[NB:  I was in bed with a bad case of Cholera, Black Death, Typhus or something (flu?) and Alfred et al. were guarding me loyally, which why I inadvertently let this happen!!!!] [PS:  All better now!]

Hey Catherine.

So we made it to Valbona. Just.
We found a really ‘helpful’ tourist
information in Shkoder who gave us
all the information we needed – or
so we thought.

She told us that the minibus to Theth
runs every morning at 7, but if
we ‘go now there is small chance
we may be able to pick one up’ at
lunchtime. And the information that
we really needed which was that
the pass between Theth and Valbona was clear and that we would be able to
cross alone (‘many people do it with their backpacks’), and that we would be
able to spend the night camping near the summit as we had planned.

We made our way to the minibus stop but we seemed to cause confusion
asking about an afternoon bus, we also half understood that the road
to Theth was blocked but we had no idea why. After an hour or so of
people helping us we managed to secure a ride with a local guy for 30
euros who was doing some construction up there, but he said it would
take 6 hours which was odd.

After a tour of Shkoder to collect building materials, bread etc, and
a trip to his family house for curd we set off. He was a great guy,
happy to stop for photos on the way. After a few hours i pointed to
the map to see where we were but he said something about the Boga road
being blocked and pointed to the southern road on the map. After a
quick read of the guidebook we understood why it would take 6 hours.

[They must have gone on the Nderlysa 4WD track?]
Anyway it was a beautiful journey and we weren’t really in a rush.

We arrived at the house he was working on outside Theth at about 5pm
where he unloaded the car. He pointed us to the waterfall and said we
had an hour, and just to reassure us he wasn’t going to drive off he
locked up the car and gave me the keys.

Eventually we arrived in Theth at about 7pm and headed for Harusha,
set up the tent and were fed an amazing dinner. In the morning we woke
up lazily as the plan was to spend a few hours in Theth, have lunch
and then set off after lunch to see how far we got before setting up
camp for the night. When we mentioned this to one of the children he
seemed shocked and said there was still snow. It also became clear why
the Boga road was shut. It had been closes all winter as there was
still a few meters of snow in the pass. We asked him about the snow
and he said we might make it through but just to be sure he checked
with his father. Unfortunately our fears were confirmed by the father,
there was snow in the pass to Valbona and nobody had come across since
last year.

We were now faced with the prospect of trying to make it back to
Shkoder the long way which made a mess of all our plans. Instead we
asked about a guide and if we could get through with one. He asked his
father and they managed to find someone from the village willing to
take us.

We set off at about 9.30 and all was well for a few hours. We hit the
snowline at about mid morning and kept going. I was ok but my
girlfriend was struggling. And then it got harder. And steeper. And
more dangerous. We finally made it to the pass, and then i realised we
had probably been completely mislead and a bit foolish. The mile
across the pass took us 2 hours. Coming down from the pass was
treacherous and my girlfriend got to the point where she couldn’t go
forward but we all didn’t want to go back. One part coming down from
the pass was particularly bad, so much so that it didn’t want to take
it with my bag on. The only option was to go through a gap in a
uprooted tree, i had to take my bag off and pass it through -
unfortunately it didn’t stop and i finally collected it about 300
meters down the hill, luckily at that point there was no edge in
sight.

Eventually we made it past the worst part and the guide dropped us
where the snow finished just about above Ragam. By now it was 5pm
and we were wet and tired, and the guide still had to get back to Theth.
We offered to pay for him to stay in Ragam but he seemed keen to set
off. We walked the final few miles to the bar at the start/end of the
ashphalt road, although we did lose the path and had to call Alfred
for directions and he kindly offered to collect us. We eventually sat
down for a beer at about 7pm.

It had been epic.

And just to round it off I managed to knock over the bag that had a
bottle of homegrown montengegran wine that had made it across the
pass, and the bottle broke.

Anyway, after that we had a lovely couple of days relaxing in Valbona,
and we have a good story to tell (its not the most stupid thing I’ve
done) and some nice photos.

If we can find the details we plan to contact the tourist information
in Shkoder to tell them to be more careful and to have up to date
information, if she had told us there was snow (as you had but from
the email i didn’t realise the Theth/Valbona pass still had snow)
then we wouldn’t have gone to Theth in the first place.

I thought i should let you know anyway as we had been in contact before.
I hope you are feeling better now, maybe we will be back one day -
but not until after the snow has cleared!

Thank you. Ulysses & Penelope.*

*Not their real names, unless of course in a super sneaky move, it IS their real names, and now you’ll never guess!!!

31 March, 2013

To the Editor:

As a born and at one time prodigal New Yorker (I returned for 15 years and did a turn owning the oldest independent bookstore remaining in NYC – Park Slope’s Community Bookstore), I was of course happy to see my new Albanian home, Valbona, mentioned in your recent article “Hiking Beyond Borders in the Balkans.”

It with some distress however that I’m writing, as the article arrived in my inbox yesterday forwarded from computers around the world by half a dozen friends and associates, and accompanied largely by howls of outrage, I’m afraid. So, in the interests of balancing the numerous inaccuracies and recycled bigotries of the article, here, in order of reading (not significance) are my objections:

First of all “the call to prayer” in Gusinje. While I’m prepared to believe that there may be a missionary outpost in Gusinje, blasting the air 5 times a day as recommended, beginning any article about Greater Albania (let’s use this handy, if touchy, name to refer to the area of Albanian-speakers including the parts of Montenegro & Kosovo visited by this article) with a reference to Islam as a daily presence is bizarre. Albanians are famously NOT interested in religion. Hence Hoxha’s outlawing of it was one of his more popular moves. In the oft-quoted words of Pashko Vasa: “E mos shikoni kisha e xhamia:/ feja e shqyptarit asht shqyptaria!” – “Don’t look at churches or mosques, the faith of Albanians is Albania!” This was written in the 1800s. One of the unfortunate aspects of the opening of the borders in the 90s was a flooding of Albania by missionaries of every flavor, who not infrequently entice attendance with cash incentives: Put plainly, they pay people for showing up. Of course that’s relatively innocuous compared to the Christian missionaries who did such a good job of describing the joys of God’s Heaven, that a group of little girls in Tirana hung themselves, to get there the sooner. Perhaps I’m belaboring a point, but that point IS: Beginning any article about Albanians with a reference to religion is at best tasteless, and certainly misleading.

Which comment has already introduced the equally touchy subject of Hoxha’s dictatorship. While no one would want him back, Hoxha is a fact of history, and history is by nature complex. Hoxha also stamped out the Blood Feud (now by some reports making a cheerful comeback under permissive capitalism), got women out of the houses, and built and unprecedented number of roads, hospitals and schools. He furthermore instituted massive programs of community involvement, with weekly “aksions” (actions) in which people came out and cleaned, planted trees, built things and generally took care of their communities. Thus the city of Bajram Curri for example, now littered with trash and crumbling (though still with an Indiana-Jones sort of frontier charm, if you ask me) was once green and tidy. Furthermore, I have yet to see a historically impartial discussion of his maniacal isolationism, but I have sometimes wondered if it was coincidence that the bunkers went up around the time that Soviet tanks were rolling into Czechoslovakia. Albania recently celebrated 100 years of independence from the Ottoman Empire, and I was surprised to note no reference to the tragic fact that in 1912, once the hard work of tossing out the Turks was done, the Great Powers of Europe immediately stepped in to “help” the newly formed government of Independent Albania. They did this by tossing out the elected government of Ismail Qemali, carving off half the territory of Albania and giving it what is now Montenegro, Kosova and Macedonia, and weirdest of all, putting in place a Bavarian princling as ruler (think of saying to Thomas Jefferson “Thanks for all the hard work boys, now get out of the way – and here’s a nice German to rule you.”) Point being, I’m not really surprised Hoxha turned his back on the world outside of Albania.

Which leads right on to the toss off comment about “Squabbling Balkan Neighbors.” More than 100 years ago, Edith Durham exhausted considerable effort trying to convince Greater Europe that if the Italians, Austrians et al would stop giving guns to the villagers and suggesting they attack each other (thus creating ‘squabbles’ that would justify their helpful intervention), the Balkans would probably be a much more peaceful place. Even the saintly Winston Churchill had a go during WWII, suggesting to the Serbs that ‘those Albanians have a lot of guns, and now might be a good time to go and capture them.’ Or in the words of my brother Lirim, after overhearing some visiting diplomats tossing around that old rube, the ‘tinderbox of Europe’ tag: “The Balkans are very small. If Europe didn’t want to have a World War, I’m sure we couldn’t have MADE them.”

All that is old history however, and perhaps it’s too much to expect someone who spent 5 days here to have looked beyond stereotypes and cliches.

The most upsetting contemporary thing about this article is also possibly not the author’s fault, but on behalf of my outraged correspondents and self, I do need to say a few words about the ‘Peaks of the Balkans’ project, and foreign aid in Albania in general. Albania and surrounds are currently being flooded with foreign aid money. The EU alone is pumping 90 million euros a year into Albania – and no, it isn’t an EU country. There have been numerous excellent books in recent years, criticizing the International Aid Industry. And while I must begin by saying that I have met many good, kind, generous people who are working within this framework, I will continue to say that my overall experience is that the system itself is wired, if not for failure, most certainly for corruption. I’d boil the problem down to the simple (if simplified) fact that ultimately, all accountability is up. Grant recipients are not primarily pushed to complete projects successfully – and certainly not to take their time and learn something – and God forbid you figure out a way to do something cheaper: coming in under budget is the cardinal no-no. No, the goal is to to successfully write reports which can be turned in on time to national offices, to be sent in turn to international headquarters. That way all the people with salaries get paid, and given the fact that most agencies (for example GIZ, which only awards 4 year contracts maximum) they also ensure a successful employment history and secure the promise of future contracts. If these reports can have some photographs attached, that’s even better – hence one report on ‘community involvement’ I saw, with some nice pictures of a proudly reported Community Meeting. “But we (the community) didn’t hear anything about this project – who are those people?” “Oh, that’s his family, and some people who work for him.” To be fair, how on earth was the sponsor supposed to recognize this cheerful deceit? And to be even fairer, I suspect the grantee won’t even see it as a deceit. The agencies’ job is to give away money. In this recently-poorest-corner-of-Europe, local capos are happy (very happy) to take the money. If turning in reports and photographs makes the agencies happy, well, it’s win-win all around!

Thus we arrive at the Peaks of the Balkans project. Now, don’t get me wrong. I think hiking trails are an excellent idea, and I think that the idea of trails that cross borders are just as wonderful today, as they were 15 years ago, when the Balkan Peace Park Project came up with the idea and began promoting it, way back when no one wanted to hear about Albania. I think it was a fantastic idea all the time that Antonia Young and her dedicated international team worked to promote it. What I don’t think is great is that with a big fat budget, GIZ swooped in and co-opted the work of a number of other people. You will notice that nowhere is Balkan Peace Park credited. Here in Valbona, local people (yes, including me!) have been working – on our own initiative – for several years to map, clear, mark and sign some 200km of hiking trails. Thus it does make one bitter to read casually of GIZ’s “involving dozens of other groups.” They certainly didn’t involve the local community here, beyond dropping by for a coffee (they were able to stay for only half an hour, they said) and telling us they didn’t want to hear about our trails, and had no interest in supporting what local people were trying to achieve. Nor did they hire anyone local to work on the project. Instead a nice boy from Shkoder called up one day, and asked Alfred if he could show him where the trails were. Alfred discretely found he was busy. Perhaps this explains why several of the odd aluminum signs which showed up last autumn seem to be pointing in the wrong direction. Finally, the one thing that an enormous international agency could have done, was to work with the 3 countries involved to facilitate granting of border-crossing permission – and no matter what Mr. Neville was told, your average tourist has no easier time today getting permission to cross those borders than they did . . . well, back in Hoxha’s time, practically speaking. Another aid dollar, well-spent.

Now, back to the other inaccuracies of the article. I’m not sure if Mr. Neville is aware that ‘Kardovic’ is a Serbian name – and while I know perfectly well that there are just as many lovely Serbians as there are lovely . . . everyones(!), it would seem an odd choice of guide in Albania. Perhaps this accounts for the impression he received, and passes on, of Albanians as gun-totting, fist-fighting (when, I presume, no guns were handy), narcotics pedlars. I can only say that having spent the last 4 years wandering around the Malesi (‘highlands’), usually accompanied only by my dog, and often in a little pink sundress (well, it’s hot in summer), for safety, civility and sobriety I’d pick Albania over, say, East New York any day.

Oh – and by the way, Valbona is not Catholic. The first person to settle permanently in Valbona 12 generations ago (one Selim Pretash, founder of the Selimaj fis or clan) received his land grant from the Ottomans in return for demonstrating his commitment to developing a community by building a mill. Ottomans tended to grant civil contracts to good Muslims, so hey-presto, the area became “Muslim.” There is an enclave of Catholics – of whom my good friend Kol Gjoni (whose mustaches are truly fearsome!) is one – in Rrogam, at the other end of the valley – they hopped over here from Theth some 50 or so years ago. They were trying (alas, unsuccessfully it turns out) to avoid the collectivization of their goats.

And lastly, in case, despite its inaccuracies this article still inspires you to consider visiting the area to do some hiking, I should add the reassuring news that I did that same walk, through Qafa e Pejes – only we made a little detour, camped out and went up to the top of Jezerces, and then down into Valbona from there. I’m a little mystified by the perils Mr. Neville reports – although long, I didn’t find it so taxing – and to be fair I did the whole thing with a sprained ankle (not from the hike), so it’s probably even easier than I found it. And you really can’t miss it – if you add GIZ’s Peaks of the Balkans trail markings, it’s now been marked 3 separate times! Thank god for German efficiency and those Aid euros!

Sincerely,

Catherine Bohne

c/o Selimaj

Valbona, Tropoja, Albania

Started this morning.

Lea Hartl on Powder Guide (thanks for the photo, which I gleefully filched!)

Cristina Drafta in Argophilia

Kellie Okonek mentions us in her blog, and is how I found the Lea Hartl artcl (ha ha).  She was also my favorite person who visited us all that winter, so you should have fun maybe reading her blog?

There’s probably more out there, as people often contact me saying they’re writing articles and promising to let me know when they’re published . . . . so far I’m still waiting for the heads up . . . .

At any rate.

The point of this “post” is for the four or five people who’ve already asked me – and any of you others out there who may be interested – to have a way of contacting each other and sharing information about SKIING IN VALBONA.  You can maybe post comments below as a way of contacting each other and getting organized?  A bunch of you seem to be from Swizerland . . . . ?

Of course, we would LOVE to welcome any of you out there who want to come.  We can offer:  Warmth, GREAT food, a cozy cabin environment (with NO television, especially, even if we fix it, No-Television-Playing-Endless-Silvester-Stallone-Prison-Movies (hey Kellie!  We didn’t forget you!), and some sort of all-inclusive (reasonable!) transport fee, to ferry you to and from good skiing locations.  What we can’t offer you is to say that we know much about skiing, so although we’re happy to spend hours pouring over maps (which we HAVE) and plotting good spots (and for ‘first descents’), and although we’ll happily cart you around the valley and make sure we get you to where you want to start – and of course bring you back again, we can’t really go with you . . . . unless of course someone brings us some skiis . . . . . hm . . . . .

Anyhow.  Here’s the space for you – now carry on!  Oh.  And two more (stolen!!!) photographs to inspire you!

This is our dog, Pango.  At the time of this picture, he is lying quietly and patiently outside my tent, guarding me while I prepare to go to sleep.  He has not questioned why I’ve decided to sleep on top of a desolate stony mountain in late October.  Nor why we had to spend the whole day slowly, doggedly, carrying some 30 kilos of equipment, extra blankets, cameras, batteries, paint and other assorted bits and bobs UP this mountain.  Nor has he questioned the need for him to preface this expedition by running some 10 km, helpfully herding the car to the other end of the valley — well, he wouldn’t question THAT — it clearly beats the hell out of getting inside the infernal machine.  At the time that this picture was taken, he hasn’t even realized yet that we are counting on finding snow to melt to drink for the next three days, and there’s only a ration of 3 sausages per day for him, and I am on a pure cake diet (fyi:  the result of extensive testing shows that cake is the ideal, and only really useful, form of camping food).*

If it comes to that, I’m not sure that I know why we needed to do this.  I have taken advantage of one of Alfred’s slips of frustration, in which he gets tired of my . . . . well, not nagging – but one-hundredth mention of the fact that I can’t see how on earth we will ever get the trail-marking done on this path without camping.  And how we really are supposed to have finished that trail, and we haven’t even started it yet.  And how as long as I’ve got to slog half way to the pass in order to change the batteries and check the photos on one of the camera traps, I may as well do some trail marking too.  And how since I wouldn’t dream of going anywhere in the mountains without Pango, who in addition to needing the exercise and being damn good company, is also the most accomplished GPP (forget GPS – Geo-Positioning Pango is failsafe!), there’s no point making him run all the way to the other end of the valley AND back again for several days in a row . . . . And Alfred snaps that he hasn’t got TIME TO GO WITH ME.  And I say, Of course I know this – he is much too busy! and He (this is where he makes his fatal mistake) says “You want to go? Go!  Do whatever you want to do!”  Never dreaming of course that I WILL.  Which of course I DO.

I might as well add that there are a few extra complications here.  Of course there is the usual “Never go hiking the mountains alone” problem.  Here, in the “Accursed Mountains” this injunction is taken even more seriously.  Avdyl Dudi (my hero) lectured me most strictly about this.  He repeated to me what his father (or grandfather?) had said:  ”One person alone in the mountains is ZERO!  ZERO!  Two people is a half – wait – no – YES!  Two people is a half, and THREE people is ONE!”  Meaning that you should never go with less than 3 people, in case one gets hurt, 1 can go for help, while the other 2 wait.  Perfectly sensible.  But I remember my shock when someone (my lawyer, I think it was) told me in NY that I should never go hiking in the Catskills alone – not safe!  ”But isn’t that the POINT of going hiking?” I remember saying – “To get away from every-one and -thing else?”  At any rate.  Here in Northern Albania, there is another problem, which is that women don’t usually go wandering around on their own.  Foreigners, okay – but they’re all strange and crazy anyhow!  But having been accepted as an honorary local, my behavior becomes exponentially more incomprehensible and barmy.  Hence why Alfred is appalled.

At any rate Pango and I are happy enough, perched on the edge of the sky, in a land so ancient and silent that one feels certain one ought to be having profound thoughts.  The spine of the ridge which sharply defines this boundary of the valley is composed of improbable fingers and shafts of stone, which point skywards from a skirt of scree.  It looks as if someone’s poured the scree over the peaks – possibly only just last week.  Or as if some maniac giant had only just been building sandcastles of stone.  But in the 3 days I was up there, I heard exactly ONE pebble break free from the stone and roll down the slope.  And in the return to silence after it came to rest (and SO? I thought) it took a moment to be sort of giddily amused and horrified to realize – if THAT’s the rate at which those stones have slithered free and slipped down the mountainside, then I am sitting there looking at 1000′s of years of accumulated teeny-tiny events.  Of course one learns this sort of thing in school, but still . . . . . It makes sitting there eating cake seem even sillier.

At some other point in those 3 days, still sitting and pondering the non-arrival of my profoundest thoughts, I suddenly duck and throw an arm over my head — WHAT the . . . . Something has just flashed over my head, making a loud sound like tearing silk.  I uncrouch and look around.  A crow has flown over head.  It is SO silent, that I realize I can hear the sound of the wind in his feathers.  The noise of it is echoing off the walls of rock around me.  It must be something like what the crow himself hears, as he cuts through the sky.  I sit there (lump of cake no doubt forgotten in my hand) and watch delighted as the crow weaves its way across the sky:  Now the noisy thrusting flaps, and then, with a sudden whistling cutting sound, the wings are pulled in and the crow speeds into a dive, flipping topside down and over again, and then wings are thrown out to arrest the fall and up and away he soars . . . . . I’m sure my mouth was open.

At any rate.  At the end, after I packed up the tent and carefully filled the bags, I sat and made a list of everything I enjoyed thinking while I was up there.  Things I noticed, and things I’d like to remember.  But my profoundest thought?  I thought of this:  You know, you never hear of arctic or antarctic expeditions, where when the boat had been crushed by the ice, and the supplies were running out and winter had finally set in, the dogs decided, ever-so-rationally “Well, it’s us or them!” and set to and ate the people.  Never, not once.  Whereas in the annals of polar expeditions the stage at which the Dogs Get Eaten is well-recognized.  Which makes me realize – the dogs would sit, as Pango patiently sits, and sigh, and restrain themselves to just one level, weighted look: “Did you think this was a good idea?” and then flop down — perhaps a bit dramatically — and sensibly go to sleep.  Good Dog, Pango.

* NB:  In the end, I gave most of the cake to Pango as well.  Just in case you thought I was cruel.  Who can resist the hypnotic stare of a hungry dog?

The fact that this corner of Europe has survived, and even made it to being called a national park is amazing.  Can we band together and save it, ourselves and the people and animals (and life and spirit and beauty) and intelligence that live within it — save it in reality?  It’s not a small undertaking, though it is a small place.

Your ideas are probably better than ours, but in any case, they will involve money, a fight with the government and the foreign aid agencies that are supposed to be doing this work, but in everyday experiential fact put pencil pushing, reports, and catering to the same corrupt government that is the main problem to the fore.  Help?  This is a battle that can be won.  But not without a fight.  We’re game . . . .

Stay tuned here for what we decide to tackle this winter . . . .

Many Thanks to Max et al. for taking and sending this (and several other) excellent photos!  If you all behave yourselves I’ll even post some more!

Strangely, it was the starry-starriest night I’ve noticed in a long time.  I can rarely find my glasses, so stars-gazing (and bird watching) are infrequent pleasures for me.  But I remember thinking happily that I wouldn’t have seen THIS from the double room, as I lay there gazing up, and that while it might be a little sad to be sleeping in a lot of scrub next to the small pile of rubbish to be burnt with someone’s pant-legs hanging over my face and prey to this summer’s invasion of tiny stinging invisible bugs . . . . (okay okay – Valbona is always beautiful, and it wasn’t actually bad at all, but this is the way one thinks after realizing one hasn’t got a bed of one’s own!) . . . . at least I got to see the stars . . . . and then I fell asleep.

And THEN I woke up!  It was 3 am, the stars were far away, and a sort of wuffling, snuffling, gently crackling noise was migrating past my head.  From the depths of my sleep-soaked brain emerged the only sensible thought:  ”HEDGEHOGS!”  I sat up, fished around for the flashlight, and operating sheerly on instict instantly trained the beam precisely on . . . . . BABY!

Those of you who visited last year will remember the two hedgehogs we raised, after their giddy young mother left them in our office.  Fatty demanded to be let out last October, to find his own place to pass the winter, but young Baby, always the more social and physically timid of the two stuck to the office.  Following helpful instructions from the British Hedgehog Preservation Society, I built her an insulated hedgehog house which we installed on our front porch, and popped her (and her whole nest) inside to sleep out the winter.  I spent the winter fretting — was it too hot, not warm enough?  How can you tell the difference between a dead hedgehog and one that is merely sleeping, without waking it up – and thus probably killing it?  In March, when there was still snow on the ground, Alfred came home one night to tell me “The Hedgehog is awake!”  Five months later she had woken up, looking a little bemused but happy to see me (a happy hedgehog makes a sort of chuckling noise, if you didn’t know).  After a little cuddle she waddled back to the house and crawled up the tube to get  back inside, back to the business of sleeping.  One week later, when I peered inside, she was gone.

When people here ask after the hedgehogs (which they do, they think it’s hilarious that we had them as pets), I tell them stoically that they’ve gone to find their “Vendin e vet” – their  ’place of their own.’  Still, of course, one worries.

At 3 o’clock in the morning I picked up Baby, noticed she’s mostly the same – still quite small, and now smells really really bad (she’s clearly been “annointing” which is something peculiar hedgehogs do, and which you can read more about on the BHPS website!).  She went through the motions of curling into a half-hearted ball, did the obligatory hissing as I put her on my lap, and then chuckled too – she uncurled a little, sniffed my fingers and peered up at me.  I thought about waking up Alfred – but a smelly little hedgehog is probably not what you want waved under your nose at 3 a.m. when you have the toothache.  So instead I tickled her spines a bit, and then watched as she waddled away, returning to her hedgehog life in the wild wild realms of Rilindja’s back yard.  Sigh.