The next day I headed a little land inward because I was curious about to Skadarsko Jezero, the largest lake in the Balkans. When I reached it I decided not to drive around it but instead head back to the coast and then cross into Albania. When I was getting close to the border I was stopped by a group of policemen. They were friendly, only asked for my papers, were astonished about my motorcycle and told me that there was no border crossing where I was heading. They explained me the way as good as possible, again I didn’t have a detailed map of the country. After asking someone else later, this time an elderly man that was sitting on the side of the road I managed to get to the border. It was clearly not one of the main border crossings; it was only a small country road. After paying for another insurance I was able to move on.
Instantly I noticed the change in people. There were obviously few tourists passing trough here. Hundreds of children were just returning from school and when they saw me they started cheering and waving at me, it felt as if I was a king riding through the streets. That was certainly a very warm welcome to Albania.
It was a very poor and rural area, many people driving wagons pulled by donkeys. That changed considerably when I came closer to Durres, a domestic tourist destination, where I spent the night. The donkey wagons were replaces by cars, Mercedes to be exact. I think about 7 out of 10 cars were Mercedes, from the oldest model to the latest and greatest, everything was present, that was something I didn’t expect to see. In the hotels almost nobody spoke English or German but somehow I managed to get a room. There are tons of hotels and the beach is big, but for this time around, it was almost empty. In the night I switched on the television more out of curiosity. I was really surprised when I saw an Argentine TV novel being broadcasted with Albanian subtitles. I never saw anything from Latin America on Swiss TV, so it felt really wired to see it here in this country.