Luke, around the world.

…and then there are places that momentarily turn my trip into a disaster.

I should have already smelled trouble when I arrived at the bus station in Tirana. Complete and utter chaos, cigarette-smoking men with three-day stubble and unhealthy levels of tan wave at me invitingly, that’s the bus you want to get into, come with me to Sarandë, and they point at their vans with rusted chassis and tinted windows. My ticket says Vlorë and I keep searching for a sign placed behind the windshield, red capital letters, there it is, but is it even the right one?

My phone with the electronic ticket displayed on the screen keeps changing hands, from a short thin man in glasses through a big jovial guy with one front tooth missing to a… little kid, barely twelve? who is more knowledgeable about smartphones than his older coworkers. The boy takes a picture of my ticket and sends it to the corpulent guy, who then sends it to a thin bespectacled guy… and I get on the van, an hour early, not too shabby. But it turns out the air conditioning doesn’t work and the vehicle is really packed, two dozen people filling the inside with carbon dioxide. By the time we get to Vlorë, we are cooked. A young backpacking couple offers to share a cab, but my hostel is way out of town, so eventually the cab is on me alone.

A Sicilian guy owns the hostel. His eyes light up when I tell him I spent the last eight years in Malta, you know, just in case this thing doesn’t work out, maybe I could go to Malta and work in customer support, some lead position, and sure he can, I tell him, but I wish him all the best with his current endeavour. It’s definitely better than slaving away in the gambling industry. 

He then leads me to a private room with a small balcony overlooking the Adriatic. There is an open-air kitchen and a rooftop bar adjacent to my room. All seems well, and it is without a doubt the place with the most amazing view yet. Too bad it will remind me of the most awkward episode of the Balkan leg of the trip, but I am still unaware of what the future holds. 

I decide to take a trip into Vlorë’s Old Town, a poor imitation of how old towns really look; it’s just a handful of relatively new buildings camouflaged to pass as medieval. There is a wide, sunny promenade too, but I am by the Adriatic, so no surprise there. Disappointed with the city center, I return to the hostel; I get some beers and start talking to a shirtless guy with lots of tattoos and a few silver teeth. He makes jewellery and travels wherever his Brazilian passport allows him to. Unlike scammers I will later meet on the way, he’s the real deal. I see him spread his tools on one of the bar tables and then tinker patiently to make string bracelets, silver rings with cheap gemstones, pendants that work as amulets. Later in the evening, I will buy an onyx bracelet, for protection, but it won’t protect me from making regrettable life choices.

Right after the purchase, I see some girls sitting around a table.

Where are you from? All of you? I send my best smile (which is not a lot), they smile back, and then I hear that one of them, sitting a bit apart, is from Poland.

Whereabout?

M is from Podlasie, the north-eastern region of our fatherland, coincidentally the region I come from myself. She is a seasoned traveller, fifty countries and counting. We start talking, and there’s everything from our favourite spots through scary travel stories to house pets. 

Come again? How was your dog called?

Ares, the chonky German shepherd mix that my parents found one wintry morning on my late grandma’s piece of land, died at an old age of fourteen. We stay silent for a bit, musing about the uncanny coincidences that happen on the road. What are the chances that the name of M’s dog is the same? We stay up late talking; it’s around midnight when we part ways, agreeing to reunite the next morning.

Then, the debacle happens.

It starts innocently, with going out of my room to eat pancakes prepared each morning by the staff for the guests. There is a redhead woman chain-smoking at one of the tables. We strike up a conversation at the pancake stand. She’s not very happy when I ask her where she comes from, let’s say Germany, and yes, she speaks impeccable German, although she doesn’t seem to be a native. We keep talking for a while, and as I am slowly chewing my pancakes and wondering about a boat trip I booked last night, M arrives on the terrace. After some deliberation, she decides to join me. A regrettable choice, but we are still none the wiser.

We take a bus heading along the promenade to the city center. Our first stop, some olives and soup from a nearby restaurant. We are quite surprised when, upon arriving at the place, we see that nobody else is waiting. The others appear a bit late, and much to our dismay, are a very lively group.

The guide eventually takes us to the motorboat. We crawl inside and there is definitely too little space for all of us cheery adventurers. The lifejackets are quite flimsy (M, by the way, can’t swim), but who would even care about this in the Balkans? The boat ride is bumpy, a little bit out of my comfort zone even though I am a pretty good swimmer. I am desperately glued to a handrail, M is sitting on the other side, and just by having one look at her face, I know she’s not having the time of her life. The skipper keeps blasting some second-rate French electro at full volume and our descent into hell continues. Two groups take the lead, the first one is French, the other seems Middle Eastern, they LOVE the choppiness of our ride, and they seem to be genuinely enjoying the headache-inducing music.

Our first stop is a secluded beach at the tip of the peninsula to the southwest of Vlore. A charming place, if it weren’t for crowds of tourists wading in warm water. A sunbed costs 20 euros, so we decide to spend time on the rocks nearby; it’s uncomfortable and so dirty that our asses are soon the colour of sand. The only activity we can put our minds to is gazing at the sea and talking. I start getting flashbacks from the Blue Lagoon, one hellishly hot afternoon, Malta, 2018.

Our stay at the beach seems to last forever. Neither of us is particularly happy, and I feel a little bit guilty for even mentioning where I was going this morning.

Our second stop is a cave that should offer an excellent view of sunshine meeting crystal clear water. It doesn’t happen because we have spent too much time on the beach and the sun is nowhere near the position that would offer any eye candy. Some people from the French group jump in the water; I have my swimming trunks on, but the inside of the cave smells of diesel, and I hate drinking diesel. I stay on the boat with M, who seems to be shrinking more and more.

The only redeeming quality of our boat trip is at the last stop. We end up on Sazan island, the place of a former Communist military base. It is pocked with hundreds of little bunkers, Enver Hoxha style, and me and M are the only people from the motorboat who decide to do a bit of urbex. It’s one of those few exceptions where democracy sucks, as the rest of our group stay at a shingled beach, skimming stones, bored to death. It’s not a long time before we are forced to go back into the boat; the music starts blasting again, M keeps shrinking and I keep shrinking with her.

Finally on dry land, I jokingly say I am about to kiss the ground like our Pope did. M laughs, but it’s a nervous laugh. Maybe she is pissed, and if she is, it is rightly so, cause so am I. A day ruined, we are tired, annoyed, hungry. She sets out to find new accommodation, while I get back to the hostel. The redhead lady I met in the morning is thinking about going to see the old town, keeps looking at me askingly, but I’m done for the day. She leaves while I keep drinking my beer. At some point during the evening, M comes back to pick up her stuff, but doesn’t even bother to go to the terrace, and then she has shrunk completely, just a shimmering black dot on her way back from the hostel to the bus stop. No hard feelings; I wouldn’t bother coming up either.

The next day we exchange a few messages. It turns out the Sazan island was indeed the most interesting part of the trip, one that deserved and needed way more than just a brief thirty-minute walk. What could we do, though?Vox populi, vox dei.

Vlorë was the first tourist trap I encountered and willingly walked into. Perhaps it was of my own doing: instead of sticking to the plan of just relaxing by the sea, I decided it was better to do something, anything, than to stay put. How glad I was to be getting out of there! Doing that turned out to be an exercise in patience, though.