August 6, 2012
Freedom, freedom at last: Librazhd - Ljubanista (Macedonia)
GRENZA, a dark-haired girl of 20 who is as coquettish as they come, works in a hotel next to the filling station at Librahzd. She is its connection with the world because neither her mother, who runs the hotel, nor her boyfriend, who works at the garage, speaks English.
But young though she is, she has seen big changes.
"Until I was 15," she said as the five of us sat together, "we couldn't leave. Only official people had the right to leave. Then five years ago, it changed. Now we can leave and all we need is a passport. I've been to Macedonia and I've been to Greece." I wanted to know what she made of them, whether the world was how she had thought or been told, but somehow the chance never came.
I hadn't realised it was only five years ago. That helps explain all those foreign cars: the curiosity to see the outside world and make the most of its riches. That has sent who knows how many Albanians abroad and at what cost to the country, since it is rarely the least clever and the least ambitious who seek a life elsewhere. The other day we chatted with a tall blond man driving a car registered in Britain. He had taken a chance to work for the town council in Reading, west of Heathrow airport, "in building and in looking after houses."
Well, we too have left Albania. And we are not displeased. The people are wonderfully friendly and we feel guilty not to have liked their country. We set off with every intention to enjoy it, to revel in its progress. But there is a coarseness. People shout, they smoke and drink, they throw litter where they please. Few buildings are pleasing. Drivers can't pass without sounding the horn and one in a hundred sees that as a signal for us to get out of his way even if there is nowhere to go.
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Our view, to be sure, is coloured by those dreadful first days. And by the fact that after them we couldn't trust any map and stuck to the main roads with, as everywhere in the world, a consequent lack of charm. Albania, which is all mountains with roads perhaps as awful as those we took, or plains with heavy traffic, came close to ending our journey. There were times we just wished we were elsewhere.
So, feeling relieved but also guilty, that all this was our fault, we crossed a 650-metre col today to descend to the lake that makes the border with Macedonia which in Grenza's youth must have been guarded to prevent escapes. Leaving Albania and entering Macedonia was a relief.
Sorry, Albania.
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