We had heard a few, less-than-positive stories about the 5-hour bus trip from Tirana to Sarande, but we were not deterred.  We knew the bus ride would not be a luxury trip, that the timetable was more of a suggestion than a schedule, and that the driver would likely stop along the way to chat to his friends. There’s no train, there’s no airport at Sarande, so the transport alternatives are:

• Bus
• Taxi
• Car hire and drive yourself (shudder) or
• Fly from Tirana to the Greek island of Corfu, then catch the ferry across to Sarande.

Wanting the full Albanian experience, it was the bus for us.

The morning started with our arrival at the Tirana Regional Bus Terminal, a lofty, yet highly inaccurate name.  It’s not so much a terminal, rather a large, chaotic car park full of haphazardly parked buses. Each driver stands in front of his bus, repeatedly yelling out his destination, creating a cacophony of noise and confusion, with each driver trying to out-yell the one next door.

There are no passenger waiting areas, no toilets, no food options. Passengers stumble around, looking dazed and confused. Or, if they have found their bus, they gather in groups near their allocated bus, adding to the chaos.

There are random ticket booths, not much bigger than porter-loos, scattered around the entrance, each booth for a different transport company, or a different destination. Rather than being lined up neatly together, the booths are scattered like the aftermath of a game of jenga. Finding the right ticket booth is the first part of the test. You could book your ticket online, but you need to get a printed ticket from the porter-loo office on the day anyway, so what’s the point? No one pre-books bus tickets in Albania.

We checked out the Google Map reviews for the bus terminal, because we weren’t sure if it was actually the right place to go (it was different to where the bus stopped when we arrived from Montenegro).  Google, as always, was a wealth of random, funny and occasionally helpful reviews, like:

• There is no order when the bus go and there are no tickets people. Also people screaming DURRES DURRES non-stop.
• No information desk, nobody speaks English, and the big departures board is completely wrong.
• Albania at its finest, chaos and confusion all around, but it does the job 😊
• Exciting local cultural experience. No order here, just get in and start talking with people to understand who goes where. Messy and exciting. If you are from a different type of place, this is one of the places where you can get a cultural shock.
• There is no timetable. Bus leaves when it is full, not at a certain time.

 

Thanks to our Google research, we were mentally prepared.  We found our bus to Sarande almost immediately, and it left on time! So, that’s a 5 star rating from me!

Our transport for the day was an old blue Mercedes mini-bus, with air conditioning (which we were not expecting). The position of the seats had been modified to fit in an extra row (also something we were not expecting), so as a consequence, there was absolutely no leg room, and none of the air conditioning vents or the overhead lights lined up with any of the seats. Aaaahhhh Albania. But on the upside, everybody had a seat, and no one was standing in the aisle (something we were expecting). For the record, the bus cost 1,750 Lek each (about $23 AUD).

Our driver, let’s call him Kreshnik, was very animated.  Everything he did was done at full volume, complete with full body and arm movements. Kreshnik talked loudly to himself, other passengers, other drivers, hands and arms flailing wildly in rhythm with his words.

Sometimes, Kreshnik stopped to pick up extra passengers. These passengers were not waiting in a bus shelter, at a service station, or even on a road layby!  Oh no…. they were leaning against the guard rail ON THE HIGHWAY, mere centimetres from the passing traffic. Kreshnik would simply slow down, then stop IN THE MIDDLE of the dual carriageway lane to let them on. Car horns blasted the air from behind (which Kreshnik completely ignored) as he gregariously welcomed each new passenger, before putting the bus in gear to continue along the highway.

After travelling in relative silence for about an hour, Kreshnik decided we needed some very loud, Albanian folk music. The speakers in the roof vibrated with the beat, making conversation next to impossible. The boisterous music continued for the rest of the trip, which was a great cultural add-on.

 

Kreshnik, and as we’ve come to discover, most taxi drivers, treat the solid, unbroken line painted in the middle of the road as more of a dare, rather than a warning not to overtake. A big fan of taking the ‘racing line’ Kreshnik evened out the many twists and turns by simply taking the straightest line, with no regard for which side of the road it was on.  If on-coming traffic appeared, then the necessary adjustments were made at the last possible minute, creating many abrupt heart stopping moments.

Kreshnik’s favourite time to overtake, as it turned out, was when he was 100m away from an oncoming blind corner, preferably when it coincided with the edge of a mountain pass. Without a care in the world, and singing loudly, Kreshnik would cross the unbroken centre line, and pass the offending vehicle. Every time, as evidenced by the writing of this blog, he managed to sneak back to the correct side of the road, just as the front grill of an on-coming car filled the bus windscreen. It was a fine art, and by fine, I mean terrifying.

About halfway through the trip, we made an unscheduled stop at a garage.  There was much discussion and arm waving with the mechanic, and a lot of gesticulating towards the right-hand side of the bus.  It seemed we had a flat tyre.  I was secretly pleased because I wanted to get off the bus and stretch out my cramped legs.  My kneecaps were red and sore from constant rubbing against the back of the seat in front. But we were not asked to get off the bus. A new tyre was rolled out. And then out came the tyre jack. “Surely”, I said to Rosco, “they won’t jack up the bus with all the passengers on board?”  But they did.

Albania most definitely moves to the beat of its own drum, and sometimes that drum is a frenetic tango, while other times its reggae. It’s lucky that we like a wide range of music.

After about four-and-a-half hours, we arrived at the bus station at Sarande.  Again, bus station was more of an aspirational term, as it was really just a street corner near the town centre, with no other bus-like infrastructure to be seen.

But we had made it, and as a bonus, lived to tell the story.  It was time to let the Sarande adventure begin.

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