In the mess of Shkodra, Albania
Driving in to Shkoder was some experience. After the border control and the car accident we experienced there, we took it easy. This especially after, we had read in our Brandt travel guide, while we were waiting at the border control, that the traffic in Albania was dangerous. We followed the road in the region capital which was only 15 km. On the way in to Shkodra we stopped and watched the Rozafa castle before we entered the region capitol. At the entry of the city we meet a German car that was on its way back into Montenegro and they were consulting their map. Around the car a large number of kids were clustering the windows begging for handouts; we had surely entered another world after passing the border and it did continue like that all the way inti the city centre.
The main road into the city centre reminded me of the suburbs to Beijing or Shanghai; there were numerous of garages displaying their products one next to each other.
Getting closed to the city centre just made it more crowded and less organized due to the parking of cars between the garbage. One thing that struck me was the enormous amount of Mercedes car in the city. Every second one was a Mercedes! We drove around in the city amongst the Mercedes display and shoppers on bikes. The roads were not in very good shape but I liked the intense scenery of city.
We decided to drive north along the Shkodra lake up to Hoti where the only other border was into Montenegro.
Along the bumpy road we quickly got surrounded by fabulous coloured houses which were newly constructed and very big also from a western standard. Many of the houses had green grass gardens which were kind of surrealistic given the heat of close to 40 degrees we were driving in. The houses kept on coming for the most of the 30 km of the 50 km to Hoti. We passed some villages on the way which were much more organized than Shkodra except for the town square were all the activities were concentrated.
