Border Crossings, Albania to Turkey (May 7, 2022, the severed branch)

Rough bus rides and cheap hotels in Albania | Crossing by foot from Albania to Macedonia | Traversing Bulgaria by bus in the night | At last arriving in Istanbul

Above: A view from the bus in Albania (photos my own)

It was early evening on a scorching hot day in the summer of 2010. I had just arrived by bus to Korçë, Albania. I was on my way from Sarandë (also in Albania) to Istanbul. But with no onward buses this late in the day, I’d have to stay the night here in Korçë

I had a fever anyway, one which had been developing over the course of my seven-hour journey through beautiful mountains. The bus I’d just taken from Sarandë had certainly possessed questionable (non-existent?) AC. This was primarily evidenced by my extreme dehydration, which was brought about not only by the heat but also by the distressing circumstances characterizing my digestive system.

Despite my sickly condition, I was determined to continue making my way to Istanbul early the next morning. I had been in the Balkans long enough: a week in Bosnia and a week in Albania, among other places. I wanted to maximize my time in Turkey.

I stepped off into the dusty, mostly unpaved lot which constituted Korçë’s bus station. I attempted to cure my dehydration by almost immediately chugging an entire liter of water. I looked around while I did so, noting that this seemingly chaotic yet cryptically organized space was just like many other bus stations I’d frequented around the Balkans.

There were no timetables, no real schedules, hardly even any signs on the buses themselves. But they were always easy to navigate anyway. I would just show up with my large backpack, standing out easily as a traveler among the locals who knew what they are doing. Then a bunch of sweaty men would surround me demanding to know where I was going. I’d spit out the mispronounced name of some city, they’d walk me to a bus, and I’d stand around for an hour or more while waiting for the driver to decide that enough people had boarded to depart.

I would return to this particular bus station around sunrise the next morning. Which bus would I take, and to which city? I’d have to find out at an Internet cafe tonight.

For now, I needed to secure a place to sleep. I consulted the Lonely Planet Eastern Europe guidebook. This directed me to a hotel which supposedly cost one dollar a night. In the absence of a smartphone and mobile data, I used a combination of the map in my guidebook and help from locals to make my way to the market.

The hotel was built like a square around the market itself. Within, vendors were selling all sorts of fruits, vegetables, and plastic trinkets. As the sky began showing signs of a setting sun, sellers were folding up tables and putting away their wares.

I approached the desk which, although it was technically under a roof, may as well have been in the open air. It was as if I was standing inside a wide yet very short tunnel connecting me from the street to the enclosed but uncovered market. I was desperate for a shower. As the receptionist made a photocopy of my passport, I listened to the bustling of the vendors closing down their shops and stands. I observed the simultaneously rude and friendly haggling between sellers and last-minute customers, basing my observations exclusively on body language and tone of voice. 

Then I gave the receptionist (the owner? the manager? in either case, the only person who seemed to work here) the Albanian equivalent of about $1.50, the price of my night here. She guided me upstairs. Soon we were walking together on an extended balcony on the second floor. This somewhat unstable veranda looped around the dusty market below. I gazed down upon the shoppers and foodstuffs, realizing right then that I was getting really hungry. It was a sensation which my slight fever and gastrointestinal distress had been crowding out throughout my journey that day.

Eating had been the last activity to occur to me earlier that day. I think in particular of the moment I found myself using a horrifically filthy cement outhouse on the side of the road in the middle of the mountains. It was home to what people in that part of the world liked to call a “Turkish toilet.” The one in this outhouse was truly no-frills; it was simply a hole in the ground above which one balanced. There was no soap, no toilet paper, just the buzzing flies and the terror of my bus leaving me here. Then something even worse: the realization, when it didn’t leave me there, that now I would need to be on that awful hot bus for another three hours minimum. Creeping so slowly along steep cliffs, rolling precariously around the treacherous bends of mostly unpaved mountain road, loving the beautiful views but craving a thirty-minute shower.

The woman and I stopped at my door. She used her key to open it, although the lock almost seemed symbolic. The door’s wooden planks were so uneven and weak that it seemed to wobble as she opened it, as if it might snap in half and fall off its hinges. She handed me the key, I went inside, and I was alone. There were two tiny twin beds of questionable cleanliness in the corner, alongside a rickety desk against a concrete wall which was covered with graffiti in Albanian. I listened to the clear voices of the people closing down the market. I had the satisfying sensation that the last stages of the day’s urban commerce were progressing right outside that fragile door.

Above: Commerce on the outskirts of an Albanian bus station

I set my 70-liter backpack on the floor beside the bed. I grabbed the plastic bag containing my toiletries, a change of clothes, and the folded towel off the bed. Then I walked back out with these onto the balcony, symbolically locking my door behind me, shaking it a little on its hinges. I walked along the veranda, circling the market below and reaching one of the shared bathrooms on the other side. I took a shower that seemed to somewhat relax the lightheadedness I felt from my fever. The water’s heat lasted just a few sweet moments before giving way to ice cold.

Now I needed to figure out how exactly I was going to get to Istanbul tomorrow. I thought about a few weeks back when I checked into my much nicer hostel in Zagreb, Croatia. “What brings you here?” the receptionist had asked me. “I’m on my way to Istanbul,” I had said. He laughed. “Why don’t you just… fly there?” Good question, I thought to myself now, although the megalomaniacal mythomaniac inside of me knew the answer: overland travel is more romantic, maybe even more literary, and airplanes are not real travel. It’s only by traveling overland that one truly appreciates the journey itself; it’s the only way to actually see the changes around you as you progress. An airplane is more like a portal, distorting perceptions of movement and distance, completely obliterating the experience of having to cross borders and mountains.

I changed into new clothes and made my way to an Internet cafe where I could figure out how to get to Turkey overland as quickly as possible.

First, though, I stopped to spend a couple bucks on some street food for dinner. It cost more than my hotel room. With my hunger satiated, I took my time in an Internet cafe, Googling the best overland routes from here to Istanbul (and by best I mean the fastest, as I had no intention of stopping anywhere again).

I would have to take a bus from here to a small Albanian border town called Tushemisht, followed by a taxi from there to the border with Macedonia. Then I would need to cross by foot from Albania to Macedonia, where people on Internet forums claimed I’d easily be able to find a taxi to the next town, Ohrid. From Ohrid I would take a bus to Skopje, the Macedonian capital, and from Skopje I would take an overnight bus to Istanbul. I took notes in my Moleskin and consulted my maps. The whole thing would take up to 30 hours or so. Once I had finalized my action plan, I sat for a while in the square of Korçë’s Resurrection Cathedral while watching the sunset and trying to relax before tomorrow’s journey.

I’d already visited Macedonia before, having been in Ohrid and Skopje a couple years back, so I was comfortable skipping over them this time. I was disappointed that I would only see Bulgaria from the windows of an overnight bus, but I was certain that I just needed to get to Turkey. I needed to see the red and white Turkish flag fluttering in the air; I needed to feel like I had all the time in the world to wander Asia Minor.

I set an alarm on my tiny Nokia phone and struggled to fall asleep. First of all, I still had a fever, which actually seemed to be getting worse. Secondly, though, I knew that I must have stood out as the only tourist in the city that day. At least I hadn’t seen any other obvious foreigners. Could I be a target for theft?

If anyone out on the open street really wanted to get into this room, they could walk up the stairs to the balcony and arrive right outside my rickety door. At that moment, it wasn’t so fun to realize that no one in the entire world knew what city I was in. I was alone here, truly alone, even digitally. Neither my family nor my friends even knew what country I was in right now. What if I got robbed, injured, and/or died?

These types of fearful feelings were menacing obstacles which could only prevent me from doing what I needed to do: travel alone, alone in a sense that I was truly alone, disconnected from all loved ones. If it was still somehow scary, then that was all the more reason why it needed to be done. So I suppressed these worries and, after a couple hours of nervous tossing and turning, I finally fell asleep.

Above: Grand Bazaar, Istanbul, Turkey

I woke up before five in the morning with my fever significantly worsened. Still, I needed to get out of this hotel, and I needed to get to Turkey. So I went to the bus stop anyway, my intestines armed with a couple preemptively swallowed antidiarrheals.

I told the men in the dusty lot the name of the border town to which I wanted to go, having dutifully recorded its name in my Moleskine. I was directed by various fingers to a bus, which I boarded and sat on for over an hour before we finally left with about seven other passengers. I listened to Death Cab for Cutie on my iPod, drank Coca-Cola, ate cookies (go-to breakfast), and hoped for my fever to decline, which it did not.

Arriving in the border town’s dusty parking lot / makeshift bus station, I approached a man standing next to an unmarked car. I told him I needed to go to Macedonia. He drove me right to the border for a few bucks, then left me there on the side of the road. It was late morning, and the road ran along Lake Ohrid, which looked completely stunning as sunlight sparkled mesmerizingly across its ripples. 

The Albanian border guard was standing in an outhouse-like structure which was more like a small hotdog stand than a proper border station. I handed him my passport. He stamped an empty page and handed it back to me. With a smile, he gestured for me to continue into No Man’s Land.

I began walking down the side of the road with no sign of the entrance to Macedonia. Just the beauty of the vast and sparkling Lake Ohrid to my left and a rocky cliff to my right. Soon, however, just as a car passed me, I turned the bend around the cliff. Just ahead I saw the Macedonian border station. It looked brand-new and state-of-the-art compared to the sad Albanian hotdog stand. It had multiple lanes for cars, each with its own glass-windowed station for a border guard to stand, all of it connected ultimately to a large central office. I guess this is the kind of border station you need to build if you want to get into the European Union, I thought to myself.

Standing there with my heavy backpack while sweating profusely, I got in line behind the car which had passed me. My fever had worsened considerably during the course of the journey from Korçë, but I was afraid to drink too much water lest I have to pee on the next bus. Once the car ahead of me was waved into Macedonia, I walked up to the border guard, who took my passport and looked me up and down with a chuckle. I was already drenched in sweat from my short walk, the top of my t-shirt nearly as soaked as if I’d just gone for a three-mile run on a treadmill.

Laughing with a gleeful smile, he gestured with his finger for me to wait a moment. He then retreated into the comparatively large building which apparently served as the border station’s HQ. He soon returned with my passport and a brochure in English. Grinning, he handed me the brochure. “Tips for Driving in Macedonia,” it read. We both laughed. Then we waved goodbye and I started walking down the road.

Above: One last look at Albania while walking in No Man’s Land to Macedonia

Although the forums on the Internet claimed there were plenty of taxis at the border, I didn’t see any cars at all. I found myself walking down the side of the road essentially into the forest. I had thought the road would lead directly to a nearby tourist-packed monastery on the edge of Lake Ohrid. Instead, it snaked to the right, away from the lake. Through the trees to my left, I could partially see the monastery. And I could even hear all the people there. But to get there - where I would certainly be able to hire transportation - would have required me to walk down a very foliated, steep, and slippery incline. A bit lightheaded, I simply continued on the road into the woods.

(Looking at Google Maps today, it seems there is now a path directly from the border crossing to the monastery. If there was one back then, I missed it completely.)

I started feeling worried. Ohrid was the name of the city to which I was headed. And it was a forty-minute drive away from here, which was apparently the middle of nowhere. I needed to find a taxi or a bus. I considered turning around, finding a different way to the monastery.

But then, after ten minutes of walking down the road in the forest, I saw a very unkempt bearded man approaching in my direction. He was waving a large blade around in the air while occasionally hacking it at random plants. He took frequent swigs from a bottle of Coca-Cola. When he saw me walking toward him from just about twenty feet away, he held the blade up in the air, waved it around, and then laughed as he threw it into the bushes. He walked over to me with a smile.

“Bus?” I asked him, pointing at the ground.

“Bus?” he asked me with a friendly tone, smiling confusedly and scratching his head.

“Bus, here?” I asked. “Autobus?”

“Autobus, autobus,” he repeated. “No, no.” He waved a finger at me. “Here no autobus.”

“Ah,” I said, nodding with no-doubt very visible disappointment.

“You,” he said. Then he pointed at my chest. “Ohrid?”

“Yes, yes,” I said. “Me” - I pointed up the road - “Ohrid. Bus? Taxi?”

“Taxi yes, taxi yes,” he said. He gestured for me to follow him. “Bus no.”

We walked together up the road for a while. Then an unmarked car came approaching from further up the road, coming from the direction of Ohrid.

“Ohrid,” the man said to me, pointing at the car.

I threw my backpack into the trunk. Then I got into the back of the car with the man. He took the middle seat. There were two other random guys in there with us, not counting the driver. The car was packed, and all four of them spoke animatedly with one another in Macedonian (or maybe in Albanian). I sat there exhausted and sick and sweaty, saying nothing. Except when the driver pointed at me and said, “You - Ohrid?”

And I said, “Yes, Ohrid.” I leaned in. “How much?”

“How much,” he repeated. He nodded his head back and forth while looking up at the ceiling. Probably contemplating by how much he should rip me off. “Five euro.”

I nodded. “Five euro,” I repeated, relieved.

I was in the car with all of them for around forty minutes before we finally got to Ohrid. The driver dropped off the other passengers in various locations, except for the guy sitting shotgun, who remained with us the whole time.

Then he looked at me. “Here Ohrid. Hotel?”

“Bus station,” I said.

He nodded and drove me there while chit chatting happily in Macedonian (I think) with the other guy. After grabbing my backpack out of the trunk and forking over a five-euro note and some change, I watched him drive off laughing with his friend.

Then I went into the bus station. I had just a few minutes to use the bathroom and buy provisions before the three-hour bus to Skopje would depart. The antidiarrheals had worn off, which made using the bathroom an uncomfortable but necessary experience. I took another round of medication and then, armed with various fluids alongside a sandwich and a large bag of cookies, I boarded the bus to Skopje just in time. My fever was stable but disturbing. I chugged 1.5 liters of water, which evidently put me in no danger of peeing (all credit goes to my unfortunate dehydration).

This Macedonian bus was, as expected, far more modern and comfortable than the Albanian bus had been. I savored the significantly more cushioned seat, the cleanliness, the beautiful views from the window while listening to music on my iPod and thinking about what I would do in Turkey. I wanted to go all the way to the southeast, to the Kurdish region. I wanted to go to Cappadocia and all along the Black Sea coast. But first I would spend a few days in Istanbul, where I was going to get lunch or dinner with two of my former Michigan State professors and another graduate of MSU’s James Madison College.

After Turkey, I would go to Georgia and Armenia, before flying back to Germany via Latvia. Stretching out before me were seven weeks of further solo travel, with little set in stone. The excitement of it all distracted me for a couple hours from my desperate need for sleep, my persisting but somewhat declining fever, my sweat-soaked clothes, and my extreme need for a shower. During my extended border-crossing walk, salt had accumulated on my t-shirt at the points where my backpack met cotton. I would probably need to visit a pharmacist as soon as I was in Istanbul. It all made me think about what Paul Theroux once wrote: “Travel is glamorous only in retrospect.”

I arrived at last to the gigantic and (thank God) all-indoor, fully air conditioned Skopje bus station. I purchased a ticket for the overnight to Istanbul, which was a 12-hour long ride scheduled to depart in three hours at eight in the evening.

Above: Istanbul, Turkey

Having visited Skopje before, I was more eager for food than for sightseeing. I grabbed a cheap dinner at one of the food stands inside the bus station, which I then ate while sitting on the concrete floor against a grey concrete wall. I spent some time writing letters to my friends back home, which I planned to mail from Turkey. Then I wrote for a while in my journal. Finally I was able to board the jam-packed bus.

I was seated in the midst of a group of women wearing hijabs and traveling with their children. They spoke Turkish and no English, but we communicated as best we could. They shared some of their food with me and made seemingly silly comments about me to their children, who either laughed at me or stared at me apprehensively. 

While crossing into Bulgaria, we all had to get off the bus so the heavily-armed customs guards could rummage freely through whatever was on board. They gathered all our passports and took them away while we waited in the dark on the side of the road. I watched the Bulgarian guards through the windows. Walking up and down the aisles, opening compartments, shining flashlights under seats and into bags. Working hard, perhaps in vain, to prove their country was responsible enough for entry into the Schengen Zone.

As we waited outside, I began speaking to the only other American on the bus. She was a young woman my age (22) who was an officer in the military. We talked about our respective trips. We seemed to get along instantly. We quickly agreed to find a hostel together once we arrived in Istanbul. Like me, she had nothing pre-booked.

We got back on the bus and so began the long overnight drive across Bulgaria to Turkey. I mostly slept, but often I woke up and saw only streetlights and concrete through the windows. We stopped every couple hours at otherwise deserted gas stations, getting off briefly so people could use the bathroom, smoke cigarettes, stretch their legs, buy snacks. I got to know the other American better during those little breaks. Soon it was morning. We were standing together at the crossing into Turkey, which was like an international corporate headquarters compared to the Macedonian border station. Turkish guards closely examined our passports before granting us the tiny stickers which constituted our visas. I relished the sight of the Turkish flags hoisted high into the sky, reminding me of the journey to come.

We found a hostel together in Istanbul, where we booked a few nights in the same mixed-gender dormitory. The dormitory also accommodated several other solo travelers and a couple groups, though we never really spoke to anyone but each other, as if we were our own group now.

Above: Hagia Sophia, Istanbul, Turkey

She and I agreed to meet up for dinner that night. For now, I desperately needed rest and medication. I went to a pharmacist who gave me fever reducers and antibiotics. I dropped off my laundry at one of the many shops servicing backpackers. Without a bus to catch that day, I could finally go easy on the antidiarrheals. After an extremely satisfying hot shower, I slept on my bunk bed, slowly recovering in the large dormitory for several hours, not waking up until well into the early evening.

When I opened my eyes at around seven o’clock, the other American was sitting in her bed across from mine. “Good morning,” she joked. She told me about her day and then we headed out to get dinner. Along with my rest and medication, my eager thoughts of Istanbul and Turkey had done me well. I felt cured. My fever never returned.

After the uncomfortable journey, Istanbul’s grandeur and beauty were simply magical. I’d been here before, but right now it felt like I was here for the first time.

My new friend and I wandered around the city for the next couple days. We talked about our lives and trips. She told me about the Naval Academy, and we realized that she had actually studied with a guy I knew from high school. It was a perfect temporary friendship, one of the dozens I’d formed in places like this so far away from home. In another universe, we might have been friends for years. But in this one, we were just friends for a little while on the enthralling streets of Istanbul, one of the world’s most magnificent cities. And I was happy that we were here experiencing it together, accepting sadly but also gratefully that these three or four great days would always constitute the entire story of our friendship from start to finish.

We strolled through the Hagia Sophia, where fifteen hundred years of religious and political change are encapsulated in a mosque turned museum (and recently turned back to mosque). It had once been the largest cathedral in the world, built in the sixth century by the Byzantine (or rather Eastern Roman) Emperor Justinian. We roamed through ancient Roman underground cisterns and beneath the passes of fourth-century aqueducts, another reminder of just how long this region had been the seat of empires and nations straddling Asia and Europe. Another symbol of how far back stretched the history of Istanbul. Once it was called Constantinople, as a Roman capital founded by the first Christian Emperor, Constantine. And before that it had been Byzantium, a tiny Greek colony positioned for trade between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. This was literally the meeting point of Asia and Europe, with the Bosporus serving as the boundary. Strategically located at this great crossroads, the city enriched itself for centuries off the Silk Road commerce conducted by merchants from across the world.

I thought about the demise of the Byzantine Empire at the hands of the Ottoman armies in 1453 under the command of the Sultan Mehmed the Conquerer. He had subdued Constantinople, the last remaining far-flung outpost of the Roman Empire which had mostly collapsed a thousand years before, and first transformed the Hagia Sofia into a mosque. Now, hundreds of years later, we were enjoying the breathtaking views over the Bosphorus from the grounds of Topkapı Sarayı, which was once a palace housing the Ottoman sultans of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. We walked along the water of the Golden Horn, enjoying the minaret-studded skyline. We went into the Blue Mosque, a stunning place of worship built by the Ottomans in the seventeenth century and home to the tomb of a sultan.

I got a Turkish shave which left virtually no trace of any hair having ever existed on my face. Then there was the Grand Bazaar with its colorful spices and silk scarves. There were kebabs at the restaurants lined up along pedestrian-only streets. There was the corn on the cob which constitutes one of Istanbul’s most predominant street foods. There was the vast Bosphorus itself, a conduit since time immemorial of international maritime trade, speckled even now by numerous hefty freighters. Which means I may as well also mention the Apple, Nike, and Puma stores.

Above: View of the Bosphorus from Topkapı Sarayı, former Ottoman palace

One evening, I met two of my former professors and another MSU graduate for dinner. They were here with a group of students on a Michigan State study abroad program covering Romania, Bulgaria, and Turkey. They were two of the professors I most admired, experts on Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and/or Turkey. People who appreciated the depths of history which rendered legendary cities like this one so magical and enticing to anyone with an interest in humanity’s story.

I told them about my journey to get here and about all the time I’d spent in Albania and Bosnia. Shuddering, I remembered the outhouse in the Albanian mountains from just a few days ago. I thought about how far away Istanbul felt that evening at the Internet Cafe in Korçë, when all I wanted was to finally arrive in Turkey, when I was struggling to fall asleep in that twin bed of questionable cleanliness. I was so relieved and comfortable now, I explained, to be strolling through Istanbul’s enthralling streets, especially in contrast to the memory of that rickety Korçë hotel room where I thought in the night that I might get robbed and/or die. I sparked some laughter with my story about walking across the Albania-Macedonia border.

I told them how this great city, so grand and rich in its history, had cured my fever.

“I feel like I’ve returned to civilization,” I said. “Or like I’ve arrived to the center of the world.”

“Travelers arriving in Istanbul have said that for centuries,” one professor mused.

The words sent a thrill down my spine. They filled me with wonder at the stories and spirits contained within this city, far too numerous to ever know them all. Then there was the awe I felt as I contemplated all the civilizations, all the religions, all the languages which had risen and fallen just within the boundaries of modern Turkey. So many lost worlds which had once sparkled with life for centuries right here around us. One day this world too would fade away, replaced by new words, alphabets, doctrines. By languages we have not even imagined, but which just might reign for a thousand years.

I was giddy with contemplations about all the exploration to come. From here I would go along the Black Sea… I would go down into the interior of Cappadocia… I would go to the Kurdish southeast along the borders with Syria, Iraq, and Iran…. I would see so many ancient ruins, so many remains from antiquity. There was so much to learn and experience in the coming weeks that it made me dizzy with a drunken anticipatory joy.

Taking a bite of kebab and a sip of an Efes Pilsner, I looked up at the Turkish flag waving in the air. I loved the sight of that red and white fluttering in the emerging streetlight as the four of us sat here together in the accelerating sunset. Each time I saw them, that flag’s sleek star and crescent reminded me I was about to spend over a month roaming alone around this great country. As I sat discussing my plans with my professors, and as they told me of the places in Turkey which they too had visited but which I had yet to see, my heart was vibrating wildly with the excitement of travel’s possibilities.