We manage to start at 8 again and leave the group behind in the Guesthouse. The weather had been supposed to be rainy but until now it’s mildly cloudy with a perfect temperature for climbing the hill. The path follows a dirt road out of the village for almost 5 km and the elevation is moderate and steady so we do much better than yesterday. As the path leaves the road and starts climbing through a nice forest we are great in time. Lots of raspberries and especially blueberries along the path that can be picked and eaten while walking make the time pass quickly and make up for the sparse breakfast.
I think Henry D. Thoureau, of whom I’m reading a book at the moment, is right: Blueberries fresh from the bush in wild nature are not even comparable to blueberries at home if somebody else has collected and sold them to you. These are really the best blueberries I have ever eaten.
We reach the pass and border to Kosovo around 1 and make rest in a shepherd’s bar with blueberry yoghurt and drinks and very good service.
After sitting there for a while, Ana and Pascual from Spain turn up again and we are happy to be reunited and walk most part of the rest of the day together. Shortly after the bar, the first thunders are audible and a few minutes later the rain starts. It doesn’t stop anymore until we reach the hut and everything is wet. But it also brings out some parts of the fauna that we hadn’t seen so far. Especially dozens of salamanders.
This hike, of which we had been afraid after yesterday turns out to be quite easy and as a real lunch break in the rain is impossible, we reach the Guesthouse by 2:30. Not without some setbacks however: around one hour from the Guesthouse my mom twists her ankle. It seems to be relatively fine now, but it could still turn into a problem.
The “check-in” at the guesthouse is what I would call a little surreal. About 4 men and 2 women and a little girl come out of the house when we arrive. “Do you have a reservation?” The little girl asks. “Yes. Two rooms.” “Ah, okay, good.” And then nothing. Awkward standing around. The 6 of them staring at us as if we were extraterrestrials that just landed in an UFO in front of them. The staring goes on for minutes.. The second attempt to clarify the topic and know where the rooms are is not more successful. In the end, we get our room, which is the upper floor of a small wooden cabin with no windows, no light, no electricity and nothing more than two mattresses on the floor. As there is not even a hanger and everything is wet we have to make one of the guys put some nails in the walls to hang our clothes.
The bathroom situation comprises two rooms. One with a hole-toilet like yesterday on a concrete floor, and one with a shower and a broken sink. No toilet paper, no soap. We take the shower and gather with our Spanish friends in the common room where some Albanian men are playing domino since 5 hours. We get a mountain tea and Ana and I decide to warm up with some home made Rhakia. The inside and outside heat work more or less. We eat our lunch packs and wait. Manuela also turns up and we are complete again. Outside, the rain turns into thick fog. We are in the cloud now. Which, on 1800m is not a big surprise. Some people start a campfire on the yard and everyone starts gathering around that fire with their wet clothes and shoes to dry them in a mix of fog and smoke. It works more or less and the fire really heats me up. We can only be motivated to leave the warmth of the flames again by the call for dinner. There are tons of cucumbers and tomatoes with cheese and rice for me and a hot vegetable soup. For dessert there is watermelon.
This is our second day without phone charging or any cellphone coverage. I hope friends and family are not too worried at home but other than that I’m okay with the digital detox.
Apart from us 5 and the group of 11 (which we also get to know little by little) there are also some friends of the family as guests here. The conditions are very basic. In one of the rooms I see tons of blueberries laid out on the beds and floor, all food and drinks are prepared with fire and electricity comes only from two small solar panels which don’t work great with this weather. After dinner we are practically kicked out of the dining room for the second round of dinner, which is for the friends of the family. We become testimonies of an interesting phenomenon contradicting what everyone says about Albanian culture. In theory, in Albania the guest is the most important thing in a house. It is worse to hurt a guest than your family. I had read that years ago when the trail opened, people had to be convinced to take money from tourists because they couldn’t imagine having a guest pay. Now, it seems like this increasing tourism has already killed or compromised this marvelous culture. As we go back to the dining room for some drinks, we see the “real guests” eat tons of fresh meat, whereas we only got some dry pasta, soup and salad. This is how massification compromises traditions and currupts people. And this is only a mild preview of how things are going to be in a couple of years. It is always difficult to have growth and wealth while preserving traditions and culture and I don’t know what the ideal way would be to make this process a healthy and happy one for all people and the environment.
The only alternative to the inside is the fireplace so we sit around the fire again, everyone with their wet shoes and pants and jackets and start talking to each other and to the other Albanian and Kosovarian guests. As the night falls, conversations get more intense and interesting and political. Some manifest that Albania is still a dictatorship just translated to modern times, the Kosovarian guide defends the United States and what they have done to always help Kosovo. And of course the topic of Covid is unavoidable as well and I think a lot of the dictatorship discussion stems from the vaccination policy.
When it gets too wild, we go to bed in our hut, where we also accomodate Manuela for tonight who would have had to sleep in a tent otherwise.
