Saturday, December 12, 2009

Today’s stats:
Distance traveled today: 33.86  km
Total trip distance: 2716 km
Max speed: 30.1 km/ hour
Average speed: 17.26 km / hour
Total time biking: 1:58
Total days biking: 47
Spending: 5760 leke ($58)

More scenes along the country’s biggest highway thismorning. Wooden shacks for homes, their yards delineated by bamboo stocks;butchers displaying their fresh meat from hooks on the side of the road;furniture sold out of unfinished buildings with no walls or windows; morejunkyards, more turkeys; piles of gravel and cement; a well-dressed man takinghis cow out for a stroll; a scarf-covered woman pushing wheelbarrows of hay.

 

Furgons, communaltransport vans, drove past, their passengers’ stares lingering out the backwindow.

We stopped for some food at a supermarket, where the shelvesin the single bland room were half empty. The old man gave us pieces ofcardboard to sit on out of the rain while we ate our bagged croissants.

After about 20 or 25km, the sleepy countryside came to lifein a matter of meters, with sounds, people, movement. Music blared from smallpizza and byrek shops, packed side byside. Vendors sold clothes out of narrow stalls. Young boys hung outside ofopen doors of moving vans calling for customers: “Tirana, Tirana, Tirana!”

For the first time, as we approached the capital, I noticedtraffic lights, real bus stops, and yellow taxis. Tall apartment buildings,fancy shopping strips and an Ikea-look-alike.

Tirana is a real city, with trendy people, big boulevards,an opera house, 24-hour grocery stores, even an annual international filmfestival. Oh, and Albania now has Big Brother!

We checked into TiranaBackpacker Hostel, recommended to us by an American named Steve who livesin Tirana and contacted us through our blog. Housed in a 1930s villa, it wasthe first hostel to open in Albania fiveyears ago to meet a small, but growing demand of backpackers – mostlypassing through Albania to get to Greece or as part of a Balkans tour.

One of the managers, Nestur – nicknamed Robo, or “dude” –told us all about it as he made us tea on an age-old wood-burning stove in theshed that serves as a kitchen. The hostel mutt, Caramel, followed us aroundeverywhere we went.

“Most clients”, Robo said, as he put more branches of woodinto the stove, “get stuck in Albania… They come here just to sleep one nightand have some beers before heading to Greece to start another party…We have alot of good traditions, but a lot of people who come are just looking forparties.”

He took us to our room, which was slightly cold withslightly wobbly beds. But they’ve got the hostel concept bang on.

We tasted our first byrek,layered filo pastry stuff with either cheese, spinach or meat, for lunch.It was so delicious, we’ve been eating them every chance we get ever since.(Byrek is the easiest-to-find fast food around here).

We headed down Tirana’s main boulevard that pours ontoSkenderbeg square. There once stood a statue of dictator Hoxha, but it waspulled down by an angry mob after the fall of his regime (Saddam Husseinstyle), in one of many moves to wipe away the past and start over. In thestreets of Tirana, for example, are a number of brightly-coloured buildings –orange, purple, pink, turquoise – a move by the current mayor to change thefeel of the place, to paint over the grey concrete and raw brick of thecommunist past. 

 

We met up with Steve, the American, who was a great wealthof information about Albania (He’s been here on and off for 10 years, and ismarried to an Albanian).

The waiter who served our drinks at the Sarajet restaurant,a former Ottoman house, had just returned from more than 10 years in England,where his refugee claim was finally rejected. He was having a hard timeadjusting to the “mentality” of traditional Albanians and was prettypessimistic about his country’s future.

Then Steve took us into Blloku, the former communistleadership enclave, closed off to the common people. It’s now a chicneighborhood with lights, gambling centres and upscale boutiques. Across the street and a few housesdown from Hoxha’s former villa, we entered a small 2^nd-storyapartment, home to Steve’s wife’sgrandmother. What a woman. At 18 years old, she fought with Hoxha’s partisansagainst the Germans. She’s still got a gunshot wound in the head to prove it.Her 16-year-old sister was tortured and killed by the Germans. Her fatherfought for independence from the Turks.

“I’ve fought in a war of National Liberation,” she says,evoking a concept of utmost importance in her family. “For the war I’ve done,I’m proud.”

Now 83, she looks back nostalgically at the communist yearsthat followed liberation. “There were no beggars then. The army was strong. Itwas a closed country. Nobody left or came, but we stayed like in our own house…Things are much worse now.”

Like many of the older generation here, Ender Bita is not afan of the roughness of the transition into democracy, when people abused theirnew-found freedom.

“When democracy came,” she says, “everything was destroyed.In this country, democracy was badly understood and implemented: theft,looting, unemployment, emigration, laziness.”

It wasn’t what I expected to hear, but made perfect sense.It wasn’t communism people had a problem with – in fact it introduced astructure and efficiency to society that many look back on with longing. But inour perception of Albania, communism has always been inextricably tied with thetotalitarianism through which it was administered. People like Ender similarly conflatedemocracy and capitalism. Here she is with me and Steve, below a painting (centre) of her at 18 years old in her Partisan uniform:

 

After an enlightening discussion, we headed to a cheap localplace for dinner, Korça, where we had pig’s neck, chofta (like Egyptian kufta),sausage, fries, salad and beer, for $5 each.

Tomorrow we head south towards Berat, a “living museum” ofOttoman houses.

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!

Thursday, December 10, 2009

Today’s stats:
Distance traveled today: 54.90 km
Total trip distance: 2610 km
Max speed: 43.08 km/ hour
Average speed: 16.24 km / hour
Total time biking: 3:23
Total days biking: 45
Spending: 77 euros

Windows clattered and garbage bags flew as we left our apartment this morning, the wind was so strong.

“So you sleep good?” Simo, the waiter from the night before, said as we entered the restaurant. He brought us two cups of Turkish coffee, before starting to scribble on the back of his order pad.

“So you don’t make mistake.”

He was mapping out directions to Albania.

The two men drinking tea at the table next to us start discussing the directions in Serbian, with Simo acting as the interlocutor translator. They argued amongst themselves for a while before we tried to recap in English.

“Just a minute! Just a minute!” one of the men said. Back to Serbian. Finally, we (they) agreed on a route.

After 15 minutes of maps and discussions, Simo said: “Don’t worry, It’s not complicated.”

“You only have about 3km of uphill,” the man in the striped orange sweater said. “When you see a car, grab on,” his friend with the nice blue eyes said. “We in Montenegro don’t like to work hard,” Simo joked.

“And where can we find a post office?” Richard asked. This began a whole new discussion. Is nothing simple around here?

“Now, repeat to make sure you understood,” Blue Eyes said.  Hands in the air indicated Richard had passed the test.  “If you get to a village where no one speaks English, call Simo and he will translate.” It was as if we had never traveled before.

“Have you been to Albania before?” we asked. “Is it nice?” They all laughed. “You’ll see for yourself.”

We got talking about future plans, and Beirut. The man who bought our second round of coffee said he liked only Armenia Street in Beirut, because in the rest of the city: “Too many Muslims.”

After the coffee came a round of rakia, equivalent to Italy’s grappa or Portugal’s aguardente, made naturally from grapes. “The best,” in fact. Even better than Italy’s, Orange Sweater insisted. Simo asked if I wanted one too, being a woman and all. I said I’d take a small one. But when he came around the corner, he had a tray of four equal sized shots. “That’s not small, Simo!”

“You are not half a man. You are a woman!” was his response.

“Živeli,” we all said – cheers! Here's Simo:

By the time we had left, we had had two Turkish coffees and two shots of rakia (good for circulation, apparently), all before 10am, none of which we were allowed to pay for. 

When we finally got on the road, the sun was out, and I stripped down to a tank top for the first time in God knows when. Not far from our path, in Bar’s old town, or Stari Grad, was the Maslina, a 2,000-year-old olive tree. We took the Bar-Ulcinj road, but before the tunnel, turned left to get to the Muriqani border crossing. It was a steep climb for 2-3km, but after that, a beautiful small country road all the way to Albania.

Picnic lunch:



Near the border, things began visibly changing. We passed our first minaret. Muslim cemeteries were abundant, with graves marked with a green crescent. Albania has a huge Muslim majority, and we were beginning to see its influence.

Then things just started getting funny. We passed a woman wearing a pink bathrobe down the street. Then the police station which had its very own herd of sheep grazing in the front yard.

Then finally, the moment we had been waiting for, for so long. Crossing the border into Albania was like watching a curtain raise over a whole new world – a overwhelming, stimulating new world:

We approach, some butterflies in the stomach. A little nervousness. This is it. This is the real thing. The men lurking past the customs check have dark faces, topped with a head of black. Their black leather jackets only accentuate the darkness.  In Richard’s imagination, they are the Sigurimi, former secret police; in reality, they are unofficial taxi drivers, waiting for customers. The smell of sheep, of cow manure. Bunkers at every other house, left over from the paranoia of Hoxha’s years as dictator. Children running out of their homes to practice the few phrases of English they know. “Hello. Do you speak English?” Nearly every single person on the main road waves, smiles, calls out words of encouragement. They are impressed with us. We are with them.

The road is newly paved and perfectly smooth. The sun is out. The mountains stand grandiose in the distance.

Minarets at every corner. Women in scarves or bonnets covering their hair. Pigs and roosters on the street. A soccer field made solely of mud – no grass, no lines. Smoke emerging from little chimneys. Scooter and bicycle-run carts and wagons as taxis. Young boys and old men on bicycles with baskets and umbrellas across the handlebars. A man cycles by with a baby in one arm. He loosens his grip on the baby to wave hello with his hand, while continuing to ride.

The azhan sounds. It doesn’t feel like a Muslim city, but it is, in its very own way. No one speaks English. The lake doubles as a garbage can. So does much of the side of the road.

Nowhere else have people been so friendly, but we are initially too scared to stop and talk to anyone extensively. At the one-lane bridge crossing the Bunë River to Shkodra town, the gypsy kids are waiting.  I can see them swarming Richard, tugging at his water bottle, the only thing they can get their hands on. I keep my hand over the camera in my pocket. A wooden bridge to the other side. More chaos. Music blaring out of shops. Workers carrying sheets of metal on their shoulders in the middle of the street. Bicycles everywhere, riding in the opposite direction. Tires, shoes, cabbage, everything for sale on the sidewalk. Cigarettes out of plastic bags. Cell phones on cardboard boxes. I can think of nothing but Africa. Except that in Africa, no one ever threw anything at us. We pass a home with a balcony full of kids playing. They scream out words in Albanian and out of one of their hands sails some object – a small piece of wood maybe – in our direction. A sign of affection, perhaps? We find a hotel for 20 euros. The showerhead hangs over the toilet. This is Albania.



Wait, let me backtrack. Yes, Albania is undeveloped – “the Yemen of Europe,” as Richard calls it. But it’s nowhere near as bad as described. And it’s a mixed lot. In Shkodra, the fourth biggest city, we found banks, restaurants open late, fancy hotels, parks, teenagers in trendy clothes, and lots of Mercedes-Benz. Here's Richard posing before the Rozafa castle of Shkodra - "quickly, before that gang of boys gets us":



Albania is a country in transition. After four decades of communist dictatorship, followed by a few years of social unrest in the 90s when the communist regime fell apart, and a 1997 rebellion that saw tanks patrolling the streets, Albania is now evolving into a capitalist-oriented, tourist-friendly place.

For dinner, we went to a beautiful stone restaurant that serves typical Albanian food. The owner approached us, wearing a white embroidered shirt, and red sash across his waist. “What do you want to eat – traditional?” Yes, we answered. And some Albanian wine, perhaps. We were expecting him to come back with some suggestions. But that was it. We never saw a menu or price list. We were never asked what we liked or didn’t like. First, some raki as an aperitif – mine cherry-flavored. Then some appetizers – stuffed grave vine leaves, fried cornbread, meat-filled pastry. Food just kept landing on the table. A selection of pickled vegetables; a dry, crumbling white cheese; flat bread; and meat of all kinds, grilled on the wood-fire oven. First wild boar sausage, then wild boar meat, then veal, then lamb. Each deliciously juicy. Every time the waiter deposited another item, he would say: “Good eat!” Best of all was an earthenware pot of a moist, soft cow’s cheese, boiled in oil and herbs and served hot.



The food was organic by default, the owner told us, because it all comes from the region, and farmers here can’t afford pesticides.

After dinner, we sat with Gjon Dukgilaj, the owner, and discussed the history of the restaurant, Albania and religion. More raki and tea arrived. He broke walnuts for us to eat as we spoke. Then he showed us around the restaurant, where he has innumerable old artifacts – swords, a weaving loom, traditional Albanian costumes. It’s a bit of a museum actually and he’s a bit of an anthropologist. “You know,” he said in all seriousness, “we were the real Egyptians.”

His theory is that when the sands overtook Egypt in Pharoanic times and the land became uninhabitable, the people migrated to Albania and their descendents became the Illyrians, who once populated the Dalmatian coast. Only in Albania did the Illyrian language – and to some degree the people – survive invasions, colonization and occupations by the Greeks, Romans, Slavs and Ottomans.

So his theory is that the Albanians’ ancestors are Egyptians. His proof?

In the ancient Pharoanic language, there are words that have no translation in Albanian. Ra, for example, was the last Pharoanic king, and means “fallen” in Albanian – “It’s a purely Illyrian word”. The Albanian people near-worship the serpent, adorned by the foreheads of ancient Egyptians. Albanian women similarly wore it, routinely until the 1960s. Gjon (pronounced John) went so far as to say that the Albanian flag – commonly accepted as an eagle – is actually two serpent heads.



Besides, he said, no one knows the roots of the Albanian language, one of the oldest in Europe. Maybe the Egypt connection provides some answers. After all, it was an Albanian, Mohammad Ali Pasha, who founded Egypt.

We strolled back to the hotel past a group of loud teenagers. The door to the hotel was unlocked and there was no reception, no guard, nothing but a narrow staircase and the shitty little key to our room. We already felt more comfortable in Albania, but Richard jammed a table behind the door just in case.

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Today’s stats:
Distance traveled today: 68.01 km
Total trip distance: 2555 km
Max speed:  60.20 km/ hour
Average speed:  16.18 km / hour
Total time biking: 4:12
Total days biking: 44
Spending: 45 euros

I guess I wasn’t looking. It’s not unusual that my eyes wander while cycling – I look to my quads, to urge them to move faster; or to the people on the street, for some form of contact. But after their usual meanderings, once back on the road, my eyes narrowed to an unusual – no, panic-inducing – site in front of me: Richard sprawled out on the road, his bicycle on top of him.

The morning had started off well. We awoke to sunny skies and Budimir cutting oranges off his front-yard tree for us to take.



Sporting a San Francisco sweat shirt, a cigarette stuck to his right hand, Budimir proclaimed valiantly: “I love America!”But that’s not the case for most of his neighbors. Before leaving Tivat, we had a long chat with a Croatian-Montenegrin (born in Montenegro, but ethnically Croatian), who let us in on some war secrets.

During Serbia’s bombing of Croatia, American submarines crept into the Montenegrin coast, just 200 metres from Tivat town where we stood, launching five Tomahawks at Serbian radars just out of sight in the mountains, keeping a watchful eye over the entire Mediterranean. The Tomahawks lit up the sky towards their target, but one blew into flames, shot down by the Montenegrins. Only one. But that’s not what Milosevic would have his people believe. To conquer his propaganda, the Americans  left their repeater atop the mountains, so that locals would hear their version of events in the daily American military briefings.

As thousands of NATO fighter planes flew overhead from the Aviano air base in Italy, the Chinese were quietly showing the enemy how to detect American stealth bombers. The 1999 “accidental” bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, was no mistake at all.

During all this, the Croatian hid in his home, his wife telling others that he had gone to work at sea – so as not to be conscripted to fight against his own people. “For me to go kill Croatians, and them to come kill us here, how can it be?”

Budimir offered to drive in front of us to show us the way to the port. The eve’s rainfall had stained the street a slick black and Richard hadn’t noticed the downwards slant along the side of the roaed, leading into the sidewalk. He was going more than 25 km/ hour, a car just behind him, when, embroiled in a patch of mud, he hit the slant and the bike jumped out from under him.

“Pick your head up. Pick your head up,” he told himself, knowing the car might not have enough time to stop. “It’s going to run over your head.”

Luckily, the car was alert, and passed him safely, and it was only then that I looked up to see Richard lying there, his right foot still clipped into his pedal. Budi hadn’t seen the wipe-out but had come back to make sure we hadn’t lost him. So Richard picked himself up and cycled to the port before stopping to examine the big gash across his left knee that left two big tears in his pants (which he sewed himself a few minutes later in a coffee shop).



After shaking the shock of the fall over coffee, and finding a flat-head screw to replace the one on his cleat that had disappeared during the whole affair, we were off again.

More flat road for the first 15km or so, until the Black Mountain showed its true colors. “Is that our road?” I said to Richard. In the distance, we could see a road sloping aggressively up a hill. “I hope not,” he answered. It was indeed, like many after it.

We made it to Bar after another I’m-not-moving-another-inch Heba moment, just as the sun’s rays disappeared from over the glittering blue sea. Found a sobe for 23 euros, with cockroaches and a missing shower door. Finally things are getting cheaper. At the restaurant below, we gobbled a massive plate of mixed grill, including the Montenegrin specialty cevapcici, at just nine euros for the two of us, before teaching the waiter the Arabic alphabet.



“You go to face?” he asked as we were leaving. Apparently in Montenegro, that’s what the young kids call facebook.

Tomorrow, it’s off to Albania… already! God, it’s come upon us so quickly. On that note, we received a comment  from an American living in Albania who had stumbled upon our blog and encouraged us to go. He warned of the thieving gypsy kids, but said it would definitely be worth our while!

Tuesday, December 8, 2009

Today’s stats:
Distance traveled today: 70.6 km
Total trip distance: 2487 km
Max speed: 53.71 km/ hour
Average speed: 16.42 km / hour
Total time biking: 4:18
Total days biking: 43
Spending: 55 euros

Slow news day today, folks, which can be summed up as follows: walled city fatigue, popcorn and rain.

We set off for the second newest country in the world, after Kosovo. Montenegro voted for independence from Serbia in 2006, and has been its very own run-down country since. Ok, so I judge quickly.

The first 18km from Dubrovnik felt more like 40 thanks to my dear friends the mountains. But after Cavtat, the rest of the way to and into Montenegro was flatter than we’ve seen for a long time.

The Croatian and Montenegrin customs offices at the border were a few hundred meters apart. “Normally, they are side by side,” Richard whispered to me afterwards. “But these guys used to kill each other. So I guess they needed a buffer zone.”

My first impression of Montenegro, which means literally Black Mountain, was grey and dull, like the sky today. Between the signs for wild boar crossings, the pair of black underwear on the road and the African-style metal shacks selling goods on the side of the road, I wasn’t blown away.

The weather forecasters must have been happy because it rained, right on schedule, at around 1:30pm and for the rest of the afternoon. We caught a free 10-min ferry from Kamenari across the Bay of Kotor, where mountains slope directly into the water, forming a … you guessed it, natural World Heritage Site. We skipped the accompanying medieval fortified city of Kotor, because I simply couldn’t stand seeing another walled city.

We pedaled in hard rain for a few minutes before deciding to call it quits and finding a sobe (room for rent) in the house of a nice, old man called Budimir. We made popcorn in the kitchen and watched Wesley Snipes and Morgan Freeman movies on the DVD player. Looks like we’re both craving a home wherever we can create one.

Can't write much now, only to say that we are in Albania and it is great. New cell: +355 672 864 086

Sunday, December 6, 2009

Today’s stats:
Distance traveled today: 88.69 km
Total trip distance: 2416 km
Max speed: 59.62 km/ hour
Average speed: 17.16 km / hour
Total time biking: 5:10
Total days biking: 42
Spending: 378 kuna (about $75)

We’ve agreed to reform our cycling strategy. We realized that stopping for a warm lunch is not only expensive but takes a significant chunk out of the few daylight hours we have and thus limits the number of kilometers we can ride. So last night, we bought groceries for lunch and tested our new approach this morning. We figured eating a quick bite on the road, instead of searching for and stopping at a restaurant would save us at least an hour and a half.

Croatia is shaped like an upside-down horseshoe and the bottom of its coastline is interrupted by a 10-km stretch of Bosnia--the country’s only coastline.  Apparently this phenomenon dates back to 1699, when the independent Republic of Ragusa (Dubrovnik) sold a small amount of territory to the Ottoman Empire in order to avoid sharing a terrestrial border with the advancing forces of their rival, the Venetian Republic.  

We hit the road at a quarter to nine with more mountains and good weather and planned to be in Bosnia in time for breakfast.

The lone outpost of Bosnia on the Croatian coast, the town of Neum was a disappointment (Although we did not venture from the main road to the city center/port in order to avoid having to climb back up to the road bed). It lacks charm and identity; but for the coastal customs control and the Bosnian currency, the Bosnian mark (KM), it might as well have been Croatia. We didn’t even get a stamp in our passports.

We stopped at a café owned by a quiet woman in her fourties with reddish hair and a gap between her front teeth. She was distant at first, but when we asked to change euros for some Bosnian money, she happily gave us our “souvenir”. She told me that her mother and three brothers had fled to Utah during the war.

“Life here, very bad,” she said, constantly shaking her head, almost as if she had a nervous twitch. I couldn’t tell if it pained her to say more or if she simply couldn’t express herself well in English. I asked if she ever considered leaving for America like her family.  “Life in America? No, I cannot. I don’t leave my country.” This, despite the fact that “…no money here.  Life in Bosnia very bad.”

We pedaled out of Bosnia to the smell of full lambs roasted on a spit. The border back into Croatia was marked by a dark splash of asphalt and a simple sign post.





(Hrvatska is Croatia's real name)

Our time-saving plan worked. We stopped to eat our chips and sandwiches on the side of the mountain road, and were in Dubrovnik before the sun set, around 16:30.



At the entrance to its walled, medieval city was a large white placard with a city map identifying the areas damaged by the 1991-92 attack by Serbians, Montenegrins and the Yugoslav army. The scramble of red and black triangles, circles and rectangles on the map covered almost every inch of the city.

After running into a couple strangers on the street, who offered us rooms for rent, we rented an apartment from a Muslim Croat called Amira (same name as my sister!) www.villa-san.com. Almost immediately, she told us all about her son’s upcoming wedding. She was in the process of cleaning the house for the big day, Saturday, when she expects to receive 30 guests for lunch. The itinerary for the day? Lunch at the groom’s house (The guests normally bring household presents, like TVs or tablecloths, but in today’s modern world, they give money instead). Then drinks at the bride’s house. Then off to the mosque to be married. Then off to the government to be married again. Then to a restaurant for dinner. Then to a hall for dancing the rest of the night away. Long day.

We settled in for the night and after a long day of biking, I was asleep in no time. I had barely opened my eyes the next morning when, rather than “Good morning” Richard said very seriously: “We need to discuss Albania.”

He had stayed up late the night before reading the entire Lonely Planet section on Albania and had some concerns about us cycling there. Until recently, it was considered the most closed off country in the world.

“They’ve only had cars for about 10 years, so the drivers aren’t any good. Likewise, they’ve only had roads for about 10 years, so the roads are no good either. There doesn’t seem to be a single hospital in the country; for health care you must go to a Baptist clinic that treats people in the capital. And even they don’t do trauma. So if we’re hit by one of the bad drivers, we’re screwed. You can only use credit cards in the capital; it is almost mid-December; and I still can’t find a map for the country. I haven’t even told you about the blood feuds. I don’t know about this.”

This, of course, was just a front. Richard has been eager to visit Albania from the very beginning and it didn’t take long to remind him that this was exactly the adventure we were looking for after two months of churches, medieval cities and easy-to-navigate Western Europe.

I might add here that back in Kenya we were warned by an Eastern European that we should, at all costs, avoid Albania because “they will steal the shirts off your backs. They make the Somalis look like sissies.” That being said, we have heard good things about Albanian hospitality and we are keen to see something truly different.

Ok, I’m getting ahead of myself. Back to Dubrovnik.

As we descended from our apartment Monday morning into Amira’s main courtyard, we noticed her cat scamper off around the corner.

“She’s scared of us!” I said to Amira. That launched her into a lengthy explanation of her “crazy” neighbor who poisoned 10 of her cats and left the remaining two traumatized and scared of strangers.

“He’s a crazy man,” she repeated over and over. “Crazy man.”

“I can understand people who don’t like animals,” she went on. “But to kill them?... He thinks I crazy because I feed stray cats. Everyday I go buy box of cat food. But I’m not crazy. I’m just human being.”

She told us of the man’s son, whom she once caught shooting cats and birds with a rifle.  “You put that thing away right now,” she told him, “because if anything happens to my son, I’ll kill you.”

To hear those words coming out of the mouth of a pleasant woman like Amira was yet another reminder of the violence these people have experienced and presumably become accustomed to. But she tells me that since the war, tensions have eased, and Bosnians, Croats, Serbs, Muslims, Catholics, Jews, Orthodox all live together, intermarry, share in each other’s festivities.

Like everyone, she was touched by the war. “I lost 25 relatives,” she says. “But I can’t hate. Hate is a very bad word. Even the man who poisoned the cats, I think he is evil. But I don’t hate him.”

We spent the afternoon walking on top of the fortified city’s walls, looking over the town, the port, and the islands in the distance. We had a specialty of the area for lunch: risotto with squid and its ink.

Tomorrow, it’s off to the mountains of Montenegro!

Saturday, December 5, 2009

Today’s stats:
Distance traveled today: 65.33 km
Total trip distance: 2327 km
Max speed: 53.18 km/ hour
Average speed: 18.93 km / hour
Total time biking: 3:27
Total days biking: 41
Spending: 819 kuna (about $163)

We had set the alarm for 6:30am in order to ride the remaining 25km to the edge of the island in time to catch the 9:45am ferry back to the mainland. Of course we woke up late and didn’t start riding until 8:35am, assuming we would have to wait for the next ferry, but keeping the faint hope that maybe, if the terrain was mostly downhill, we could still make it. It was a race against time, and for the first time on this trip, I pushed myself continuously for 25km straight. One might even call it a sprint. Well, maybe a jog…  

Richard had ridden ahead to get tickets. At 9:40am, I was sailing down the mountain with the tip of the island in sight. I knew I was close, but the road just kept winding. “Why does everything have to be so difficult?” I called out to whatever spirits were listening. I was sure I would miss the boat by just a few minutes and Richard would lecture me about why I hadn’t “dug deep” and pushed myself just a touch harder.



I rolled into the tiny port with less than two minutes to spare, just as Richard emerged from the ticket office. “Go! Go!” he yelled. We both grabbed our bikes and boarded just in time. It was one of those few times where we actually managed to do something right.



It was a beautiful, sunny day. We sailed into Drvenik, at the foot of the 1000+m mountain chain that lines Croatia’s coast, much closer and more immediate than most mountains, usually seen from a distance. Quite a defense system the country has – like one big, tall, long wall.

We stopped for lunch in the town of Ploče, where the restaurant owner, Antonio, gave us a bag of Croatian oranges as we were leaving. Apparently it’s orange season here. We passed infinite stalls of vendors selling them on the street, and orange trees in every field.



Back on the road, the wobble I had noticed earlier in my bike grew out of control and I wandered into the opposite lane with a car oncoming. At the next chance we got, we stopped to tighten the bolt connecting the handlebar to the fork.

Having searched all day for vegetables (tomatoes, peppers, zucchini – anything but onions and carrots, really – are not available), we stopped at one orange stand where we found a single green … thing, that looked something like a squash. We had no idea what it was, but Richard asked the woman if we could cook it with risotto and when she said yes, we went ahead and bought it.

Our truly beautiful riding – past a small strip of houses along the Neretva river at the foot of the Dinaric Alps – came to a premature end around 3:30pm when we came across a hotel. We were about to enter another section of curving mountain road, with the next big town 20km away. “I’m just worried you’ll hit your wall at the worst time,” Richard said to me, knowing I would opt to continue riding a little further.  



Cycling in winter involves tough decisions. The sun sets early and it’s too cold to camp just anywhere. So if you’re not sure you’ll find accommodation further ahead, you often have to stop before you’re ready and at expensive rates, just to be safe. And so we spent the night at Hotel Merlot, where the owner gave us a 20% discount, we got unlimited internet and had heat, for the first time in Croatia! Which meant we could finally wash our clothes knowing they would dry by the next morning. Thank goodness.

Friday, December 4, 2009

Today’s stats:
Distance traveled today: 55.51 km
Total trip distance: 2262 km
Max speed: 44.72 km/ hour
Average speed: 12.29 km / hour
Total time biking: 4:59
Total days biking: 40
Spending: 506 kuna (about $100 or 67 euros)

We left Vjeko’s apartment before the break of dawn in order to catch a 7:00am ferry to the Croatian island of Hvar, one of close to 1500 islands along its coast. As we were searching for the right pier, we found a young man in his late 20s or early 30s waiting for the same boat. “Can I help you?” he asked, smiling. “Yes, is this the boat for Starigrad?” we asked. “Yes, it is.”



As he approached, I could see from the street light that he had both his ears pierced and wore sneakers, jeans and a hoodie. He was unusually friendly and talkative. “Hvar Island is good for cycling.”

A truck driver delivering tea, coffee and chips, he advised us on roads to take (there are only two on the island, one new and very much unknown) before introducing himself.

“My name is Stjepan Radic. I’m named after a big man in Croatian history who appears on the currency.”

“Was he a president?” I asked.

“No, he led the movement for Croatian independence,” he answered. “But in 1928, he was shot dead. They (the Serbs) shot him. Boom.” He made a pistol with his hand and feigned a shot. “Where are you from?” he asked.

When I said Canada, he began a long ramble about a dog from Newfoundland who once saved 12 people in a shipwreck and has a statue built after him overlooking the water. Stjepan had a dog like him once.

“And you?” I asked. “Where are you from in Croatia?”

“Here, Split!” he answered with pride.

“It’s beautiful,” I said.

“Yes, I love my city and my country. I have traveled a lot in Europe. I drive my truck in France, Belgium, Germany. Every place has something beautiful, but I love my country.”

With that, trucks began boarding the ferry. “I have to go!” he said as he ran off. We saw him a few minutes later pulling a huge white truck into the ferry and met him again in the seating area.

He told us of a beautiful new road, barely used, south of the main road along the island’s coast. But it would add a few kilometers to our ride across the island and we would have to cross a 5km stretch of gravel to get to it, he warned.  “Ok, now I go down there. There’s one couch on the ship – just one – with no arm chair in the middle. I sleep.”

We disembarked in Starigrad two hours later and decided to take the riskier but more rewarding route. Within one kilometer, I felt I was going to puke. It was a quick reminder that two weeks off the bikes was probably not the best idea. Richard wasn’t doing much better. “I’m dying,” were his exact words when I met him halfway up a hill. After three hours of biking the mountainous island, we had cycled only 26km.



The ride, however, was beautiful, just as Stjepan had promised, reminiscent of Cinque Terre’s jagged rocks jutting out of the earth, with small stone houses topped with red tile roofs forming small villages along the way. Old ladies waved to us and we saw what Richard believed to be Greek stone formations used for trapping water, and still used today.



Stjepan had also told us of a hand-made tunnel along the way. What he neglected to tell us was that it had no lights whatsoever. It was like entering an infinitely long cave with a blindfold on. Of course, we couldn’t turn back and it was the only way to go forward. Within seconds, I got off and walked my bicycle. Richard was up ahead. He called back to me: “Heba?” He had turned ha;fway through the tunnel but couldn’t see me. “I’m coming!” I called back. He couldn’t hear me. “Heba?” he called again. It took two more tries until he heard my reply. (Look carefully and you'll see the small opening at the other side of the tunnel)



I moved ahead gingerly, but the further in I got, the darker it was, as the hole at the entrance no longer lit the way. Over time, my eyes lost their sense of reality and I couldn’t see a thing. I was literally walking in pitch black with no idea where the walls where, whether there was a big hole in the ground or whether a car would come and trap me in the one-lane tunnel. Like Richard had done before me, I walked into the wall. I took out my headlamp to try to light the way, but the batteries were so weak, I couldn’t see past my handlebar bag to the ground or the walls. I had enough sense left it in me despite my fear to take the red flashing light off the back of my bike and used it instead. Twice, cars passed me, and I hugged the wall to avoid being hit. When I finally got outside, Richard had three worlds for me: “That was traumatizing.”

We rode into Jelsa, the biggest town on the island, where every bar/restaurant we found was closed during the off-season.

“You want to eat?” a loud voice boomed.

We looked up to find a frenetic man on a scooter fly in. “Follow me!”

He led us across the street to the only open restaurant in town, where we met three French guys we presumed to be the only other tourists in Croatia at this time of year.

Today was the first day we really felt crazy for cycling in December. With the mountains, the wind and the threat of rain, we thought maybe we should have gone straight to Greece for warmer weather.



25km short of the island’s end, I just couldn’t go any further after a day of almost uninterrupted uphill. It was already near pitch black on a mostly uninhabited road without lights. We found a closed hostel across the street from a church with flat, grassy ground where we could pitch out tent. But camping from 4pm to 7am in this weather, we’d probably freeze. We stopped to ask the man who lived at the scary-looking house next door if there was a ‘Sobe’ or room for rent in the surroundings, secretly hoping he would invite us in.

“Govorite li Engleski?” I asked if he spoke English. “Malo,” he answered. Badly.

“Sobe?” I asked. He told us to hold on while he scurried to his phone and made a call. When he got no answer, he told us to wait there and jumped into his car. He returned five minutes later with a blond woman and, to our surprise, keys to the hostel.

“Not many customers these days?” I asked Blondie, as we entered the three-room pristine hostel, which we would have all to ourselves.

She shook her head. “The last people we had were last month.”

“Are our bikes safe outside?”

“Yes,” she answered, almost laughing. “There’s no one around here.”

We were so grateful, we didn’t care that we ended up paying 30 euros for a place with no running water, no heat and electricity that cut out once during the night. At least we were out of the cold—or at least the rain.

December 1-3, 2009

We left Freedom Traveler hostel once and for all on Tuesday, getting one last round of free cornflakes, yogurt and ham, for old time’s sake. We’ve decided to try to make it to Athens in time for Christmas, and so we’re going to try to move a little faster than we have been until now. This meant taking a train across the mountain chain that cuts straight down Italy’s boot, and saying goodbye to pasta and pizza. We originally planned to take a train to Bari on Italy’s eastern coast and from there, a ferry to the oh-so-talked-about city of Dubrovnik, at the southernmost tip of Croatia. But the only way to get from Rome to Bari with bicycles by train is to take four different regional trains… which we were not eager to do. So instead, it was off to Ancona, a seedy little city further north that Lonely Planet emphatically says is not worth a visit. We were sorry to leave Italy before seeing its south – said to be a completely different world – but it was time to move on. (A good sign that it was time to go was when we ran into a couple Americans girls at our hostel who wanted to know where they could get pasta in Italy – “like Mac n’ Cheese”). The train rolled into Ancona at 3:40pm and we rode straight to the ferry terminal to buy our tickets for the next night. 

I managed to convince a hotel clerk to take us in for just 40 euros, the cheapest we could find. Richard was coming down with a flu, so we took it easy, munching down on take-away Indian food and reading the history of the Balkan war.

We spent Wednesday in Ancona waiting for the ferry at 9pm. Richard bought a THIRD cycle computer, albeit at a cheaper price than usual from a friendly bicycle shop just steps from our hotel. Fabio, the owner, insisted we send him a postcard when we get back to Canada, and when I told him I wouldn’t be able to write anything in Italian, he said ‘Ciao!’ would be enough.

I can’t remember if I’ve ever been on a ship as big as Jadrolinja’s Dubrovnik, which was to be our home overnight.

Crewmembers strapped our bicycles to the side of the vehicle deck, while Richard and I eagerly scurried through every corner of the boat, like little children seeing one for the first time. When the excitement finally subsided, we fell asleep on the reclining chairs—apparently the only passengers without cabins and thus we had the entire seated section to ourselves. 

Halfway through the night, Richard repositioned himself on the floor with a blanket. We woke up around 6:00am to find the boat drifting through black waters, the lights of Croatian islands glittering in the distance. The sun illuminated pinks and blues in the sky as it rose quietly.

When we disembarked at Split’s port, we could barely contain ourselves. We were in Croatia – and with a stamp to prove it for once (damn the European Union)! It doesn’t matter many how many times I read the words for “good morning” and “how are you?” in Serbo-Croatian, I couldn’t remember them, and so all I could do was smile and nod at the immigration officials who checked our passports.

A tall, lanky man with missing front teeth and salt-and-pepper hair was waiting for us just outside the customs control. We had arranged to rent an apartment from Vjeko through a Croatian friend of Richard’s who is originally from Split (yes Dad, he does have friends in every city!)

On the way to the apartment, Richard asked Vjeko how far away the Bosnian town of Mostar was. His answer was, sadly, perfectly representative of the new land we had entered. “Three hours I think,” he said. “I was only there during the war. Not since.”

Unlike Portugal, Spain, France, Monaco and Italy, the Balkan countries were at war as recently as 15 years ago. Many of the people we meet on the street have been touched by it. That may explain why they’re often much more serious.

Vjeko disappeared almost immediately after letting us into the apartment – not to worry, he told us. His Mum lives just next door and can get a hold of him at any time. When indeed I visited Mum next door, I found out she speaks not one word of English. And we thought our lack of Italian made things difficult…

Croatian people seem to be an interesting mix of Mediterranean, Slavic, and former Communist-bloc. From 1918 – 1991, the Socialist Republic of Croatia was but a region of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Yugoslavia was enigmatic in that it was a multiethnic and multi-religious communist state, ruled for decades by Josip Broz Tito—himself a multiethnic leader, a partisan who fought with the resistance against the fascists in World War 2 – and which unlike other communist countries in Eastern Europe was not part of the Soviet bloc (Warsaw Pact) countries, but rather one of the founding members  (along with Egypt and India) of the group of non-aligned states – countries aligned with neither the largely capitalist/democratic western NATO countries nor the Warsaw Pact communist bloc.

Split is a gorgeous town, with a splendid promenade along the water that feels more like a chic Mediterranean resort than what Heba seemed to think Croatia would be (can you tell Richard edited this part?)! But to our surprise, that’s just what much of the Dalmatian coast of Croatia is.

We visited the Roman emperor Diocletian’s palace, the best preserved existing Roman palace, which unlike most of the other roman ruins we’ve seen, is actually part and parcel of the town, inhabited by people, cafes and shops. What a relief to spend the day walking through busy narrow streets instead of paying 10 euros to enter a sequestered site and listen to a 3-hr audio guide.

Tomorrow we board another ferry to the Croatian island of Hvar, and will finally begin biking again there!