It is such a bliss to travel by bus through Albania.
It is so calming to relax on the bus seat and to be carried to far- away places with other friends, through majestic mountains, along deep turquoise rivers and the enchanting sea with its ever-varying rocky bays, passing historical cities with imposing fortresses and beautiful white villages with modest peasants with goodness in every wrinkle. As I cannot read or study on the mostly mountainous roads, I am forced to slow down, to do nothing except enjoying the journey. And I let my thoughts go and find inner peace in this scenery. I am led to philosophy, to think and feel my projects further on from an intuitive side. Each time I return from such a trip, I have become a bit wiser.
The greatest richness of traveling by bus is meeting marvelous people and having a great time. As we are together for several hours, we often begin to form a kind of community. Most bus drivers from the lines Saranda-Tirana-Kosova and Tirana-Tetova know me and are my friends. When I change the bus in Tirana or get into the bus in Prizren, they call me "Saranda!" In buses I have conversed with shepherds and writers, retired people and children. On my last trip from Tirana to the yearly poetry festival in Macedonia, the bus drivers and I gave each other nicknames, in the restaurant we toasted with salt and pepper, and with two students I danced in the bus at four o'clock in the morning! In most of the cases, some passenger or bus driver invites me to eat in one of the restaurants on the road. In the night bus through the night mountains in the North, I am overtired when the bus stops for the second or the third time, anywhere between Rubik and Kukës. Are we in Fushë Arrëz, in Lajthiza, in Shemria? I drag myself out of the bus into the cold air to have a coffee or mountain tea with my friends.
I always admire to what extent the bus drivers feel responsible for all their passengers. Their mobile phone does not stop. They ensure the smooth getting on the right bus or find a hotel for vacationists who come spontaneously to Saranda. Waiting relatives and friends are informed at what time the bus will arrive.. In the buses to Macedonia, we are also offered tea and coffee and sweets, as if we were in a plane. The modern buses to Kosova have video equipment, and mostly we watch New Year videos with popular music and turbo folk and silly humor. Whereas in the older buses in the South, the musical background is the cheerful chatter of the moderator of "Top Albania Radio", who rolls her R in the Tiranian way, together with pop music, or Southern folk, or fiery Greek music.
In one day you change worlds, from Oriental to Mediterranean and back, still speaking Albanian all the time. My soul is imbued, impregnated with beautiful images and good times. When times get tougher again, they appear by themselves before my inner eye: the glittering of the sea just one meter away or deep down the cliffs, or the shrewd mountains under the fairy-like full moon. And the pilaf I have eaten on the Southern mountain pass of Llogara, or the mountain tea I have drunken in Shemria, on the road, on the road, on the road.
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