Albania – Part 2 – From Peqin to Elbasan

In 2009 some friends and I joined an interesting group of people who intended to walk along the ancient Roman road Via Egnatia. More about the beginning of the trip in my previous post.

Our first stop was Peqin – a small city on the Southeast of Durres. We would camp inside of the old city walls. There was a big celebration with food and dances. So far so good. The only bottom point was that the terrain inside the city walls was lower than outside. It rained like hell that night. Half of the tents were literarily under water. Not a good start of a camping journey but a very good indicator what was expecting us in the future.

Albania - Part 1 - Durres

A couple of years ago, actually in 2009, some friends and I joined an interesting group of people. Their main goal was to rediscover and walk along the ancient Roman road Via Egnatia. Centuries ago the road was one of the main roads in Europe – it connected Durres (then Dyrrachium) in Albania and Istanbul (then Byzantium) in Turkey. The road crosses Albania, Macedonia and parts of Northern Greece and Turkey. More about this adventure you can read on the page of the Via Egnatia Foundation  which arranged and ran the trail. 

The whole journey was scheduled for about two months but we joined just for a week for the Albanian part. It was in early May. At that point I had absolutely no idea what Albania could offer. For me it was a country about which I knew nothing, although it was very close to Bulgaria. I only knew we need to get maximum one bag of clothes, a sleeping mat, tent, and some other camping stuff and to meet others in Durres, Albania where the adventure would start. 

Therefore, we crossed Macedonia, left our car in Struga and took the bus for Durres. We got there in the early morning. The city was still sleeping and we could enjoy its waking up.