Big Trip Day 295: Broken Bones in the Bunkers of the Balkans
Hi friends! Justin here.
We’re still months behind on Big Trip updates, so I invite you to imagine yourself back in October. The leaves are changing, there’s a slight chill in the air, and we’re leaving Greece after 30 days of eating way too much feta cheese and gyro meat.
After wrapping up our action packed road trip with my mom, we set off towards Albania to stay with our friends Andy and Amelia and their son Hank (who we hadn’t met yet!) We first met Andy over a decade ago when the three of us were starry eyed Peace Corps volunteers in the Dominican Republic. Andy and his wife Amelia (who was also in the DR doing much more important work on her P.h.D,) became foreign service officers and now live abroad, forever! Their current post is in Albania, and lucky for us, they invited us to come visit.
Andy generously offered to pick us up in Florina, Greece, where we all stayed the night before completing the journey to Tirana, Albania. Fortuitously, the Italian Circus happened to be in town, so we obviously had to attend. The show had it all: juggling, a disappearing act, and 3 guys driving motorcycles around inside a metal dome. And best of all, none of the acts involved caged animals.
The next day, we arrived at Andy and Amelia’s house in Tirana, the capital of Albania, and began to get a taste of what it’s like to be a US diplomat. One of the perks of being a diplomat is that you are provided with housing wherever you are posted. In this case, their housing community looks like it was copy/pasted straight out of an American suburb; the only difference is that all of the neighbors are also colleagues working for the US government, and the community is surrounded by large concrete walls with strong men holding AK-47’s standing guard at the entrance (the men are very nice, and Andy and Amelia assured us that this is overkill for Albania.)
Needless to say, we felt extremely safe and comfortable, taking advantage of amenities that we had almost forgotten about such as snacks from the pantry, Andy’s incredible home-made cocktails, and free use of the community gym and tennis court. Long gone were the days of risking our well-being by riding around on motorbikes, eating street food, rock climbing, and surfing over sharp coral reef. In this familiar and secure environment I found myself in, I felt that nothing bad could happen and I let down my defenses. Then on our 5th day there, while playing a friendly game of tennis with Andy just steps away from the U.S. Ambassador’s house, I placed my foot wrong and heard a terrible pop. Andy helped me limp back to the house, where I iced my ankle while we considered our options.
At the time, I assumed I had just sprained my ankle, so the immediate solution was to pick up a pair of crutches to use until I was healed. Perhaps because Albania was recently a Communist country, their selection of crutches wasn’t the best, and I ended up with heavy wooden crutches that looked like they were left over from the war. They had absolutely no padding for the armpits and no rubber traction for the ends. Andy resourcefully came up with some solutions to help me out.
Over the Labor Day weekend, all five of us piled into the car for a road trip to the north. While we drove, Hank was constantly on the lookout for construction equipment. Whenever he saw a tractor, he would shout “look I ssss sssa sssaaaww a a aaa digger!!!” You’d be surprised how many diggers are out in the world when you start paying attention.
Our first stop was in Prizren, Kosovo. I had previously not known this place existed, but after spending a day there, I can verify that it is officially on the list of top 10 most adorable little cities in the world. We hiked up to a charming little castle where there was a cute little dog waiting to tour us around. And later we found a cotton candy machine that made us a delightful little treat.
The next stop on the road trip was Valbonë, Albania. Valbonë is nestled in the valley below the Accursed Mountains, otherwise known as the Albanian Alps. With the leaves on the trees turning yellow and orange, it was the perfect time to hike the various mountain trails and take in the breathtaking views.
As you recall however, I had a “sprained ankle”. I didn’t want to miss out on hiking, which was basically the only activity on the agenda, so I hobbled my way out and back on the trail for a total of 6 miles round trip. Hank helped me keep up with the group by periodically refusing to go any further and then engaging in lengthy negotiations with his parents about his immediate future. Amelia and Andy demonstrated legendary patience and commitment to fostering a love of nature in Hank, who clearly has a strong preference for places that are currently “under construction” with diggers and cranes aplenty.
In retrospect, all that hiking was probably a bad idea given the state of my leg. But as I am writing this, I can see into the future and know that it all worked out in the end. So don’t worry! I have no regrets.
After our hike, we stopped into a taverna to have dinner. We ordered a specialty northern Albanian dish called flia, which consists of a stack of crepes with heavy cream slathered in between, which is then baked over several hours. This food had the density of a cinder block, but it was quite delicious. We ordered a whole pie and managed to eat half, despite Andy and I’s commitment to eat as much as possible. Dory and Amelia, wisely, tapped out after just one slice.
A fun (fun?) fact about Albania is that their dictator mandated the construction of nearly 175,000 bunkers between 1967 and 1986 due to his extreme paranoia that the nation would be attacked by neighboring countries and the U.S. As a result, bunkers that were never once used are littered everywhere throughout the country. We found one in Valbonë on our walk home, so we, of course, got inside it. After that, Hank became obsessed with bunkers and quickly came up with his new favorite song “Old McDonald had a bunker.”
Once we got back to Tirana, I finally had a chance to get an x-ray. Through some diplomatic wizardry, Amelia secured me an appointment, and then used her air of extreme competence and impressively good Albanian to usher us through the hospital in minutes that, alone, I’m sure would have taken us hours. I found myself in the x-ray room after just a few moments, and the radiologist looked at the scan and then asked me, “you are not having a very much pain???” I said no, I had been walking on it all weekend. He said, “This leg extremely broken.” Whoops!
Our doctor friends Anna and Charlie were able to officially provide the diagnosis that my fibula was broken at the ankle, and I was meant to wear a walking boot for 6 weeks. Unfortunately, Dory and I were set to fly to Spain the next day, and the same country that produced my wooden crutches was unlikely to produce a walking boot in my size in under 24 hours. So with no time to obtain any further treatment for my leg, I decided to carry on with just the crutches for at least a couple more days.
After a wonderful time visiting with our dear friends, Andy did us one last incredible act of generosity and drove us to the airport at the buttcrack of dawn. We bid farewell and headed off to our next destination: Sevilla, Spain! We were on our way to dogsit for a blind pup named Pepe, since after months of trying, we finally had out first gig as Trusted Housesitters (a dogsitting/house trade platform recommended to us way back in Laos by two Canadian travelers.)
Thanks for staying tuned to our our newsletters even though we’re now time traveling backwards by a few months. We promise we’ll catch up soon.
We love you guys!
Justin & Dory