May 14th: As explained the new shoes for our car had a delay. Based on that we had time after breakfast to go to the „vibrant“ city center of Drama and buy some stuff. We ran out of cookies, bread, cake and apples in the car.
As we did not really know how long the trip take us including the two customs processes we wanted to be prepared. 11h30 am we started direction tire dealer Yannis (John). Communication with hands and feet as our Greek was as limited as the English of Yannis. But as usual it worked out.
The tires arrived on time and Landi got his shoes. Yannis was so nice and we had a laugh every now and again …. both sides not really sure about what. After 45 min Landi was ready and we just took some Olive oil on bord and were ready to start. Wow it all worked… THX Dimi.
We could not hold back our Landi anylonger…. you coils feel he wanted to get on the road and test his new shoes…. we gave it a go and went direction Albania. The drive to the Albania border from the Greek side was an easy one…. Landi was able to role his tires nicely…
You drive on a highway that is ending short before the border only …. empty streets…. we had the first rain… and Landi was in its cruising mode. The border process from our Greek friends was easy and very friendly. At the end the officer there told us the following: „Hey German gentlemen just to make sure you understand here ends the EU bye bye“ …At that moment we did not really know what it means 😉.
Albania entry was a bit more bumpy…. insurance to be bought in local currency…. slow activity, but we went through and lost not too much time. Albania is a very relaxed and slow country in all aspects. Keep that in mind if you ever have to go there. We were warned about a lot of speed traps inside the country …. that was making the choice who would be the team to drive easy: Martin and Landi.
Albania is not geared up to be used as a transit country…. streets are mostly fine but to narrow, no chance to over take… and if the streets are not new and sponsored by the EU or Saudi you find potholes in which you can park a bus or two😌. …. and the real real watch out is the driving style of the locals . As you can imagine driving all the way so far we thought we had seen it all… forget it. They top everything in Albania. They enter streets without looking, they drive which ever speed is appropriate in their mind ….. we can only tell you: watch out be awake….
On top to that we had heavy rain on our way which made the drive even a bit more dangerous. We averaged not more than 50 km/h in Albania. One word to the car park…. I think 60% of all cars are Mercedes‘…. so here we park all the diesel cars? 😂.
After very long 5h inside Albania we reached very late Montenegro border. It is a combined border process …. arriving late evening is not ideal … we agree. However that work process there was not ideal as well. We made out of a late evening a very late one. Bring time. After nearly 12 h we reached our flat in Montenegro… no dinner no nothing… just try breads, some cookies and beers …. good Night! Now we are in Sutomore a small town direct at the coast side… let’s see how it looks tomorrow morning.
