Albania's strange mix of corruption, poverty and beauty leaves Mike Carter feeling uneasy - a sensation not helped by a close encounter with catastrophe on a hairpin bend
The world's most decrepit roads, psychotic drivers, endemically corrupt police and armed bandits who routinely rob lone motorcyclists. Just some of the things the border guard told me I was certain to encounter in Albania as I bade farewell to Greece.
But he didn't mention the wildlife. Because, had he done so, I would probably not have ridden towards the two metre-long strips of intertwined black rubber on the road with quite such casual indifference. Nor would I have been quite so surprised to witness the said rubber strips stand to attention. And I might have been more prepared to fend off two rather annoyed snakes - and, boy, those things can shift - snapping viciously at my ankles, an entirely understandable reaction when somebody has just tried to ride a motorcycle over you while you're engaged in a spot of reptilian rumpy-pumpy. As welcomes go, Albania's was certainly memorable.
I pull over in the next dusty city to compose myself. A Porsche Cayenne draws up, and a man drops the tailgate to let out his goats. A brand-new Bentley with blacked-out windows cruises past, dodging the donkey-pulled carts.
Parked alongside the enormous mound of rotting rubbish that sits by the side of the street are rows of gleaming, top-of-the-range BMWs, Mercedes and Range Rovers. These are testimony not to the economic powerhouse that isn't modern Albania, but to the affluence of the people busy filling in their insurance claim forms in Stuttgart and Sloane Square.
They are the unwitting donors of the estimated 60 per cent of cars in Albania which have been stolen in western Europe. 'Do business in Albania,' runs a German joke. 'Your car is already there.' And I know it isn't helpful to propagate stereotypes, but it's easy to see, sitting here, how Albania has become a byword in some circles for corruption and organised crime. What is harder to understand is how they're getting away with it.
I ride on along the coast road between Saranda and Vlores, through olive groves and pine forests, and along miles and miles of stunning deserted beaches and turquoise waters, and over heart-stopping mountain passes.
Ghoulish stuffed dummies hang from trees, the Albanian custom to ward off the evil eye. And everywhere there are mushroom-shaped concrete bunkers, like Daleks popping their heads through the earth, the legacy of Stalinist leader Enver Hoxha, who ordered 700,000 of the things to be built between 1950 and 1985 to defend Albania as it grew ever more internationally isolated and he grew increasingly bonkers.
Inland, along horrendously disfigured roads, I pass by vast fields of abandoned cars, shanty towns and fetid green rivers choked with rubbish. Ancient trains rattle by, their carriages missing doors and windows. In the pothole-riddled city of Shkodra, strap-hanging commuters stare back at me through the smashed windows of their bus. On the outskirts of every town and city stand the vast skeletal remains of long-derelict factories, the whole landscape suffused with decay, desperation, neglect. And as I stop to take a photograph, two youths on a scooter pull up, both with Kalashnikovs slung around their shoulders.
All this might not be so shocking if I were in some other part of the world, or even in another time. But I am in Europe, in 2006.
'It's the politicians and the gangsters. They steal everything from us,' Shume, who worked illegally in London until he was deported, tells me later in a coffee shop.
I ride towards Montenegro. For the first time on this trip, I am looking forward to leaving a country. But I feel guilty, as this is so easy for me to do.
A Mercedes comes around the corner on the wrong side of the road at a ludicrously high speed. The driver touches his brakes, but the car's wheels lock on the rucked surface and the vehicle veers first to the left and then starts to spin. Now side on, it is careening straight towards me. And it's weird, because everything really does go into slow motion and I am so calm as I look at the terrified face of the driver and think 'I am about to die'. Then I close my eyes and wait, not for the physical impact, but for the noise.
But the only noise I hear is a scraping of metal on stone as I open my eyes and see the Mercedes disappearing over a wall and into space.
Përgjigju Duke Cituar
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