Our Journey Ends: Dream Coming True and the Day When Everything Went as Planned

Day 14: Our Dream Coming True - a Cozy Friendly Place for Locals

Today we got up quite late and after a great breakfast went on with our journey. We missed the bus going to Kotor so we decided to hitchhike again. First ride took us to the borders with Montenegro. The driver explained how come there are so many new houses in Albania. As many Albanians (about a million) live and work outside of the country taking their good money earned in western Europe or elsewhere back home. For them it’s a question of prestige to buy themselves good houses and cars, even though they can barely enjoy them, because most of the year they spend abroad.

Besides the written journal we've also been keeping a drawing journal

We passed the border by walk. It was nice that we skipped all the cars waiting in the queue, but they probably didn’t share this positive feeling. We started hitchhiking right behind the borders and those cars kept just passing by… But we were lucky in the end. Three girls going on vacation to Croatia took us and it was great. We talked almost the whole ride about life in Tirana and Prague, about work, politics. They even started planning a visit in Prague and we exchanged contacts, so we can have a beer together when they arrive.

They would probably take us all the way to Dubrovnik, but as the flight was the day after, we decided to make a stop in Kotor - a typical mediterranean old town with those beautiful stone houses.

Unfortunately the prices there were also quite typical, so after a nice walk around we took a bus to Herceg Novi, where we were hoping for a cheaper accommodation. The bus went around the three bays passing by many beautiful villages.

In Herceg Novi we were afraid that it would be too tourist, expensive, and ugly, because the village wasn’t as old as Kotor. Fortunately the center of the town was quite pretty. We even found a perfect accommodation! An old woman, she must have been around 90, allowed us to stay at her terrace overnight. For shower we would have the sea, toilet at a restaurant.

What we were happy about probably the most was that we found a charming little restaurant full of locals with local food and low prices. We shared a table with a musician, his mother and his friends. We talked to them the whole evening, drinking wine, eating fried little fish and again - we exchanged contacts and are hoping to see them again in Prague.

On the way home we passed through a drum’n’bass party, which we would normally join, but this time we went to our terrace and jumped to our old, hard bed. Before falling asleep we finished the first of the three parts of Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. What a beautiful last evening of our journey!

Day 15: It's Strange When Everything Goes as Planned

I am still surprised by the fact that the last day of our trip went exactly as we had planned. We got up quite early so we could have a swim in the sea before the departure to the airport.

We bought a bread and yoghurt for breakfast and headed to the bus station. As expected the bus was overcharged (12 euro per 30 km for per person), and it even didn’t stop at the airport even though going directly through it, such that people would have to take a taxi, which is overcharged even more (30-40 euro). So we were there again hitchhiking. We got a ride to the border, walked by all the cars which had passed by us in Herceg Novi, went through the Montenegrin part of the border, hitchhiked to the Croatian part and repeated. We got a ride from a very nice couple - an Albanian Elsi and a Swiss Andrea. They took us to the airport.

We found out that our booking from the day before worked and even had an opportunity to make a good deed. We found some backpackers who just arrived and gave them our gas cartridge we had been using in the mountains for cooking.

Now I am sitting in the plane, thinking about this day, about the whole trip, finishing our diary. I hope the plane won’t crash, or something, because I would have to change the first sentence of today’s post...

Your @hr1 and @mor

If you liked this post, you might also wanna see the Introduction post about our travel. Or see the previous day of the journey.