I’ve had my share of adventures driving on foreign roads, including quite a few recently in Albania. But I had to face the most terrifying thing of all recently in the central Albanian city of Fier: scratching the rental car.
From narrow, winding roads to wild, out of control roundabouts, there are plenty of hazards facing a driver exploring unfamiliar roads. The biggest danger of the scratch, though, comes when one is closest to home. After a long day of concentrating on the road and driving carefully, it is the arrival when the driver is tired and careless. For this reason, when driving to a new destination, I book accommodation based on the parking. The last thing I want to do after a long drive is circle endlessly through traffic in search of a space that would make a Smart car driver frown, but somehow I ended up in this situation in Fier.
Like many cities in Albania, Fier seemed to be going through a massive infrastructure project. We drove along a half-street where on one side of the car was a mountain of broken up concrete and dirt and the other was a pit four feet deep. The oncoming traffic drove partially onto the debris pile to get by while I made room by edging the tires alongside the open pit.
Often the best places are the ones where tourists never set foot. These are the places without flashy hotels and must-see sights, but also without the busloads of iPhone photographers, overpriced junk and annoying scams. These are the places where it’s easier to experience real life, the food is good and the locals are genuinely interested in meeting foreigners. However, sometimes there is a good reason tourists don’t visit a place: it just isn’t very nice. The street that led to our guesthouse was blocked by the debris mountain, so I continued inching along through the dust and traffic on the torn up road and I feared that Fier might be a bit of a disappointment.
After another fifteen minutes of trying to find a way in, driving up and down narrow streets, sometimes forward, sometimes in reverse, I realized there was simply no way to get to where we were going. Leaving the car parked in a wider section of the road so that traffic could get around it, ND and I set off on foot through the construction site in search of our guesthouse.
It took some time to find the place as it wasn’t so much a guesthouse as a two-story house just for us. The online booking engine had a description that didn’t make much sense, so I didn’t know what we would be getting. I reserved the most expensive option (which wasn’t too much) to be on the safe side. It seemed that this option reserved the entire place and the owners, an older couple, moved into an empty coffee shop at the street front. They tried to explain to me in Italian and body language how to get through the construction by car. The directions were something like this: left, then that way, right, right again, 3 lefts and then straight, then that way and then that way.
I went back to the car and for another twenty minutes we tried to navigate our way up and down narrow alleyways full of torn up roads, gravel piles and cars with no room to pass. Finally, we reached a way in but it was blocked by police. I argued with then politely for a few minutes as cars began to pile up in the road ahead and behind me and horns began to honk. The police didn’t speak any English and they wouldn’t budge to let us through. And now, with cars jammed into every inch in both directions and the police watching me, I tried to get our car through one inch at a time. In this kind of traffic, you move an inch and then stop to let the other driver move an inch and then he lets you know how much space you have by demonstrating the distance between his thumb and forefinger.
After another twenty minutes we got back to where we started. There were no police here, only road barriers blocking the road off from the construction zone. So we moved the barriers and drove in.
The road ahead was under complete renovation, the remaining road nothing more than a gravelly path through two crevices of torn up asphalt. I almost immediately got stuck on a gravel pile. I restarted the engine and reversed at full power, the tires spinning and spraying gravel. I backed up as far as possible and then made another attempt with some speed on. This time the car bounced over the pile of gravel as if it were a ramp, but not without a bit of crunching on the undercarriage.
We arrived at our house and I quickly jumped out to look under the car. It didn’t look too bad. Relieved, I popped the back open and called the kids. “Out of the car, help me with these bags.”
That’s when I heard it, the one word no one wants to hear accompanied by a car door opening, the dreaded “oops!”
I would deal with that later.
Sometimes the nicest part of having a rental car is being able to leave it. For the remainder of our time in Fier, we would be on foot. And explored by foot, Fier is a delightful city. Much of the city is being rebuilt, with bridges and colorful shops complimenting the stream flowing through town and the parks and walkways. Men play chess in the park, people chat in sidewalk cafes and a walking-only street is lined with shops. Fier may not have any must-see sights or spectacular vistas, but it is a pleasant city as it is. And it will be even nicer once the construction finishes.
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