I try my best to be descriptive with my journals;o paint a picture so that anyone reading them can feel like they were there with me. Sometimes though, things and places are very difficult to write about, and it is just the whole feel and atmosphere of a place that strikes you - be that good, bad or indifferent. My time spent in Albania, although thankfully relatively short, has been one of these times. It's worth mentioning that on Friday James had tried to get into Albania from Budva before he met me, but had had to abort mission bofore he had even made it to the border - basically, it is one right royal ball ache. The only reason I had been able to meet up with him was because he had had to come back to Budva. Despite his quite graphic descriptions of what it had been like for him, I flight suprisingly unpeturbed and still wanted to head down. That was basically why I took the supposed day trip to Tirana with the other 3 people from Budva, since it would save an awful lot of grief and wasn't too much more when you consider a city tour, lunch and the 10 euro entrance fee you have to pay just to get into Albania was all included. I just wasn't going to go back with the coach to Budva - although with more time to spare I would gladly have just to walk down the catwalk of a beach again! So, to the trip. It was actually very professional and well worth the money, and looking back I really would have felt a bit uneasy crossing the border alone. I have seen a lot of border crossings in my travelling time, but this one was well up there with the most unbelievable. It was just a little clearing in the trees where a couple of officials were wildly gesticulating at people most of the time - I was just so grateful everything was taken care of for me! Even for backpackers, Albania as a whole is somewhat unchartered territory - I suppose that is part of the attraction. Even the tour company marketed the trip as "Albania - the final secret". But in reality, without wishing to be too harsh, Tirana is an ugly city with ugly people, hot as hell and with a little bit of an edge. Maybe I'm just starting to feel the effects of a non-stop few days and a lot of travelling, but even compared to poor countries such as Bolivia and Paraguay that I visited, this place beat the lot. Anyway, we first stopped of to look at 3 huge bunkers - ex Communist leade Enver Hoxha's paranoid concrete legacy built to serve as places of protection where people could go if the country came under attack. The designer had to vouch for their capability to withstand full tank assault by standing in them whilst they were bombarded!! Only in Albania! Then it was along dusty roads into Tirana - check out the photo that looksa little like the entrance to a building site, well thats the main road leading into the city! After a brief tour of what few "sights" there are to see (one of which was the National stadium - in a shocking state of affairs), we had a lovely 3 course meal for lunch, with a couple of glasses of wine thrown in too! So it was nice being there with James, Fetha and the Norweigen guy, before we had a couple of hours free time. After saying bye to everyone on the coach, I set off trying to find the only hostel in Tirana. Boy did I miss you Ballard - map reading and sense of direction really are not my fortes!!! Finally finding it, sure enough it was full and so I ended up checking into a small hotel, not all that cheap and seemingly undergoing repair, only 5 minutes from where I had left the coach, but had taken an hour and a half detour walking round getting lost in the boiling heat! Lying on my bed had never felt so good! Saturday I just spent taking advantage of cheap internet and getting up to date with things, since I had no inclination whatsoever to go out for a beer! Reading an email from Lex about how he is going to miss all the eveyday things that happen whilst you are travelling and somewhat take for granted, I realised that one day I will look back at these experiences with a strange sense of enjoyment and satisfaction. And so to today, and what I thought would be a nice straightforward day, and the last awkward obstacle to overcome before meeting Becky. Now its come to it, I don't even know how to start describing everything! Basically, there is no order or organisation to the busses - they seem to go from wherever they want whenever they want, and not even the few people that spoke just a couple fo words of English seemed to know for sure. After failing to find the bus station marked on my map (there are 5 marked on) that I am adamant doesn't exist, I ended up getting lost and so jumping into a taxi - who he too didn't know where it was. After stopping and pulling over to ask a couple of random pedestrians if they spoke any English, of course they didn't, he seemed to finally understand where I wanted to go and dropped me off at what is meant to constitute a bus terminal. In actual fact it is just a T-junction. And then he ripped me off - so all in all not the best start to the day. Eventually, I bumped into a Canadian guy called Alex who managed to help me out in a roundabout way (tourist offices were shut being Sunday) and I'm having to cut my losses and change plan - heading straight to Skopje, Macedonia tonight. To be honest I reached the point where I just wanted to get out of the place! And so here I am, killing time until 8 o clock. What fun! After an eventful few days, and alone in a crazy city, last night I began to look back at my trip so far. I realise that I have become a little bit a leader of men. Joe from Dubrovnik, Chu from London, James and other peole along the way have all seemed to look to me for guidence at some points, despite them all being older than me. Thinking about that, and also having the bottle to take on travelling through Albania and somehow cope with everything that it threw at me, makes me kinda proud of myself. The last couple of days or so certainly have been some of the most character building ones! Jonny