Hitting the road

I get down to the bus park early in the morning. The bus is supposed to leave at 7.30 in the morning. But when I get down to the bus it is empty - I start to think the bus is not leaving at the designated time but will leave much later. I try to ask the other man in the bus when we will be leaving and he indicate that we will in just a few minutes despite being virtually empty - I got my doubts that the bus will actually leave when it is empty - but it does. And I start driving along the nice pothole infected road.

We bump along the road and a few more passengers shows up on the way but the bus remains only half full till the end. We drive in at the big bus parking lots in Elbasin and I try to find the train to take me to the border. I don’t really know where the train station is but I try to ask for directions and I get pointed in the right general direction. I walk along the busy street - there is a lot of activity going on it must be sort of a big shopping day this Sunday.

I find the railroad tracks but I am not sure whether to turn left or right - hence I try to find somebody to ask for direction. I find a food stand but unfortunately they don’t really speak any English - only Albanian. And despite I have been travelling several days around the country by now I am still not really fluent in Albanian hence I communication is suffering a bit. But I manage to understand that he is trying to tell me that the train has left 1 hour ago - or something like that. And the next train is not leaving until 2 in the afternoon. I don’t really like to stay here in town to wait for the train so I go back to the bus station.

The bus is gonna be a lot faster anyways - the only reason I wanted to go by the train was I wanted to see for myself if the trains in Albanian actually is as old as slow as I have heard. I guess I will never know if it is the case but waiting 3 hours for a train which is several hours slower than the bus don’t seem like the best way to spend the rest of the day. I go and get some lunch before the bus is leaving for the border town.