” we answered. “Go on ahead,” he signaled, as if to say, ‘I’ll catch up.’ Then he started pedaling furiously behind us, and we thought he might actually be able to keep up. Sadly, we lost him in less than two minutes.  And here, more interesting forms of cycling in Shkodra.

It was a windy, windy day on the flat two-lane highway through the countryside. The wind got so strong it blew Richard’s map off his handlebar bag. The road was, yet again, perfectly smooth, defying the stories we’d been told of horrible roads. But what was on the road fully confirmed the ‘Yemen of Europe’ theme.

First it was the turkeys. We passed a shepherd family – father, mother and son – ushering their brood of turkeys (what do you call a group of turkeys?) across the street with sticks. Then it was the two men pulled over on the side of the highway, arguing with the police officers who stopped them. Then it was a pack of dogs that started running after us. Richard had always told me that dogs are dangerous because they can get caught in your wheels, get run over, and knock you off your bike. “Go! Go! Go!” he yelled. Apparently, I didn’t take him seriously enough. Again, he screamed: “Go! Go! Go!” with an urgency I have never heard before. So I pedaled, and we evaded our predators.

Somewhere around Lacë, we fell upon construction on the road, turning the two-lane highway into what would become three or four lanes in each direction. We could smell the fresh cement that Albania was using to make itself over. But in the unfinished parts – the bumpy, dirt sections that blew dust in our faces when cars drove by – glimpses into the old Albania remained.

Around 4pm, we started looking for a hotel – there are plenty of them along the highway: brand-spanking new and usually empty. We found one for 25 euros where the receptionist spoke no English.

We pedaled into the nearby town, Mamurras, to find internet. Not one person in the village spoke English; luckily the word internet is universal. Young boys crowded in to study their curious new guests at the cyber café. Trying to ask the simplest questions – like “what time do you close?” – required a series of hand signals, attempted sentences, laughter from the entire room. It was a typical scene from a Senegalese cybercafé. “Turn up the music!” somebody screamed, and the rap music went up. Finally, Richard found an older guy who spoke Italian, and a tiny 14-year-old called Ergys, who spoke English. He served as our translator for the rest of our stay. As we were leaving, the boys mustered up the courage to talk to us more. “Where are you staying?” … “How long do you stay?” … “Take care on the road back to the hotel.” When I tried to pay, the teenager running the place refused to accept any money.

In Albanian tradition, hospitality is of the utmost importance. So much so that the treatment of guests is regulated by the Kanun, the 15^th century code that governs daily life in the northern part of the country. If a guest is murdered while staying with you, it is your family’s responsibility to avenge his or her death. In the 1990s, a revival of the Kanun led to 20,000 blood feud deaths in Albania.

In another show of hospitality, the hotel clerk insisted on carrying my bicycle up the stairs. I don’t think he realized how heavy it would be...

Tomorrow we hit the capital, Tirana!