Four Days in Durres (1)

During half-term holiday tidying I came across this account of our visit to Durres, Albania, which I will post for the curious in serial form, as it's a bit long... no photos, unfortunately, but photos of Durres and Tirana can be found on Wikipedia, etc.





Two names have been anonymised thusly:


Dhendri - Albanian for 'The Bridegroom'


Zonja - short for Albanian 'Zonja e Shtepise', ('Lady of the House')

Port of Bari

Spend the night at Stanstead Airport and land in Bari just after 9am. I take a bus to the railway station, where I'll find a taxi to take us to the Port. My daughter sleeps in her buggy as I wait with a crowd of Italian students. When the minibus arrives they lift the buggy with daughter still in it onto the bus. It's passed over passengers' heads to the back seats and jammed into the aisle. Someone helpfully changes seats so I can sit beside her.

By this time it's raining heavily and I decide to go straight to the Port and book the ferry, even though it won't sail until 11pm. Perhaps by afternoon the weather will improve enough to get out and see something of Bari.

At the Port there are at least a dozen ticket offices, each for a different ferry, but I find they all sail at the same time. The clerk at the first open office I find offers to look after my case while I wait and directs me to the bar and restaurant, both almost empty.

The weather doesn't improve. I go back to the ticket office to ask whether there is anywhere nearby we could visit without getting soaked. Better to wait inside, I'm told - but his assistant has got us a cabin for the same price as a seat on deck...

Meanwhile more passengers begin arriving in the waiting areas and queues form at the ticket offices. Everyone speaks Italian, some speak English, no-one else, apparently, speaks Albanian. Is everyone going there on holiday, then, I ask... some for holidays, some for work. We sit quietly looking through the windows as rain pours into the grey Adriatic.

Mid-afternoon a noisier group arrive from the bar. One of them is a man dressed in black leather, a bandana and much gold jewellery. I'm just wondering whether I would describe him as part of an ex-Soviet state Eurovision rock act or an extra from some sort of 'space cowboys' film when I realise, too late, that staring at him has attracted his attention. People look uneasy as he joins our table but smile and greet him politely. He replies to them in Albanian, which they ignore, and switching to Italian asks me where I'm from and where I'm going. Someone interprets and then changes the subject... they seem to know each other and are reminiscing about some recent feat of alcoholic over-consumption. Later he sees another acquaintance entering the waiting area and excuses himself. By now he has remembered enough English to tell me 'I'm on the run'. Okey-dokey then...

At 10.30pm we queue to board the ferry. The man checking passports and tickets tells me that as we have UK passports it will be safer if he keeps them in the office until we arrive in Durres tomorrow morning, which service he will undertake for a mere 10 Euros... I've been awake for more millions of hours than I'm capable of counting by now and do not want to fall asleep alone at the Port of Bari. Hoping vaguely that the photocopies in my case will save us in the eventuality of the possible non-return of our passports, I give him the passports and the money.

Get lost looking for our cabin and am rescued by a kind English-speaking lorry driver who carries bags and buggy and tells me to be sure to lock the door. I tell him about the passports and am assured that 'everything will be fine'. Inside the cabin I lock the door and put a chair up against it. Take a wobbly shower along with my daughter, put out the light and we both fall instantly asleep in the bottom bunk.