My next article was supposed to be a guide to taking public transport in Albania.
This country is home to one of the most maddening transportation systems I’ve ever come across, and attempting to navigate it was an absolute nightmare.
Every time I come up against something so perplexing on my travels, I always resolve to publish the most detailed guide about it, if only so that you guys don’t end up in the same situation as me.
Because boy, did I end up in some situations.
To illustrate the perplexities travellers could encounter in Albania, I planned on sharing a couple of anecdotes about the experiences I had. You know, write about the disasters, why they happened, and how I could have prevented them.
One of those disasters involved taking a bus between Tirana, Albania and Prizren, Kosovo, on what I thought would be a simple, stress-free day trip.
I pulled up my messages with Dave from that day, scrolled through the photos I took in Prizren, took a deep breath and began to write.
Before I knew what was happening, my brief anecdote was suddenly FOUR THOUSAND WORDS and I STILL HAD MORE TO SAY.
At that point, I was like: okay, it turns out this particular incident requires a full-blown blog post.
So here we go. I’m about to take you through a day that involved mysterious bus companies nobody had heard of, sketchy drivers who may or may not have wanted to harvest my organs, phantom departure times, three abandonments on the side of a motorway, and enough confusion to last me a lifetime.
This is what happened when I attempted to take a day trip from Albania to Kosovo.
I’ve been travelling for long enough to know how to make a travel day go well.
My first rule: give yourself so much more time than you think you’ll need.
And so, I truly believed I was setting myself up for success when I decided to leave my Tirana accommodation a full hour before my bus was due to depart. I’d have more than enough time to get to the station, find the departure area, and get on board.
But then along came Patoko.
Patoko is Albania’s ride-sharing app; their version of Uber, and it looked to work in much the same way. I opened the app, requested the ride, and after a driver accepted, looked for a place to stand that would make for quick pick-up. I darted across the road, found an empty space, and checked my phone again.
Cancelled.
I frowned, then tried again. Another driver accepted.
Cancelled.
Third time’s the charm? Cancelled.
Was I doing something wrong here?
I quickly took a cheerful selfie and added it to my account. I double-checked the pick-up and drop-off points. I quit the app and opened it. Sent another request.
All good? Dave messaged from inside the apartment, 20 minutes after I’d said goodbye to him.
“I’m still outside!!!!” I replied, and sent him a screenshot of my situation.
When a driver finally accepted my request, he was a painful 15 minutes away, meaning I’d get to the station a mere 10 minutes before my bus was due to leave. I considered cancelling the ride, but this was likely my best chance at getting to Kosovo.
In the car, I counted every second, willing the clock to slow down, wincing at every traffic jam and red light. Tirana, I would later come to learn, is infamous for its bad traffic.
My door was half-open before we’d even come to a stop. Don’t worry about the change! I yelped at the driver, handing him the money and then sprinting towards the glassy building in front of us.
The East Bus Terminal, it turned out, was actually a vast shopping mall, and the bus station, it turned out, was hidden inside of it. Already breathless, I attempted to run in five directions at once, in search of a sign or a map. It was 8:25 — five minutes before my bus left — but where on earth was it?
“Why is nothing ever easy?”
This was supposed to be easy.
When I found out the station was beneath the shopping mall, I raced down a series of escalators to get there. In front of me, a chaotic jumble of minivans and buses, arriving and departing, locals intuitively boarding and disembarking.
I searched for a departure board, a timetable, the name of the bus company, or a sign for Prizren, but there was nothing.
Prizren, Prizren, Prizren, I chanted in my head as I completed a circuit of the station. Where was the bus to Prizren?
This wasn’t looking good.
I spotted a line of ticket offices and raced inside the closest one, heart pounding in my ears, and handed the woman my ticket. She looked confused.
“Do you know where this bus is?” I asked.
She handed my ticket back and pointed for me to go outside. That… cleared things up then.
I hovered outside the door for a few minutes in case she was planning on helping me out, but no! She was just telling me to get out of her office. I went to the booth next door and showed that woman my ticket.
She looked concerned, which was somehow even worse.
“Wait,” she said, and so I did.
An intimidating-looking man entered the room a few minutes later, cigarette in hand.
“You go with him,” the woman told me, and so I did. I got into his unmarked minivan, he followed after me, closed the door, then we set off.
I confess this wasn’t feeling like the safest situation I’d ever put myself in as a solo female traveller.
For the first time in 15 years of travel, I shared my live location with Dave.
An hour later, our minivan came to an abrupt stop and the driver told me to get out. As I dawdled on the side of the motorway, he promptly disappeared and I wondered what was happening.
Another minivan pulled up beside ours — just as empty — and its driver — just as intimidating — got out and walked towards me. I squinted up at him.
“You get in my van now.”
“Um…” I stalled, looking around for help, because every single part of me was feeling like I should absolutely not get inside this van. “I don’t know…”
He stared at me. I avoided his eyes.
“Yes, go, go, go!” My original driver popped up from behind a bush and motioned for me to get in the new minivan. “He will take you to Prizren now.”
Welp. I clambered inside, followed by both my original driver and now the second driver. Leaving the first minivan behind, we started to drive away.
And, I repeat, this did not feel like the safest situation I’d ever been in. I quietly googled “human trafficking statistics Albania”.
Of course, I didn’t genuinely think these two guys were going to kidnap or murder me, but I was still on edge until we arrived in Prizren. There, I said my goodbyes and took my first steps in a brand new country. Kosovo: it was so good to be there, particularly as it meant my dramatic travel day was now over.
Spoiler: it hadn’t even begun.
Because believe it or not, this was not the travel disaster I wanted to tell you about. This is simply the precursor to the travel disaster.
But before I get to all that, it was time to explore Prizren.
Or, at least, attempt to.
Because for the next several hours, I had one of my most bizarre experiences as a tourist in a new city.
My strategy for exploring somewhere new is always the same. I read dozens of articles about the place and star every spot I come across on Google Maps, whether it sounds like it’s worth visiting or not. (As a travel writer, you always end up checking out the boring stuff, just so that you can tell others it’s boring and not worth seeing!)
Once I’m on the ground, I then work my way across the city, ticking off every star as I go. Prizren was no different. It’s a relatively small city, so I only had around 20 attractions on my map; with my bus back to Tirana leaving at 3:30 p.m. — four and a half hours from now — I was confident I’d be able to see it all.
The first attraction on my list was Our Lady of Ljeviš, a 14th century church with a… locked gate. I was surprised I’d added a closed attraction to my list, as I usually check reviews and opening times before deciding where to go.
The weird thing was: the church had tons of positive reviews, all praising the beautiful interior and the guide who shows visitors around. But one person said you needed to ring a doorbell and the police would arrive and let you in. Someone else said you had to go to a nearby booth and ask a security guard for the key. Somebody else claimed the police wouldn’t let them inside at all.
I decided I’d come back later to figure it out. Time was short and I had more churches to see.
That’s the main thing I’d learned when researching the best things to do in Prizren: the vast majority of attractions in the city are churches. Unfortunately, the vast majority of them are also closed.
I didn’t know that at the time, however.
No, I had no idea that I was about to spend three hours walking from one closed church to another, continually being refused entry, shouted at by security guards, and generally being glared at by everyone I ran into. I felt like I was somewhere I shouldn’t be and I felt like the locals hated me.
I’m not exaggerating when I tell you I managed to see exactly two tourist attractions while I was in Prizren because every other one was closed.
I wondered what I was doing wrong.
Was it a public holiday? Did everything close on a certain day of the week? Because when you look online, there is no mention of my predicament. Instead, church after church has glowing reviews; travel bloggers list their must-sees. I just wanted to see one! Occasionally, if I scrolled past 50 reviews on Google Maps, I’d find a one-star review with someone grumbling the attraction was closed. But for the most part, everyone was like: this is great!
(It was not great.)
And so 95% of the photos I took in Prizren looked like this:
You probably won’t be surprised to hear, then, that 90 minutes after arriving, I decided to leave. What a waste of time! What a weird experience.
But how to get back to Tirana?
I’d bought my bus ticket in advance through Gjirafa Travel — the main website for booking bus tickets online — and it was due to depart at 3:30 p.m. It was currently 12:30, so I’d have to leave on an earlier bus. Given that transportation is so inexpensive in this part of the world, I wasn’t concerned about buying a new ticket. All I wanted to do was get back to Tirana and forget this day had ever happened.
Prizren Station was just as disorganised as Tirana’s. Inside, the timetable on the wall was paper rather than digital, and didn’t list the times or bay numbers for international trips. Outside, people gathered in front of several parked minivans, but they all seemed to be travelling domestically.
I wandered for a bit and stumbled upon the international departures area; there was even a sign for Tirana, letting me know I was in the right place.
According to Gjirafa Travel, the next bus was due at 1 p.m. — in 10 minutes — with later buses arriving at 2:30 and 3:30 in the afternoon. Given the lack of people who appeared to be travelling internationally, however, I wasn’t concerned about getting a seat.
One o’clock came and went and there I was, sitting on the ground, watching and waiting, frowning in the rain, because of course it was raining. Where was the bus?
Given the confusion around the buses that morning, I wondered if I needed to take action. I was 99% certain I was doing the right thing, but who knows how the buses work in Kosovo? Maybe I needed to walk inside a random ticket office in order to prompt a woman to summon a man with a cigarette who would take me where I needed to go.
First things first: was I in the right location?
I definitely was. The ticket in my hand said Prizren Station, the station was marked on Google Maps as Prizren Station, and my email confirmation had a link to the departure point: I tapped on it and it dropped a pin directly where I was sitting. I double-checked Gjirafa Travel to make sure the 1 p.m. bus left from the same location. It did.
So that was fine.
Next: does the bus to Tirana leave from this particular bay?
I mean, the sign in front of me literally had the word Tirana written on it, but that didn’t necessarily mean the bus would stop there.
I walked the length of the station in search of a bus that was heading to Albania, weaving down every aisle and peering into the window of every parked vehicle. To be completely thorough, I circled the exterior of the station, just in case the driver hadn’t wanted to go inside.
Maybe it was just delayed.
Maybe it wasn’t.
I decided to try my trick from the morning and wander inside a ticket office, hoping the staff would confirm the bus was on its way, or be able to help me out in some way. What I didn’t expect was for them to say the following:
“There are no buses to Tirana.”
I blinked back at the confused woman.
“But my ticket,” I showed her the piece of paper. “See. It says Prizren Station, which is here.”
“I have never seen this bus. Have you?” she asked her co-worker.
He looked at the ticket then shook his head. “There is no bus to Tirana from here. I have never heard of this bus company either.”
Well…
Back on the ground, I turned to Google and tried to find a write-up of the journey I was trying to take. I pored over countless blog posts where the author revealed everything about how to get to Tirana apart from exactly where they’d boarded the bus.
I read every single review for the station on Google Maps in the hopes that somebody would mention they were travelling to Tirana, so I’d know the bus existed. I found the website for the bus company, but they didn’t publish a timetable online.
Finally, a glimmer of hope: a TripAdvisor comment from seven years ago, left by somebody who had come up against the same predicament. He had been trying to catch the bus to Tirana and asked for help at one of the ticket offices; the staff had told him the bus actually leaves from a red kiosk outside the station.
A red kiosk!
I jumped to my feet and rushed out of the gates, scanning the streets for a red kiosk. Red kiosk, red kiosk.
(There was no red kiosk.)
Well, now I had no idea what to do.
My only real option, I felt, was to stay where I was. Because maybe the bus to Tirana did leave from here and the staff had never noticed it before. At the same time, if I’d been told the bus didn’t exist, surely I was wasting my time by staying?
I wondered how much a taxi to Tirana would cost.
I wondered if I’d be spending the night in Prizren.
I checked the time: two o’clock. The next bus was due in half an hour so I decided to wait until then. If the bus didn’t show up… I’d have to figure something out. In the meantime, I jogged up and down the station and patrolled the streets outside its gates. If there was a bus that was leaving Prizren, I wanted to know exactly where it was going.
They were going all over the country, I learned, but none were going to Tirana.
When I messaged Dave to tell him I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen him again, he was more than a little confused. Join the club, I told him.
Together, we sprawled out across the internet, trying to find out if these buses existed, if the bus company was functioning, if the bus station in Prizren was where the buses left from, and if it was even possible to leave the borders of Kosovo.
I couldn’t believe I’d been sitting on the ground at this bus station for close to three hours.
I was about to give up when I found a WhatsApp number in the description of a photo on the bus company’s Instagram. I decided that was my best chance at survival. To my surprise, the response to my message came almost immediately.
To my frustration, it confirmed my worst nightmare.
The bus company existed. The buses existed. But the bus station was not, in fact, the bus station I was waiting at. In fact, it wasn’t a bus station at all. The pick-up point was actually a service station 10 kilometres (six miles) outside of Prizren.
Which means that, yes, the departure point on my ticket — on the main booking website for the company — had been wrong all along.
But wait!
If you thought that was the end of my saga, you would be sorely mistaken.
(And yes, to break the third wall: I am feeling absolutely emotionally drained just retelling this story.)
So. Now I had a plan of attack. I knew where the buses left from and all I needed to do was take a taxi out there. There are no functioning ride sharing apps in Kosovo, so first I had to wander down the streets of Prizren until I found somebody who could take me.
It’s worth mentioning that I was putting a lot of faith into the message I’d received through WhatsApp. Given the lack of taxi apps, if this bus didn’t show up at this service station in the middle of nowhere, I’d essentially be stranded for the night. I’d have to hope a taxi drove past at some point or try my hand at hitchhiking back into Prizren. Oh, and did I mention that my phone was currently down to 10% charge and I most definitely did not have a charger with me?
Everything always works out in the end, I told myself.
I arrived at the service station-cum-bus station-cum-car park at 3:45 and scanned my surroundings. There were no buses in sight, which is not what I was hoping to see.
There was a small bakery, however, so I headed inside in search of reassurance.
“Yeah,” the guy nodded. “The bus to Tirana does leave from here. At 5:00 p.m.”
“Five o’clock? Are you sure?”
“Yes, the next bus is at five o’clock.”
That was baffling, because the schedule on Gjirafa Travel said that the bus left at 4:30 p.m. Even more bafflingly, I later stumbled upon a timetable affixed to a wall that said the next bus left at 4:00 p.m.
If that didn’t perfectly sum up what it’s like to take public transport in this part of the world, I don’t know what would.
Four o’clock came, but no bus arrived.
Four-thirty came, but no bus arrived.
Five o’clock came, and I feel like I should tell you I was starting to get nervous, but I was honestly too tired to feel anything at all.
No, I felt absolutely zero emotion at all until I spotted a bus pulling into the car park and I realised I’d been saved. I jumped up and down, I waved like a madman, and I galloped across the pavement to the driver. There was no way that this bus was leaving Kosovo without me on it.
When I collapsed in my seat, I let waves of relief wash over me. Phew. What. A. Day.
Wait.
Wait, what do you mean it still isn’t over?
Because yes, my friends, there is still more to come.
The bus I was on, it turned out, only went as far as the outskirts of Tirana, so at some point, when I was the only person left on board, the driver stopped in the middle of nowhere, beside a motorway, and let me off.
So there I was, a lone woman with 5% battery on her phone, standing on the side of the motorway, in the dark, in Albania, stranded yet again.
You have got to be kidding me, I muttered.
With the most resigned sigh that I have ever resignedly sighed before, I opened up my favourite app Patoko and hoped beyond hope that I would be able to get a taxi before my phone ran out of charge.
Yet again, this did not feel like the safest position I’ve ever put myself in as a solo woman.
Yet again, I was standing on the side of a motorway with no idea what was happening.
To my relief, the first driver I was assigned did not immediately cancel the ride. To my frustration, he was a 20-minute drive away.
Twenty minutes spent standing in the dark, phone essentially dead, desperately hoping that the driver didn’t cancel.
I. Was. Exhausted.
Drained.
Shattered.
Broken.
Relieved, eventually. Because there was my taxi driver and now, I could finally declare my nightmare travel day over.
Except…
Just kidding. Haha.
No, I safely got myself back to my apartment in Tirana, unloaded a gargantuan amount of trauma upon Dave’s shoulders, got into bed and turned my attention towards the coming days.
Ten days in Albania: all by public transport. All planned using the timetables and information on Gjirafa Travel.
Surely things couldn’t get any worse?
The post In Which I Attempt to Take a Day Trip to Kosovo appeared first on Never Ending Footsteps.
