Non-official minibus through Albania to Shkodër

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(the article below accompanies this video)

After staying up most of the night in Tirana, Albania to watch the Super Bowl, I got up after about four hours of sleep a little high. But it was a moving day; Masayo and I were headed to the nearby town of Shkodër (a.k.a. Shkodra).

At 9 am I was 253, and I guessed it was the stress of staying up and the excitement of watching the game, because I had been ok after the pizza last night. But we had the usual breakfast buffet downstairs, and I shot up for it.

The unofficial bus to Shkodër from Tirana (where, remember, there is no fixed bus station) was leaving from a certain roundabout on the opposite side of the town square called Zogu i zi (though Google Maps insists it’s called something completely different). Masayo said she didn’t need a taxi, and that she could walk there.

So we checked out and walked there. We got a little turned around and I asked a police officer where this Zogu i zi was; it was a little farther than I thought but we made it. Asking a woman at a small kiosk, she pointed to a minivan with a SHKODËR sign in it. The driver confirmed that this was the 11:00, and the cost was 400 lek each (about $4).

Masayo went to put her big backpack in the back of the van, and set part of it on a little white sack that was already there. She jumped suddenly, because the sack moved. I thought it had something shaped oddly in it that was rolling around, but it kept moving — there was an animal in it!

I laughed and laughed, and the driver smiled bemusedly and lit a hand-rolled cigarette. We wondered what was in the bag. A chicken? A dog? An ornery cat?

Anyway the bus took on a lot more passengers (it was exactly full, with the last guy sitting on a wooden stool in the aisle) and took off right on time.

The driver drove at a slow, steady pace the entire way. The road from Tirana to Shkodër is straight and flat, and on it you pass a long, long series of furniture stores. Otherwise rural, these large showrooms seem to have nice furniture, as far as I could tell through their giant two-story windows. If you need furniture in Tirana, I guess you come here. It went on for miles.

We arrived at the main square of Shkodër, and it was raining pretty hard. We got out, got our bags from the back (the livestock sack was gone), and found our umbrellas. The hotel was really close, and the guy who checked us in spoke really good English and was very nice. Outside it had started to hail, little BB-sized pellets.

Our room was on the second floor and it was quiet, and rather dark since the main overhead light would only come on sometimes. (But once it was on, it usually stayed on.) My BG when we arrived was 205. Still not down from the sleepless Super Bowl night.

Masayo was still not 100%, and didn’t want to leave. So I went out to find something to eat, settling on some Albanian burek with yogurt that we had wanted to try. I also got some baklava, and a Coke Zero for me.

I guessed about my Humalog shot — burek often makes me way higher than expected, plus I had baklava, plus I was trending high anyway today as far as I could tell.

A few hours later I had ended up at 225. Fair enough, but a little surprising. I had a little snack and took some Humalog.

That took me down to 183 by 9 pm, and we had some food I had bought at a local supermarket: muesli and yogurt, cashews, and crackers.

A little later Masayo came out of the bathroom and announced that there were slugs in it. I went to check — indeed there were. I counted three, and then on closer inspection, five. They were about an inch long, and I suspected they had come in through the small window above the shower, which was wide open and seemed to have no screen.

Slugs stick to tissue easily, and it was easy to mass murder them into the toilet. I also closed the window.

I didn’t check my BG before bed, falling asleep without bothering. I was happy to be in a new town, though I hoped Masayo would be feeling more chipper soon. We were only in this town since it seemed a hassle to go from Tirana into Montenegro, and there is a neat castle in Shkodër. Hope my BG is better tomorrow, also.

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