The furgon (minibus) I would ride was an old, battered, orange Mercedes. The roads up to the villages aren’t passable by regular cars; the only vehicles that can make it up there are 4x4s. I climbed in and joined the crowd in the minibus and we set off bouncing along and made a few…
I was Shkoder bound. I didn’t know much about Shkoder, except that it has global recognition because of the blood feuds that still happen in northern Albania. Shkoder is perfectly fine to travel to, as it’s in the northeast, a major city and easy to travel to, but the travel books I’d seen in the…
On the bus from Berat to Tirana I was glued to the window. I remembered on the bus in to Berat we had passed a house that was designed to look like a boat and I wanted to get a picture of it. Unfortunately, though, I didn’t see it again. So I gazed out the…
I boarded the bus in Sarande and was Berat bound. It’s roughly a 250km journey. Though cities in Albania are never far apart as the crow flies, bus travel between them can be a trying experience. I wanted to be on the 8am bus to Berat as I was informed the bus journey is a…
From Gjirokaster the bus was about two hours to Sarande. Sarande is on the Southern Albanian coast and is one of the country’s more touristy destinations for its location on the sea and nice beaches, its close proximity to both the border with Greece as well as being right across from Corfu. Once again, I…
The bus from Athens was long. Thankfully, though, I hadn’t slept much the night before which enabled me to sleep a lot on the bus. In Istanbul I know enough Turkish to get around and pick up things people are saying around me, and my travels thus far had been with people I knew, but…
I got to Athens around 7am and wandered around the Piraeus port looking for where to get a ticket to Chania, Crete, my next destination. I eventually found a ticket desk that was open but all the ferries for Chania were booked for the next day or two, but if I wanted, I could get…
It was time to set out again. For the past month I’d been working at a kid’s camp up on mount Uludağ, about four hours from Istanbul. The university doesn’t start up again until towards the end of September, and aside from another week of teaching at a kid’s camp at the end of August,…
Went and paid my gas and electricity bills the other day. Lord, what a nightmare it is anytime I need to go and pay my bills. When my parents were here we talked a bit about how if you go and live in another country for a while, you go through experiences that, try as…
I’ve met a lot of people in my few years of traveling and feel like I’ve got more than enough characters to make up a pretty funny novel about meeting them all. I’m a fairly shy, introverted person and it takes a while for me to talk a lot and be open with people, but…