I spent another day in Bari as the ferry to Durrës in Albania, only left at 10pm. I left the BnB as late as possible then rode slowly into the old town for the usual coffee and croissant.
This time, I had a donut because there were no plain, normal, unfilled croissants. I hate filled croissants. Here in Italy, they put cream or jam or Nutella or whatever in them, and really fill them up. You get a year’s supply of jam in one croissant. The plain ones, however, can be on par with french croissants – light, crisp and flaky. I’m now a connoisseur and in my travels over here have learnt the best countries for pastries . Never, ever get them in the UK. Its always, always, always disappointing. When you bite into the cloggy mess that they pass off as a croissant over there, your taste buds immediately remind you that you should listen to them more in the future. The response is always – oh yeah, that’s right, these are rubbish.
So, I rode around, people watched, bay watched and mooched around until lunchtime. I went to the same place as yesterday – Con…???. They’ve got great Focaccia, Arancini etc. Yesterday, I bought lunch for the lady begging outside. I felt sorry for her because nobody seemed to acknowledge her. So, I said ok, some food ? Come inside and choose. The staff knew the drill. In the end, I had to curtail her ordering – she was getting a week’s supply there and then. She left very happy and appreciative with smiles all ’round.
Today, however, I thought it should be someone else’s turn to help her out. I’m not here to change anyone’s life, I’m just a tourist passing through, a non-committed observer, and as such don’t make political statements, don’t support charities in the places I go, don’t protest local issues and try not to turn my nose up at anything (er… Except for smokers and discarded rubbish). I simply don’t know enough about local level issues to take a side or make a difference, so I stay out of it.
So when the lady saw me, she thought I was going to shower her with food like yesterday. She stopped asking everyone else and focussed on me to a degree which I didn’t appreciate. In the end, someone else did step up today and help her. I have to say that if I was begging outside a food place, this is where I’d go too.
What followed was more mooching around and googling about the ferry to Durrës. It’s an interesting procedure. You need to check in at the ticket office. That’s fine, except that it’s two kilometres from the port And in my googling, I couldn’t see the exact address. When I found it, they wouldn’t let me check in for another two hours.
Why not ? It’s closed. But you’re open. Yes, but no check in. Then why are you open ? Check in closed, goodbye.
So I rode the couple of kilometres back into town and looked around some more. When I had finally returned, checked in, gone back again, had some dinner etc, I went to the port with hours to spare. The departure board said it was leaving at 8:00pm not 10:00pm. Slight panic, hurry up John and get on the ferry. When I went to the gate, they said to come back in an hour. Was that a typo in the departures board ?
In the end, all went very well. The ferry trip was uneventful. I had plenty of space on a couch to sleep and stretch out. One old guy couldn’t sleep and made sure nobody did for about an hour. He kept slapping his chair in exasperation. Apart from the Albanians arguing at 6am, it was all ok.
In the morning, I went to get a coffee but got a stern – Cash only – when I asked to pay by phone. So I went back and searched for my wallet. Couldn’t find it, searched again, no luck – so I hoped it was on the bike. I gave it one last try and found it where I spent the last ten minutes looking, becoming increasingly confused and exasperated. I went back to my friend the gruff cashier and waved a 50 euro note. He gave me the docket for the coffee but without my glasses I couldn’t read the price. He fumbled with my change, took some time then pushed it my way. He was five euros short but I didn’t realise until I was a couple of metres away.
When I went back, he knew exactly and promptly gave me the right change without protest. It was a good wakeup call. Where I’m heading is probably more cash oriented, so I’ll need to be on my guard.
Disembarkation was simple and I was soon through immigration and into the new port building. There was a Vodafone desk, so I went and got a Sim card. The lady faffed around, managed to serve three customers at the same time, but my card didn’t work. I finally convinced her that it wasn’t my or the phone’s fault, so she got into the settings and sorted it out. Great, she did very well and was nice to deal with.
I then got changed into shorts and repacked my bags and this took a fair amount of time but I wasn’t in any rush. There was another phone desk – One, I think, in the building, and the lady there was puffing away on a cigarette. Indoors, in the workplace ? Albania is going to be interesting.
I rode into Durrës looking for a cafe for breakfast. There were heaps but nobody was eating, just drinking tea and coffee. That’s strange, I’ll find a bakery. It wasn’t until I had a face full of pastries outside the bakery that I remembered that Albania is predominantly Muslim and that Ramadan is still going. I felt bad for eating while others couldn’t, but I can’t change that.
Leaving Durrës in the morning sunshine was great, and I headed south along the bike path, past beach resorts for many kilometres. There weren’t many people about but it was nice being in a beachy environment in sunny, warm weather. It had the feeling that summer was on the way.
I stopped at a small supermarket and had my first dog encounter. This one came up to me, sniffed me, then wagged its tail, sat and begged for food. A nice change.
I gradually turned inland, stopped for some bananas, then a coffee in Kavajë. I didn’t know what to expect but I didn’t expect it to be as good as those in Italy. It was every bit as good, and over the next few days I realised that the coffee here is great.
People near the road all smiled and the drivers were fantastic. The only incident was when I went past two foul mouthed boys about 12 years old. One stood in the middle of the road and tried to stop me and the other chased me on his electric scooter. He then abused me in Italian of all languages. I know plenty of unsociable words in Italian, and this kid exhausted my vocabulary in about thirty seconds and kept at it until I waved him away. An old guy beside the road just shook his head. I can’t remember anything like this happening since Vietnam in 2022.
The rest was uneventful and I arrived in Divjakë without incident. The young kid at the BnB spoke great english and sorted everything out. I went into town for some supplies and found a small, quiet and friendly village. I went back later for dinner and ate what seemed like a bucket of salad and the same volume of mushroom pasta. Again, super friendly people ran the restaurant.