A wild bus into unknown eastern Albania

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Since going to Skopje in Macedonia was in violation of our original itinerary, our tendency was to just stay a couple nights and then try to get back on track. We didn’t want to deal with the hassle of getting all the way up to Montenegro from here, so we opted to go by bus to Tirana, Albania.

We had to wake up early though; the only bus that suited our schedule left at 9:00 am. The alarm went off at 6:30; my BG was 82. Masayo again made eggs and bacon, and I also had most of the cake I bought yesterday.

 

Irena, the apartment owner, came to meet us and check us out at 8:00, and she had two other women with her: Montenegrin travelers who had just arrived and would be taking the apartment.

We checked out and walked to the bus station. It had seemed like a long walk when we arrived, but now that we knew what to expect it wasn’t that bad. It always happens like that: the second time you walk somewhere it seems shorter.

Masayo was feeling lightheaded again from the walk and the bus fumes from the road, so she sat blearily in the waiting room. She isn’t fully recovered from the bad air we’ve been experiencing lately.

The bus showed up and it turned out to be a minibus. We got on, and left the station right on time.

 

On the bus, around 12:30, I checked and was 156. Nice job on the chocolate cake breakfast Humalog choice. After passing through the border (again, we weren’t stamped out of Macedonia or into Albania; this has been a very disappointing trip for actual passport stamps) I shot up and ate a sandwich I bought at the Skopje bus station.

 

The thing about Tirana is that, although it’s the capital city of Albania, it has no central bus station. Intercity transportation is an unofficial network of buses that come and go at various places. Our bus was passing through the city but ultimately stopping a few kilometers away, at a place called Kashar. We had already resigned ourselves that we’d have to just find a taxi from wherever we managed to be dropped off.

As it turns out, we stopped in the main square of Tirana, and got off there. It was raining, and we had no local money, but I knew from checking maps before the trip that we were fairly close to the hotel. What luck! We turned down a taxi driver (didn’t see an ATM around anyway) and started walking in the drizzling rain.

After walking along a street called George W. Bush (just like in Prishtina, Kosovo; this one was in honor of Bush visiting Albania in 2007) we found a big four-lane road where our hotel was located.

Town House Hotel was great — we checked in, by which I mean the guy confirmed my name, handed me a room key, and that was it, no paperwork — and saw the room. It was full of new, dark wood-colored furniture. Everything was new, sturdy, and well-designed. We liked it immediately.

But Masayo was worn out and didn’t want to go out. After checking my BG (210, unfortunately — another bus station sandwich gets the better of me) I went out to a pizza place we had passed. The old woman was watching TV and seemed surprised to see me. It’s a tiny little takeout place, and the pizza menu was on the wall. It was all in Albanian, so I opted for the one on the bottom, which was the most expensive and was a mixed pizza.

She said it would take ten minutes, and I asked her where a shop was nearby. She pointed the way and I went to buy a big water and a beer. When I came back, I saw the pizza lady was putting the pizza into the oven with a long stick. A real oven-baked pizza!

I paid her, 450 lek (around $5), and went back to the room. The pizza was excellent — not too big, but the crust was good and the toppings (which included tuna and peppers and everything else) were tasty.

I took a big Humalog shot since pizza often makes me high. It worked beautifully — at 11 pm I was 131. I feel like I have turned a corner in BG management, and am finally really getting over my bad underestimation of Humalog habits.

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