Thursday, continued

I spent about 7 hours just wandering through Sofia, poking into little shops and spending a bit of time in art museums. The national gallery had an exhibit of a famous Bulgarian painter whose work I didn't like very much--lots of idealized peasant women. He did have one short period in the 1920's when he traveled to Sicily and Istanbul and got away from home. The paintings he did during that brief period were interesting.

 "Syracuse"; painting by Vladimir Dimitrov-Maystora

My flight to NYC had an 18 hour layover in Kiev so I hustled in to a downtown hostel to spend the night.

Kiev from my hostel

Even in this brief visit it's clear that Kiev is a whole other ballgame. It's massively larger than anyplace I've been except maybe Tirana. One of the first things I saw were two guys getting ready to duke it out in front of the train station. Behind them were a row of guys selling beer out of the back of their pickup trucks. Kiev is the wild, wild West. Tolstoy Square, just down the block from the hostel, was packed with kids drinking and smoking and generally carousing.

I'm off to New York in about 30 minutes.

Thursday, August 9, Kiev

 I'm not sure where the time went. Suddenly it's Thursday where I am, Wednesday where you are.
I had one full day in Sofia. At this stage of my travels each Summer my energy and interest level begin to wane.
The heat weighed on me though it was ten degrees "cooler" in Sofia than Skopje (95 degrees instead of 105F). I found myself falling asleep as I walked.


Of all the places I've visited I'd say Sofia seemed to be the most "livable" city. It is modest in size and full of appealing -looking places to live, small apartment buildings over well-kept shops. There's building going on but not so much to make a big impression. As we entered Bulgaria from the east I saw a succession of small towns and cities that haven't changed much from Soviet days. Endless rows of Soviet-style apartment buildings that haven't seen a paint job since 1962. And vestigial smokestacks atop moribund factories. Even the outskirts of Sofia to the east were like that. It was only when you penetrated into the heart of the city that you began to see a different, gentler place. I've never seen so many art galleries in such a small city.





WiFi problems...I'm going to try a new post to continue this....

Monday, August 6, Sofia, Bulgaria

I don't know if I can recharge my laptop in this place so I must be quick with this post.
I bussed to this hostel in downtown Sofia today. It must be one of the hippest, most signal hostels in the world. Dozens and dozens of young hipster travelers here. My dorm has about 30 beds laid out in rows on the floor of the upstairs of the building. And that's just one dorm of several. They have WiFi, tours of the city, free breakfast, cheap dinners, laundry services, etc. etc. For ten Euro's/day, about $13/day.
I get one full day in Sofia, tomorrow, then fly begin my return flight (with an 18 hour layover in Kiev).

Sunday, August 5, Skopje

For many reasons today is a day of rest.
The enveloping and smothering cloud of heat makes it impossible to be motivated to much physical activity.
I need to write my column for San Leandro Patch.
I need to read more than I've been doing this trip.

Yesterday I got myself stranded, again. Lonely Planet touted a lake, Lake Matah, above the city that they recommended as a place to visit. They explained that you could get there cheaply (seventy cents) on the #60 bus from downtown. So after I finished a small foray into the old city in the morning I sought out the bus. The avenue that seemed correct (remember there are no street signs) was, alas, treeless. That meant standing out in the afternoon sun with temperatures above 100F, waiting for a bus that I wasn't certain would come. Then I found two blessed sycamores offering shade near a bus stop. There I ensconced myself and hoped. Buses came, buses went, all belching black smoke, with no evident air-conditioning, with numbers like #2, #24, #88, but no #60. My only solace was that there were other folks standing with me who had been there for as long as I had.
Then #60 arrived. I sprinted for the door and paid my fare to the driver. There was only one other passenger. Could it be possible that no one else wanted to take refuge at the lake on a sizzling Saturday afternoon? Perhaps I was on the wrong bus.
The bus itself seemed a parody of public transportation. The seats were clearly salvaged from old school desks. You may remember the kind, hard, made of shiny tan plastic made to look like wood. There were no advertisements on the bus walls, really nothing on this thing except the bare walls and those uninviting seats.
I sat down. We headed for the city outskirts then came to a river, which we crossed. After about 15 minutes of travel I saw a body of water to my left. Several people got off. I figured this must be the lake so I exited and walked towards the lake.
It wasn't a lake, just the river that emptied the lake. I was in the wrong place. Sullenly I returned to the main avenue and found a shady spot to wait for the next bus. And I made some friends.
First an old guy tried to talk to me. Once he realized I was a tourist he asked if I spoke German.
"Bischen Deutsch," I replied.
We then tried to converse in a language that where I knew, at best, one hundred words. All we got established was that I was from California and a teacher. After a few minutes of staring, trying to think of some way to overcome the language barrier, he drifted off.
Then some schoolkids came over. We talked a bit, mostly via hand motions. Their English vocabulary consisted of two words, "Justin Bieber". We did establish that I was headed for "Matah".
I waited. And waited. An hour passed. Someone called over a friend, from London, who told me the bus was due at 6pm, in twenty minutes. Six o'clock came and went.
Finally, after nearly 90 minutes a bus came. I jumped on along with the schoolkids. We traveled uphill for about five minutes when the bus stopped.
One schoolkid looked back at me and yelled, "No Matah".
I got off and started walking. At this point I was so hot and tired I would have descended to the level of hiring a taxi if I could find one, but none came. Three other people were walking with me, or at least in the same direction. One of the walkers, a woman, told me Matah was "far".
I trod on for about 30 minutes till I came to a gathering of folks around a rushing stream. The water was too cold for swimming but the coolness of the air was a splendid antidote to my dyspeptic mood. I kept going. The road narrowed and I found myself marching with dozens of locals towards the lake. The path was carved from out of the mountain and was somewhat scenic. But the lake, when I found it, was a bummer. Full of trash and forest refuse, small, unusable except as something to gaze into. Had I endured all the preceding to visit this dump?
I had.
The only sensible recourse now was to retreat back to Skopje, except I didn't know how to do that. There were no taxis. No bus had passed me on the way up. Had the buses stopped running? It was past 7pm now and the skies were showing their first signs of darkening.
I bought a drink and asked the proprietor about buses. She told me there was a bus at 7:30. Hallelujah, I was saved. Other folks began gathering nearby, apparently to take the same bus. I sat and waited.
The bus came, headed upstream. It passed me and, in the tight space provided, turned around. No one got on. I sensed that he would go around and pick us all up.
But he didn't. He barrelled quickly past me and was gone in a flash. All the folks who I thought were waiting for the bus, were not. I ran after the bus but he was long gone. I was bereft. I put my hands to my head and nearly burst into tears.
The thought of walking the two or three hours back to Skopje seemed impossible even for someone like me who is accustomed to these kinds of treks. It was just too hot and I was too tired. I stumbled around for a few minutes until one of the people in the group surrounding me sensed my discomfort and asked about what had happened. This woman understood enough English to get the drift of my plight.
"Let me ask our tour guide. Perhaps we can give you a lift," she said.
They were Polish tourists with their own luxury bus. Soon several of them became solicitous. Was I going to Skopje? If I was, they would give me a ride. Which they did, in their honey of a tour bus.
That's how I got home. 

Sunday, August 5, Skopje

The most remarkable thing about Skopje is its monuments. They are everywhere. Monuments to past glories (Alexander the Great and his dad, Philip); monuments to religious figures; monuments to past revolutionaries (mostly unsuccessful and killed off by the Ottomans or Turks); monuments on walls (many on random buildings); monuments in city squares; monuments on quiet side streets. I'm certain that Skopje leads the world in per capita monuments.
I took photos of a sampling, but realize that this is just a tiny percentage of what I saw.

If I were to describe the Balkans in one word it would be 'unsettled'. Which might partially account for the large number of memorialized heroes here. In each country that I visited there is a museum of history, and in each museum are listed the past heroes who conquered the surrounding areas (mostly from the Ottomans) and expanded said country into a regional power. The Croats took over present day Bosnia and Montenegro and parts of Serbia. The Bosnians, at some other time, swallowed up Serbs and Macedonians and Albanians. Same for Albania and Macedonia. They've all had their times as masters of the region. And each museum contains at least one map showing that the 21st century borders of their country don't truly represent where their borders should be. Macedonia, for instance, claims ownership of a sizable chunk of Greece around Thesaloniki.
Nobody's completely happy with the status quo ante.
Whether anyone has a yen to duke it out and reclaim 'lost' territory, that I couldn't divine. That would take a longer stay and a higher level of engagement with policy makers.
But you can understand why a place like Macedonia, which has been repeatedly absorbed by its neighbors, would celebrate heroes of the past. If nothing else it at least asserts that there is a Macedonian identity, and that, at one time in the past it was a masterful identity.

Tomorrow I head for Bulgaria.

Friday, August 3, Skopje, Macedonia

Thursday was a travel day. For some reason there is only one bus, at 4pm, from Tirana to Skopje, the capitals of the two respective contiguous nations. It's a comfortable bus, a nice change from the wrecks I usually ride.
We didn't get to Skopje till midnight. Luckily there was a money changing booth still open, but I still fell prey to a predatory taxi driver. I could never have found the hostel in the darkness so I felt I had no choice but to take a taxi. But I hadn't mastered the exchange rate and he pillaged me for over ten bucks for a short ride. This happens once a summer to me. (And Lonely Planet, which I read, warned not to take the taxi from the bus station, but I ignored their warning due to fatigue.)
Today was my day to get lost in Skopje, which I did. In retrospect these misadventures always have a nostalgic patina but when they are happening they are a pain in the butt. I discovered the Old City, a splendid market area where I hope to buy a gift tomorrow. But the temperature posted in the Old City was 41 degrees (106 F). I think that was artificially high due to the acres of paved streets with nary a shade tree about, but it was still damned hot. So when it took me three hours to get back to the hostel I was in bad shape.
There are few street signs in the Balkans--none in Croatia as far as I know. The ones here are in cyrillic and so almost impossible to decipher. And most of the main boulevards have no signs whatsoever. Thus the map that I dutifully carried when I left the hostel this morning did me no good at all. And without street names I quickly wandered in the wrong direction.
Tomorrow I hope to go the the big lake near here. Then Sunday I'm due to motor over to Sofia, Bulgaria, where I'll spend one full day before flying back to New York. I've enjoyed the trip but about this time I'm always ready to be done with living out of a backpack.
I know absolutely nothing of the Olympics. I hope there is some left by the time I reach the East Coast on Friday.

Wednesday, August 1, NE Albania

Along a mountain trail

After breakfast at the guesthouse this morning we motored up, up, up. I don't know how high we were but at the top of a pass we debarked and hoofed it for about 45 minutes northward. We finally came to a beautiful little valley inhabited by two shepherd families. I plunked myself down in a meadow and read a book for about an hour before it was time to return to our vehicle.
From there on we spent four or five hours getting ourselves back to Tirana where I am now.
Tomorrow I head for Macedonia.

Tuesday, July 31, Thethi Valley, Albania

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Tuesday, July 31, Thethi Valley, Albania

            An easier day, a leisurely day, a rainy evening.

            We left the guesthouse around 8am as usual and descended a few hundred meters to the village below. The weather was cool, the scenery was scenic; mountains to the left of us, mountains to the right of us, mountains all around us. We found the local waterfall:

            The water was too cold for me. The best I could do was to enter up to my ankles, but Francesco was more thick-skinned:                 

            Tomorrow is our last day and it will be spent driving back to Tirana.

            “Johnny”, Francesco’s dad was our most voluble and enthusiastic member despite the fact that he is 72 years old. If we met other travelers, as we repeatedly did today, it was Johnny who quickly found openings for rapid-fire, animated conversations. It helped that he spoke respectable amounts of several languages, his native Italian, Albanian, French, German, English, and Arabic. There were probably others that he didn’t get to use here.

            It is from Johnny that I learned three lessons:j

1.              Don’t give up on learning the local language. A little grasp of the tongue gives you opportunities to communicate (and thus rapidly increase your fluency with that same language). Because I spend so little time in any one nation I give up on the idea of trying to use at least some of the simplest words.

2.              Every year I ask myself if I’m too old to keep doing this traveling thing—or at least too old to do the athletic things. But Johnny showed me that you can still bound over rocks and climb steep pathways in your 70’s.

3.              I need to get back into the gym and do at least some minimal exercise every week so that I can remain active in the summers. Johnny hikes in the Italian Alps every Sunday. 

Francesco in the waterfall

It’s amazing how far away Oakland seems from here. By here I don’t only mean an isolated valley in NE Albania; I also mean five weeks into the summer. I hardly feel as if that other part of my life exists.

Monday, July 30, Thethi Valley, Albania

            A hard day, a tiring day, a satisfying day.

River at the base of the Thethi Valley

Our group plus the Poles and a Frenchman meeting at the top of the pass separating Valbona from the Thethi Valley.

            We hiked uphill to 2,000 meters to start the day. I was very worried, after yesterday’s difficulties, that I’d not be able to accomplish this day’s hike, but I got it done without great difficulty and without any pain or discomfort. It was a wonder to me. The summit today was a pass between two mountains. We arrived at the pass to find a group of Poles with one Frenchman resting after a climb from the other side.

There were springs everywhere, very convenient for refilling water bottles.

            Next we descended the other side.  That turned out to be the most arduous part of the day. Three hours of walking steeply downhill made my knees almost rigid and unbendable. And my back seemed to acquire a permanent scoliosis. Yet we had one more bit of business, a thirty minute trek directly uphill to our guesthouse. It was during that last portion that my body really began to give out. There was no pain, just deep fatigue. That last few steps to our destination seemed immense.

            The remarkable thing was that I had none of the real pain of yesterday. It seems as if my body will allow me to finish these five days. That is a great relief.

Sunday, July 29, Mt. Ribot above Valbona Village

            A depressing day, a pain-filled day, a hot day, a disappointing day.

            We began our day with breakfast in the guesthouse, and then set off to bestride the surrounding mountains. I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to keep up. Even before I got out of bed I could feel my heart pulsing in my back and soreness behind my left foot. What brittle part of this elderly body would betray me? Would my heart give out? But at least it was cool when we began.

            I glanced up to the jagged, bald peaks around us.

The mountain we were about to climb.

            “Could we really be going up there?” I thought to myself.

            We hadn’t gone more than 300 meters when our Albanian couple dropped out. I couldn’t understand what they said to Enric, our guide, but their body language gave hints that they weren’t happy.

            “This is too much for us,” is the gist of what I think they said. Enric made a quick phone call and soon the couple were headed back to our first-night’s lodgings. They would be getting a lift to the next rest stop. The remaining group of six would be continuing our trek.

            One part of that decision affected me directly. I had counted on the Albanians, who I knew were the least fit of the group, to slow us down so that my failings wouldn’t be so obvious. Now I was the weak link. No telling what that might mean.

            The other part of my angst was the fact that I felt so isolated. Remaining in our group were a father and son from Italy and two young Australians who had hit it off seamlessly. As the only two real English speakers they were my only possible conversation partners, but it looked like they were so into each other that I would be a relative exile.

            The guesthouse sat at about 1,000 meters above sea level. The mountains looked to be about 3,000 meters. How much of the difference would we make up with our mountaineering? I didn’t know and Enric wasn’t saying.

            On we marched. I tried mightily to keep pace with Enric at first, and then it became a matter of simply maintaining contact with the group. I didn’t find it easy. Enric was a different kind of leader than the ones I encountered in Laos and Guatemala and elsewhere. He had little interest in chatting up our group members or doing much of anything to build comradery amongst us. He set his nose upward and strode briskly in that direction. Every 20 or 25 minutes he’d glance back.

            For the first hour I kept pace with the others. Giovanni, the dad of the Italian pair, or Francesco, his son, kept behind me to monitor whether I was having any difficulty. Giovanni testified that he spent every Sunday trekking through the Italian Alps, so he was clearly ready for anything Enric was likely to throw at us. His son was a triathlete—‘nuf said.

            Robert and Natali, the two Australians, took the lead behind Enric. As youngsters they had the toughness to handle any climb.

Resting at 1,700 meters.

            The question was whether I could keep up.

            The first hour was a riverbed full of sharp stones but the slope was modest and I had no trouble with it. But then we entered a pine forest. The slope was steep. There was blessed shade but my body took much punishment.

            My breathing became labored, my legs felt like two lead anchors that had to be dragged forward. I wanted badly to be a part of the group’s journey but my body wasn’t feeling the same way. We stopped for breaks periodically and that saved me but the pace that Enric was setting was daunting. We walked for about an hour in the shade but then reached the tree line. Suddenly we were in full sun, which added one more agony to my suffering. We rested at 1,700 meters. The peak of Mount Rosit was to our right. Enric announced that we’d climb for about one more hour, and then eat lunch (which we’d brought along). My back was sore, my feet were heavy, the air was cool, which helped, but I had doubts about my ability to make that last hour.

            Then Francesco, the triathlete, decided to retreat. He parted ways with us and headed down the mountain. There were four of us left plus Enric.

            I told Enric I didn’t know if I could make it all the way. He’d told us that the return route was simply a doubling back on our upward path so I knew I could stop and wait for the fit ones to crest the mountain and return to pick me up, if that was necessary.  But I really wanted to make it to the top. I really wanted to eat lunch with the group. I’d felt so alone, so much an outsider on this climb that I passionately wanted that vindication of a shared lunch.

The fit ones disappearing. They made it to over 2, 000 meters.

            But it wasn’t to be. The four fit folk quickly advanced ahead of me. Soon they were hundreds of yards further up the path. And my head began to spin. I sat down, hoping that a brief rest would help me reclaim my equilibrium, but it didn’t work. As soon as I stood up my whole body felt like I’d just gotten off one of those carnival rides that spins you round and round till you don’t know how to remain erect.

            I slumped down, defeated. I lay out for about twenty minutes (the group had long disappeared over the next rise) then sat up and ate my lunch. I made it, by my rough estimate, to 1,800 meters, but the pain of my failure was all I cared about.

            Dejectedly I began the long, slow descent, following the path I recently trod upward. My back pain increased and my legs began to lose their turgor. Natali had found me a walking stick, which saved me from crashing to the ground repeatedly. I dreaded the thought of having the fit folks overtake me and leave me, once again, behind.

            I made it reasonably far down the mountain before Enric and his crew caught up. We took a long rest under a nearby tree, long enough for my legs to recover most of their former glory. It took us about another hour to finally return to the elevation from which we’d originally ascended. But there was one more bit of pain awaiting me.

The view from 1,800 m. This is as far as I got.

            There was one more segment of our journey, a 20-30 minute flat walk to our new guesthouse. It was hot. Our path was across a dry riverbed filled with stones. I quickly fell behind the other five (Francesco had rejoined us). All my frustrations of the day came to the fore. Enric and the fit group were 200 meters ahead of me, oblivious to my feelings of isolation and abandonment. Why couldn’t they slow down to include me in their journey? I didn’t understand. And I held Enric mostly responsible.

            So when they came to a rest point I asked him:

            “Do we need to be at the guesthouse at any specific time?” I asked.

            “No,” he replied.

            “Then, do you think you could slow down a little and let me be a part of your group?”

            Behind his sunglasses I could “see” Enric glaring at me.

            “You think I’m going too fast?” he asked with a sharp edge to his voice.

            “All I can say is your going faster than I can walk,” I replied.

            “Sir, I wish you’d told me this before. I like to know these things.”

            “What did you think when you saw me so far behind?” I queried testily.

            Now I’d angered the guide. Would he ban me from the next day’s hike? Would he speed up his pace tomorrow to humiliate me? Did the other group members hear my complaint? Would they ostracize me?

            I didn’t know the answers to any of these questions. And I didn’t know if I was physically capable of doing tomorrow’s climb, anyway.

            What should I do on Monday? Quit the tour? Try to skip one day’s climb? Try to join the climb as if nothing had happened? I didn’t know.

            And should I explain to the other group members my sense of exile?

            All good questions.

           

Saturday, July 28, Valbona Valley, NE Albania

A very crowded ferry on Lake Koman.

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Saturday, July 28, Valbona Valley, Albania

            The Valbona Valley is in Northeast Albania. I’ve never been to Yosemite (!) but I have been to Mt. Zion in Utah, and this place reminds me of there. To get here we boated up a reservoir for about three hours. Albania’s Hetch Hetchy. As you ferry up the lake you can sense the lost valley below the water.

Mts above our guesthouse, first night.

            Once we finished the boat ride we boarded an eight-passenger van for a torturous two-hour ride over unpaved mountain roads. We are seven (eight counting the guide): two Italian men, a middle-aged Albanian couple, and two young Australians (who hadn’t met before this morning). The bad part about all that is that everyone has a partner except me, but that’s the usual lay of the land when I do these tours so I’m accustomed to it.

            Albania resembles California a bit. It has a broad central valley with Tirana, the capital at its northern extremity. To the west is the sea; to the east are mountains. Here in the northeast the mountains are large, 3,000+ meters, and the land is remote from the urbanity of the rest of the country.

            We are staying in a guesthouse that someone has appended to their farm. The farm sits in a small valley surrounded, of course, by the mountains. They have their portion of corn and other row crops plus some cows, a horse, and other farm animals. You need to watch your step around here owing to the cow poop that is everywhere. They have apples trees and prunes plus the inevitable grape vines.

            It’s cool up here, a pleasant change from the heat we left behind this morning. Any lesser smells are overmatched by the cow dung aroma that dominates your nostrils wherever you go.  

Stream near our guesthouse, first night.

            We’re just about at the level where the broadleaf trees, mostly beeches and birches, give way to pines and firs. About 1,000 m. above us is the tree line, finally surmounted by about 500 m. of treeless mountain tops.

Friday, July 27, Berat and Tirana

My money troubles were not over. I got to the Western Union office early. The manager of the place and her assistant were there. They knew I was coming and welcomed me. They asked for my passport. They sat at the computer and began, I thought, to put through the paperwork that would get me that precious cash.

            Time passed. The manager and the assistant engaged in an energetic conversation in Albanian. Their body language bespoke some kind of trouble. I began to despair, again. I read every map in the outer office of the little building that housed WU. Then I read them again.

            “This name, Alan, this is your other name?” she asked me.

            “Yes, my middle name,” I plaintively responded.

            More heated conversation from the two ladies.

            “This name, Alan, it is not on the paperwork. It is only on your passport. I don’t think we can give you the money.”

            Fury and frustration warred inside me. But I kept my cool. I simply gave them a pained look.

            “Let me call Tirana,” the manager offered.

            That took ten more minutes.

            Then there was some scuffling around inside, then she called me inside again.

            “There is your money, please count it,” she said.

            I was so nervous I miscounted the first time, but she was certain she’d counted correctly and, after my second count, I was on my way. I paid my bill at the hostel and bounded down the hill towards downtown Berat and the bus station.  I quickly found a fourgon with “Tirana” in the windshield. After a bit of a wait I was on my journey back to the capital.

            I got lost in Tirana, as usual (my Lonely Planet map was safely stowed in my backpack) but this time the gods were with me. As I drifted along an unfamiliar avenue I looked to my left and there was a vaguely familiar face. It was the guy who checked me into the backpacker’s hostel last week. He recognized me. Soon we had my backpack on his bicycle and we were off to another night’s lodging.