Albania - What an interesting place -Day 390 (27,974 miles)

After reading the Lonely Planet blurb on Albania we were intrigued to see it for ourselves. It's a small country with a population of around 3.2 million and was ruled by a Communist regime until 1990.


Very ostentatious fuel station canopy, it looked more like the entrance to a Vegas hotel.

The countryside from the border to Tirane was littered with these concrete bunkers, apparently there were about 700,000 built to defend the country during the 41 year Communist leadership of Enver Hoxha (who sounded like a completely paranoid nutter!)

Whatever day of the week it was we came across many convoys of wedding parties, we were transported back to India by the level of horn honking used to mark the celebrations. In fact the noise was not the only way we were reminded of India.........
During Communist rule there were only 1,000 cars in Albania and the majority of these were assigned to Party officials. So, an awful lot of people have learnt to drive and taken to the roads in the last 11 years and we are convinced they flew in a posse of Indian driving instructors to teach them! Yes, Albania is definitely the European version of India as far as driving standards go. They are pretty bloody awful and as most are driving big German cars pretty fast it feels even more dangerous.

We expected Tirane to be pretty cheap but unbeknown to us it is Lonely Planet's no. 1 city to visit in 2011 so understandably prices are on the rise. However, there are some really good standard hostels and we found one with good parking, a helpful owner and like alot of hostels now it was actually a double room with en-suite rather than a dorm.

Many of the buildings that date back to the Communist period have been painted in a variety of colours to give the city a more cheerful appearance. Not sure that this makes much difference to those that lived through years of an oppressive regime and worked as forced labour on farms or in factories.
Among the grand buildings there are still signs of poverty, beggars, street kids selling cheap pens and others selling small amounts of home grown vegetables or second hand clothes. We didn't find out whether there is any kind of state support for those without work but like many poor places, probably not.



After Enver Hoxha died this pyramid was built as a mausoleum and museum in his honour. Since the fall of Communism the country is split on what should be done with the building, it is now in quite a state, closed to the public and may be pulled down to make way for a new parliament building. It's a shame it can't be renovated and put to good use but I suppose that's easy to say for us as tourists, we didn't suffer under their regime.


We stood in the middle of the road, in the middle of the day and took the photo's above and below, considering how few cars were in Tirane until 1991 the size of the roads is somewhat disproportional, even today it's not busy. Presumably the space was required for processions of Communist strength.







We found the National Art Gallery really interesting it contained work from many different periods including lots of Communist propaganda stuff. Not surprisingly all the subjects looked fit, healthy and well looked after (yeah right).





Still life?

Not sure why a street in Tirana was named after him, perhaps he seemed a slightly nicer bloke than Enver Hoxha.

We took a bus trip out to the small town of Kruje, a quaint little place in the hills that is mainly famous for a castle and museum detailing Albania's ancient history. In particular the 15th century hero Skanderbeg who fought off the Ottomans and joined forces with the Venetians.

To be honest I wish we had stayed in Tirane for another day but the bus ride to Kruje was quite entertaining. We needed to find a Furgon which is basically a badly maintained mini bus in which as many people as possible are crammed (including one on an unsecured plastic stool), we were helped to find the right bus and more importantly told the locals fare to pay by a couple of young lads. They were off to a market to sell a selection of fags, and cheap plastics goods from a small box and once the bus got going one of them started to practise his sales technique on John. They had been helpful and fun so John bought a incredibly cheap and tacky Albanian passport cover (always handy!) Negotiations started at 300 Lek and he ended up paying 70 Lek (about 50p), after a few minutes the young lad obviously felt he had done pretty well as he threw in an equally tacky card holder and a couple of packs of plasters!

Sales transactions completed the same young lad then engaged John in a discussion on the physical attributes of each young lady that got onto the bus (lots of gesturing as he spoke no English and John no Albanian!)

Wish we'd had time to see more.

Macedonia - Ohrid is nice -Day 387 (27,814 miles)

We wanted to visit Lake Ohrid in the south western corner of Macedonia on our way through to Albania. Now we were so close to home we'd become rather relaxed when entering new countries. Do we need visa's? What is the currency? How do you say thank you? and most importantly was our bike insurance valid? Well, in the case of Macedonia the answer to that one was no and unlike some countries we have visited it was compulsory to have it before we could get across the border. So an hour later and 60 euros poorer we were in, a little extravagent for a 3 day visit but luckily we rented a cheap apartment and were able to self cater and keep the cost down.



Ohrid is a pretty town and the lake is a substitute for the coast as Macedonia is landlocked, so the lakeshore was packed with bodies in various states of undress and various shades of red and brown.

While in a town we thought we should make sure our insurance covered Albania, Croatia, Bosnia and Slovenia so contacted Carol Nash and paid some more money for cover but were told that border officials could insist we purchase local insurance as we would not have the original Green Card with us. We managed to get the pdf copy they mailed us copied on to bright green paper and hoped that would do the trick.

Next time we need new cars we're coming back here! John thinks that when Fiat stopped producing the original 500's they sold the design to Yugoslavia. There were loads of these about, I loved them!

John re living the 70's.

We escaped the town for a few hours and rode around the lake.


We came across this fit young man miles from anywhere, I was so surprised that while looking at him I missed 4 of his friends coming the other way! Shame, that would have been a better photo.

Greece - Just the northern bit - Day 384 (27,634 miles)

We've now made the decision that we will definitely be home by mid September at the latest and with that in mind our route through the remaining countries we hope to visit will be based more on what can we see that is roughly on the way (rather than zigzagging around). We will still stop and take a look around but we don't expect to explore these countries as fully as most others we have visited.

Getting out of Turkey brings John to his knees! We mentioned that getting the bike imported into Turkey was a bit of a palava as there is an X in the reg. When we tried to leave the country it was no different! They couldn't find an entry on their system so they weren't letting us out. Luckily the third official to get involved thought to try a search by John's name and there is was! The import officer had entered an S instead of a X as a workaround. So if you are trying to import a vehicle into Turkey with an X or W in the reg we would suggest you plan ahead and have some plates and fake papers made up with S as an alternative!

To digress, I was unsure how to spell palava so Googled it and found a site called urbandictionay.com the definition read
'A term used to express what a load of hassle a task or experience is/was. Usually used when quite pissed off or on verge of giving up.'
This absolutely must have been written by someone who has taken up the independent import/export challenge!

How gorgeous is this! I keep telling John we've no room for anymore bikes, but I could make an exception.

Very nice too.

We took 3 days to poodle along the Aegean coast stopping at Alexandroupolis, Xanthi and Asprovalta, all perfectly nice little seaside towns that for some reason had many fur coat shops! We were stuck in Asprovalta for 5 nights, illness? mechanical failure? no just liked the place. We found a nice apartment with a balcony and a kitchen so we could cook basic meals for ourselves. It was a 2 minute walk to the beach so we swam early mornings and late afternoons and lazed around a lot.

Our next stop was a perfect place if you fancy a holiday on the Greek mainland that combines the beach and mountains (and boy do they need more tourist Euros). The little town of Litochoro was very pretty, 10 mins by bus to the sea although we didn't bother having just had 5 days along the coast but the town itself was lovely and there was fantastic views of Mount Olympus.




One day we did a 200km loop around Mount Olympus (2917 m and the highest mountain in Greece) and the surrounding hills, the peaks are big lumps of rock rather than jagged peaks so not as dramatic as many ranges. It kind of reminded us of Scotland, especially those big black clouds!

Nice winding roads.
On the way down (a descent of around 4oooft) the back brake stopped working, after some fiddling and cooling with water John got it working again. Later on that day he found it was probably due to the rear brake pedal sticking after the steep decline.

Apparently they are about and........

they like to eat these.

Another day trip took us out to the lovely Prespa lakes area, the main lake is at the point where the borders for Greece, Albania and Macedonia meet and apparently there are buoys on the lake marking the borders.

In all our miles/km's on this trip this is only the second XTZ 660 Tenere we have actually come across on the road (the 1st being Stew our nephew in Oz). We had a great chat with George from Athens he's a big Tenere fan and told us about some nice places to visit in the area.



The lakeside at Psarades.

Heading towards Kastoria.

Our last few nights in Greece were spent in Florina which we chose just for it's close proximity to the Macedonian border. We turned up with no idea where we would stay but a couple of locals in the town directed us to a large hotel on a hill above town. As we pulled up in the car park in front of a row of garages a guy walked past and said " you can put it in the garage if you want" the offer of secure parking is always good to hear and came from the hotel owner Tony a Greek/Aussie who rides a Honda CBR 1000 Blackbird. We had some good long chats with Tony about Greece, Oz, bikes and life in general . He and his wife Maria run a great place, like most people on this type of trip we don't stay in many 'proper' hotels so it was a pleasure to find somewhere affordable but really comfortable with good facilities, a great place for more chilling.

Florina had some lovely traditional buildings. We wandered down the hill to this part of town and ate in the same restaurant 3 nights running. Well, they gave us complimentary chocolate pudding and desert wine so wouldn't you?

The road to the Macedonia border? not sure we've got this right.

Turkey - Return to Istanbul - Day 371(26,660 miles)

After 32 days and just over 3000 miles (4800 km) we arrived back in Istanbul, neither of us expected to cover so much ground but Turkey is a big old country and there is still alot for us to come back and explore another time.

Adil our friend from the motorbike club had offerred to meet us on the outskirts of the city but as we had a GPS record from our previous visit we thought we'd be OK. We did enter the city via the Bosphorus Bridge which was important to put us in the right part of the city, but unfortunately due to a case of 'premature exiting' we ended up in the thick of the city rather than continuing around the ring road. It was Friday afternoon, notoriously bad in most cities but with a few illegal u-turns and use of pavements we were back on the right road without losing too much time. We arrived hot, a little harrassed but very glad to be back at the club.

A welcome back cake from the club members, suitably served on top of a map of Turkey!

Metmin, Tatiana and Yasmin and a selection of biscuits (to go with the cake!)

The main priorities for the next couple of days were to give the Tenere a good clean, fit new tyres and service the engine. We were lucky enough to have the use of Apo's workshop (you may remember him as the cook of the fantastic chicken we ate during our last visit). As you can see from his well loaded KTM above, Apo and some friends were off camping after helping John.

Come Sunday I left John to relax at the club's apartment and went into the old city for a bit more sightseeing that I hadn't fitted in last time.


Above is the Hagia/Agia/Aya (it seems to be known as any of these) Sofia museum. There has been a church on this sight since 363 AD, this building was completed in 537 AD and has been a Greek church, Roman Catholic church and Mosque during the centuries since finally becoming a museum in 1935. A very impressive structure and huge space.


A joy to visit on a hot day is the Basilica Cistern, an underground chamber of nearly 10,000 square metres. Apparently there are hundreds of cisterns under the city that used to supply filtered water. Today it's a huge, grand fish pond with beautiful columns and ceilings where tourists go to cool off.

During both our visits here we have spent most evenings in the neighbourhood local to the club as this is much cheaper than the city centre. We had become regulars at one particular restaurant that served good food and often sat on the front balcony people watching.

We always felt perfectly safe in this area and many of the club members were local people so we weren't so much worried as intrigued when for 3 nights there were swarms of riot police, water canons and armoured vehicles patrolling the local streets.


We saw no actual protests or riots but we did hear there had been an anti-government protest a short distance away. No news seemed to make it to the internet and we didn't find any english written newspapers in Turkey. However since then the 4 highest officials in the Turkish armed forces have resigned as well supposedly due to disagreements with the government, no idea if there is a link.

We had a great time in Turkey, the history is amazing and the people incredibly friendly. Once again a huge thankyou to all the wonderful people we met at the Istanbul Bisiklet Motosiklet Ihtisas Klubu we have made many special friends who we hope to see again.