Celine Huegel

Other travellers at the farm recommended me to go hiking in the mountains in the north of Albania. They actually said "you cannot miss out on that". Lara has already planned to go there via hitchhiking, so I joined her for the trip. We could leave our stuff at the farm and hitchhiked into Shkodër in the morning, since we had to get some little things done there. I got an Albanian simcard with 35GB data and Lara got a proper backpack for hiking. Also we got a really nice burek breakfast for less than 1€ in the city. 😁

To summarize our hitchhiking experience:

We made it to Theth with four rides. 🥳 In the first car were two locals who picked us up outside Skhodër and brought us into the city center. Both of them were smoking, one of them weed. I just hope it was not the driver.. I put on the seatbelt. 😅 What was really ironic was the "no smoking 🚭 " sign hanging from the mirror. 😅
Second ride was also local. He was taking us 15km outside of the city to a cross road towards the mountains. Rich guy, nice, and very religious (he was about to drive to a nice church for 1.5 hours). 🙈 We talked a lot about Albania and he told us that most people only earn around 300€ per months, that police is pretty corrupt and that lots of young people leave Albania since they cannot find jobs.
Our third ride was again a local guy who could only speak Albanian and Italian, so that was fun. 😂 He brought us half way up the mountain road to Theth. Lara tried to communicate with him in Spanish, he seemed to understand a little, it was fun. :D
Last ride were two locals again, I assume father and son in a pickup truck with lots of groceries. So Lara and me were sitting in the back with a stack of eggs between us. We had to stop twice on this curvy and steep one lane road to pour water onto the overheated engine. 😄 Also they stopped for us on a really nice spot with an amazing view to get some good pictures taken. :) The two locals basically drove home to their place and dropped us of there. It was outside of Theth, but the younger one who drove and understood some English pointed towards the cow's pasture saying "Theth".

So we started walking through thorne bushes, past confused looking cows on a small path that we kept on missing, over some adventurous improvised wooden bridge, until we finally got onto a proper path again with guest houses near by. We haven't booked anything but thought we'll just show up and ask for a place to stay for one night. The first guest house was full unfortunately, but the very helpful older lady called the neighbour who still had room available. She lead us over a cow pasture again, the neighbour picked us up half way. The place he showed us was just amazing, it was basically a little tiny house with a double bed and one single bed as well as a little bathroom. The views on the mountains were amazing and there were so many animals running around this place: little pigs, huge sheppard dogs, a horse, sheep, chicken and roosters,... it was simply beautiful.😍 Also, it was reasonably cheap with around 35€ for both of us, including breakfast and I think he said lunch (didn't get lunch, but never mind. :D).

We both had a nice hot shower (it was much colder in the mountains and we needed to warum up!!) and spend some time for ourselves enjoying the outside area. In the evening we had dinner in the main house. We ordered some local fish which was deep fried, along with fries and something they call "paprika with milk". It wasn't what we expected, at least it wasn't milk but some sort of sour joghurt, also it wasn't hot. 😅 Wouldn't order it again but it was worth the experience of trying something new. ;)

In the evening we were having a bottle of white wine and some snacks that we bought in Shkodër before and watched Netflix and Youtube to make use of the tons of gigabyte I got with the Albanian simcard. 😅 It was a fun evening and I slept really well. :)

I planned on getting up super early the next morning to start hiking with the sunrise around 7am. I was awake around 6:30am, but unfortunately breakfast wasn't ready yet. 😅 So I had to wait and it was actually 8:30am by the time I could leave. The breakfast consisted of a pancake, fig jam, feta cheese, a boiled egg, some butter, and a glass of very fresh milk. It was still pretty cold in the morning, I was wearing multiple layers of clothes, but as soon as the sun came out it warmed up quickly. I filled up my water bottle in the natural spring next to the main house and started hiking (best water ever, it tasted so good!). Lara started hiking a little later but we would soon catch up again on the mountain. 😅

There weren't many people on the hiking trail yet. The trail was really well marked and was going up the mountain through forest and open grass land. About 20min into the hike, a cute little dog joined me for at least half an hour. She would occasionally run off but always come back, I had to actually be careful to not accidentally bump into her while hiking. I also passed two Italian girls, who were just about to pack up their tent. They were camping in the most beautiful spot with amazing views. We chatted for some time and got along really well. They told me that they parked their car in Valbona and plan on driving to Montenegro the same day. We said goodbye expecting to meet again on the trail at some point, as we did later. 😁 About two thirds up the mountain, I found a big rock on the side of the trail with a beautiful view onto the valley. I decided to stop there for a break. After some time, Lara passed the rock and joined me on her break. :) From there on we hike together to the pretty crowded peak at about 1800m elevation. From there we had an amazing view on the valley on other side of the mountain, which we had to hike through to get to Valbona.
On the way down, we passed a little coffee place (basically just a hut with a few benches) and got a mountain tea each for around 4€ - pretty expensive but we felt like it and also it's the middle of nowhere. 😅 That's when I also met the two Italian girls again. I actually wasn't feeling too well that day and it didn't get better during the hike, so I felt like going back to Shkodër as soon as possible rather than staying in Valbona, so I asked them whether they could take me back to Shkodër on their way to Montenegro (it's literally on the way). They were happy to take both me and Lara back to Skhodër, so the four of us hiked back to their car together. :) In the car park we had a really nice picknick with whatever we all had left over, it was delicious Italian fusion food (I tried Frise Integrali for the first time, so good!!).

Around 4pm we started driving back to Shkodër. It's a curiosity to me that it's around 80km distance between Skhodër and Theth, the hike on the other side of the mountain to Valbona was around 16km, and suddenly the ride back from Valbona to Shkodër doubled to 192km!!! The ride was beautiful even though it was a one-lane road for about 60km with curves inside curves. It was crazy. The views onto the river/lake down in the valley were stunning though. It soon got dark and it took us around 5.5h to get back to the farm. The Italian girls were pretty exhausted and Lara and me invited them to stay at the farm for a night for a proper shower which they were craving for on our costs as a thank your for the ride. 🙂 They loved the farm and we all cooked together delicious pasta with porcini mushrooms that the girls found in the mountains. It was a fun evening and I went to bed quite late, even though I was super exhausted. I'm so glad I went on the this spontaneous trip to the mountains, it was worth it!! 😁Leia mais