Korce was a whole experience in itself. There was market in Korce today. We parked the Saharagelber and went into the city. The streets were full of life. Our tour started a bit unpleasant, we heard an awful screaming from a sheep close to us. This sheep tried to escape from his owner, it had already smelt death. The sheep are transported easier alive and for the people here the best prove of the meat being fresh is to see the ‘meat’ alive. The sheep are traded on the street here and they cut their throats and poach the sheep on the street too, horrible. Melissa did not want to stay too long here. we felt very sorry for the poor sheep. When we went on, we saw lots of chicken in too small cages, poached animals hanging in trucks.
Indeed, it happens all on the streets. A bit further lie the entrails of a sheep with the rest of the garbage, the fresh skins lie somewhere else in a van. There is a lot of waste lying around on the streets. People are walking their way trhough it.
We will try to find a supermarket and a ATM and leave the place rather sooner than later. We left the screaming of the sheep behind, it cut through us like a knife, we know now what’s happening over there.
The buildings are brown and grey and look like they can collapse every minute. It’s all a very miserable situation the people in Korce live in, Korce looks like a mess. It’s so poor and we were very impressed to see all this, we can know imagine how on of the poorest countries in Europe look like. We enter a big square, where people wandered around, finding their ways to somewhere, Mercedeses crossed the square and linebuses were waiting to set off to their destinations.
I was some people with plastic bags of the Lidl supermarket and I decided to ask someone where the Lidl could be found. I pointed at the bag and made gestures like ‘Where is it, I don’t know!’ by shrugging my shoulders. The man thinks I am crazy and walks away. ‘Gee thanks’ I thought. Again, I tried with a young man but he rigidly contintued walking. Melissa laughed at me for my unsuccesful attempts. I stopped trying. I couldn’t help looking around to see all those Mercedeses, it’s so odd. I’ve seen it in Morocco but there are so many of them here, All these old Mercedess rendered me useless and therefore Melissa started searching for the ATM and the supermarket herself. I kept on looking an tried to capture all this with my camera.
After a while Melissa found an ATM and came back to me, we continued to walk around a bit and checked if we could find a supermarket. When walking around, I even found a Saharagelber W123 station. Lots of the W123′s were in a terrible shape.
Then when we were back at the car, I thought by myself, that my W123 isn’t too different from the others now, because of all the mud and sand which made her look the same as the others.

After Korce we decided to take the same route back to Permet as we had driven yesterday and then continue from Permet in the direction of Berat. This way we could experience the nice roue again and then follow atouristic route up north.

It was again stunning to experience the Albanian landscape. Even with all the special bunkers which are scattered over the landscape. They were placed by the dictator who reigned over Albania in the seventies and eighties.
We made jokes about them. They looked like the top of a R2D2-like robot, as if the rest resided under the surface. So sometimes we yelled ‘biedebie’ to each other. We drove through the fairytale environment and it still felt weird, only the road, the ‘biedebies’ and us, no other signs of civilisation. We both enjoyed Albania very much, it stole our hearts for sure.

On our way Melissa asked me to stop, she saw a skull so she wanted to have a look (there were more of them, it turned out later). So she was wandering around and heard a very low grunting. When she looked behind here here she saw a big dog, skin to
the bone, obviously so hungry that he would tak any risk, even try eating a human. It was of course so desperately hungry and all bets were off. Melissa knew this was serious and started calling me. In fact, I saw this dog from my mirror in the Benz, but did no realize shed hadn’t seen it and that it was about to attack her. She made gestures to me to drive backwards, which I did. The dog stood still, waiting what this yellow thing that was approaching was about to do. When I was close to Melissa she started walking towards the car and finally got in. ‘Wow! That dog was trying to eat me!’ She said to me amazed ‘Tha was pretty scary though!’. This dog was totally bewildered and probably the skulls Melissa had founf were one of its family or friends. The probably were dumped here some while ago. Melissa felt so sorry for the dogs and wanted to leave some food behind, so we left some bread, that was all we had for them. Of course, it’s something, but not of much help for the coming week…
Melissa was happy she sat next to me again, I started the engine and we departed again..

After a while we were back at the intersection close to the border, we got here when we entered to and were this friendly guy read the signs for us. We drove in the direction of Permet again. Driving this part was amazing. In the beginning we had a river on our left hand side. Then after a while we went into the direction of Berat. Whle passing some houses situated along the road there were some fellows standing there looking as if they saw water burn.
The road got worse and worse and when we passed a village situated at the foot of the mountain this road seemed to end, well, in fact in continued but it meant a paved road with sand and stones. We checked on the map again, ‘Is this the road to Berat?’ we asked ourselves. ‘This has to be the road then’ I said, looking up from the map into the mountains. ‘Shall we do it?’. Of course we did, it will probably be fun anyway. So, there we went up to the hill over this stoney road. When we were climbing over the sloping road. The track got worse and much more difficult. The stones and boulders got bigger, so we had to find our way through it with the hillside on our left. The heavier parts were alternating the somewhat easier parts.
At some point I saw a car standing on the hill with noone around and thought about what we could do if the Benz broke down now. If we would run into trouble with the car we would have a very big problem in this place, in the middle of nowhere, no infrastructure and facilities. It would be stupid to leave the car alone here too.

We couldn’t imagine the road stayed this way all the way to Berat. In fact this had to be the route to Berat but it was hard to believe. Hopefully it would get better after a while. After a while driving over this difficult track we stopped the car again and tried to calculate how far it would be to Berat and how long it would take to arrive. It was already 8:30 and it should be approximately 60km from here. With an average from 30km/h we would arrive at 20:30hrs in Berat. But the road had to be better than this from now on, otherwise it could take ages. In fact, 20:30 is pretty late already, it will already be dark by then.

After curiously looking after each curve to see if the road got better we were pointed to the facts all the time. The road seemed to -stay- bad. The Saharagelber was doing very well, but for us the last one and a half hours were very temping.
The enormous stones, holes, the small road, often a steep hillside on our left or right, deep fairways and sometimes pools of mud and water made the trip difficult but very exciting too.

To manouvre the Benz over this kind of road in these situations was a good practice for Africa coming summer.

We didn’t see anyone else while driving. We drove through the unspoiled nature of Albania. There were mountains everywhere, in between times we passed a lake and now and then we saw a shepherd with his herd of cattle of goats and sheep and their dangerous dogs they have with them.
At 20:15u we stopped to put some vegetable oil in the tank. From a distance we heard a gigantic noise from frogs sitting at a small lake. It seemed to be thousands of them, it was unbelievable. From a distance we saw a shepherd with his herd of cattle walking over the hills and believe it or not, there was a scout on his horse in a special costume who went exploring the area. These people sleep and walk with the cattle for some time in these mountains. We felt we had landed in the middle ages.

While driving for hours through the mountains over this stony road in the middle of nowhere, without any villages or cities and noone around, something happened where I was so afraid of. While manoeuvring between the holes and stones I hit a big stone with the bottom of the car. A loud bang, but it was not easy to heard where it hit the car. I stopped the car and got out, I was recollecting the situation while driving in Morocco 6 years ago, where I hit a big stone which teared open the oil carter.
When I drove slowly backwards I saw a big pool of oil. That was in the south of Morocco, in the middle of nowhere too by the way. One of the cars that was passing by towed us to the next village (and charged us big time for that one).
So, when I got out of the car I immediately checked my precious Mercedes but did not see anything on the ground and no leakages. Nothing was loose and I got in the car again, tapping on the dashboard while Melissa gave me an odd look.
“We can go on, no worries” I said to her.
The twilight was setting in and still no sight of some city. After quite some heavy driving again, we arrived at small group of houses or better: ruins.
Until now, the Saharagelber was able to pull through and over anything we came across untill now (even without the lifting of the car I planned to do before the trip, but was not able to).
A few people saw us coming and stared at us, not used to see a car around here, especially a tourist! They seemed to be perplex to see a car with foreign license plates.
We saw some old wrecks which seemed to be old trucks, a couple of plastered old ruins and a bunch of other crap, like wasmachines and plastic bottles and everything in between.
Apparently there were two or three families living in these ruins. We asked a small group of people where Berat was, by just saying ‘Berat’ and then pointing in a couple of directions.
One of them, a friendly looking man, understood what I meant and pointed in the direction we were driving in. He raised 5 fingers and pointed in the Berat direction again, so it had to be 5km. So we thanked and continued.
On our left side we saw a tarred road, but that one went in the wrong direction. It was 20:30 so we had to make a decision.
‘When it’s getting really dark, we can’t navigate just by view’ I said to Melissa. The crossings aren’t easy to oversee (where the directions are heading) and we can’t easily see the holes. Also, we can’t see where these dogs are when for some reason we have to step out of the car. These dogs are very big and are used for herding, they’re very aggressive when you approach with your car.

On our left side we saw the sun setting which gave us a stunning sunset to watch, but with mixed feelings though. It was beautiful of course, but it also meant it was getting dark very soon.
It was starting to get serious now. We decided to continue, if it’s really 5km. Go back via the tarred road we saw on our left did not seem to be a smart solution, if it was only another 5kms, with this velocity it was only another half an hour driving.
When on the top of a large hill we oversaw the landscape, the hills on the horizon got black with the sun setting in the background. Perfect!

The mountainside road went further uphill and got smaller and smaller. This felt not right. We had a bad feeling about it now, it seemed to be another planet we were driving on, nothing is recognizable. We expected to see some light pollution from cities far away, but there was nothing. We expected to see at least some signs or bigger roads, other cars or any infrastructure so you know you’re not the first who’s driving here.
The road got smaller and this seemed wrong. We met a couple of women who were walking on this tiny road. We said ‘Berat’ again and pointed around us again. They shook their heads and pointed back to the small intersection we just passed, apparently we had to take the the other direction. So, I drove backwards and we took that other road, but this seemed to be better indeed.

This road winded through the mountains too. After quite some time driving we still did not have the feeling that we were approaching a city or something. Apart from the great views and nature itself, there was no sign for us we were heading towards a city or something. We agreed that we were lost in Albania. At a certain point we arrived at another intersection with two reasonable possible directions. There was of course no one around, this could go on all night, reducing the chances to keep on heading in the right direction. If we took the wrong direction we could go wrong for hours, without seeing a city or an indication that we were going wrong. Our map of Europe was quite useless for this, Albania was too small and only the main roads were drawed.
We decided to continue straight on, this was just a guess as there were no signs.
As it turned out, this strategy does not work here. At first we passed some houses, it was immense dark, some of the houses were lit with a simple outside lamp. A group of dogs had heard us and came towards us, they barked and kept running next to the car so I couldn’t see them. We hoped they did not do anything stupid because we couldn’t see them, so we drove carefully. They ran with us for a long time but finally they stopped, thank god we were far enough for them, they had decided to go back and we were of no ‘danger’ anymore. The road became a narrow path and led us along some small houses, it looked like this was only a path to connect the houses and we must have gotten of the main road. We decided to go back and did this thing a couple of times, finally we seemed to have found the ‘main road’ again. It went up and after a while we were surrounded by trees and weren’t able to see anything except for the road iself.
We approached a tough part. Before us, we saw a pool of water, then a muddy part and after that another pool. This was pretty unpleasant, because -if- we got stuck here, we would certainly stay here for some time, as we didn’t see any car in a very long time, it was like expecting a car approaching in the middle ages, or so it felt.
I drove back and looked desperately at Melissa “I think we have to give it a shot”. I shone with my headlights at the 2 pools and tried to make a plan, how to cross them. This was pretty exciting, as we really, really didn’t want to get stuck here.
We were tired, it’s pretty dark and tools to get ourselves out of it we didn’t have, and as I wrote before, we didn’t expect anyone to come by in a long time. Thus, getting stuck is NO OPTION! When I pressed down the accelerator adrenalin was running through my vains. After taking of I entered the first pool, the Benz kept on driving, it shooked a bit left and right because of lack of grip on the muddy soil in the pool, then we were at the middle part, where there was a big stone, but we came out on the left, just as planned .
Then we entered the second pool, the car is decreasing speed but still rolling. Anxiously we sat there, I was trying to steer around a difficult part and to leave the pool at the right side of the road, so we got on the solid sand again as soon as possible.
We felt the back of the car winding left and right, ‘Come on! Come oooooon! I yelled stressfully. ‘Bang!!’ I heard. That sounded like a stone at the bottom of the car. Then again the stone showed us its presence, but now from the back of the car. Another bang, but not as loud as the first one. We kept on driving, the wheels were spinning but we were still going. After a bit of more hard work in the pool from the read-wheel drive, we had to pass some mud before we were on solid ground again.
This part went slow but good and finally we could conclude we were on the solid part of the dirt road again. ‘We did it!’. We roared and we were very delighted. ‘This old Benz did it!’

The remainder of this track was better and we did not encounter other pools. We went a bit downhill and this was a good sign, as cities aren’t usually built on the mountains. At the foot of the mountains the road was winding through the landscape, we approached an intersection again with, of course, no signs. So, we chose to go straight on, as there were no signs with directions. This went pretty good, but after a curve the road became very small and lots of big rocks lied on the road, I sat with my head against the roof so I could see as much as possible in front of the car. A bit further the road was more or less broken. It went up a bit and there was lots of sand and some very big holes. We saw some small houses. These people for sure didn’t have a car or would use the road from the other side perhaps. We might be able to continue and give it a shot, but we wouldn’t for sure be able to go back, it looks very hard for the W123 to deal with this.
Also, we didn’t expect this road to be the main road anyway, we had to go back and so we had to try to turn over here. On both sides of the road there was quite some sand with stones and taken into account that the road is very small, it looks impossible to turn here. Driving backwards is no option, because the road is pretty steep and small and there was a curve, with one side on the mountainside. I turned of the Benz and opened the window. We start to talk about our options, which seemed to be none.
“Well then”, I said. “There we are, in the middle of nowhere somewhere in Albania. I can’t go back and turning is impossible, continue in straight on means a point of no return, and probably it’s the wrong road anyway”.
We seemed to hear some noise from the the houses over there, also, there was a big dog barking over there. It sounded as if it was coming closer, but not much. “The only option is turning around” Melissa said but I told her it’s definitely not possible.
I started to panic a bit “What the hell did we do! Why?!!” I yelled and hit the steering wheel with my hand. “Relax!” demanded Melissa “We are going to try it out”. “I told you that WON’T work!” I snapped at her, knowing that in fact she’s right.
I was able to bring out a ‘Sorry’ and said “All right, we are going to try it then, but then you have to get out of the car to help”. She isn’t too happy with that because of the dog but someone had to watch the back and the front of the car.
“So there we go” I thought. After trying to turn the first time I was standing already quite crosswise. Then I started to go forwards and backwards and when coming closer to the 90% crosswise the car was hardly able to move anymore. The space was close to nothing, the front and the rear were hitting the sand of both sides of the road now. It was pretty much stuck! “Try a little bit more!” Melissa yelled, but I wasn’t able to move anymore. “Darn!”
I got out of the car and tried to dig the sand away. The end of the exhaust pipe was completely in the sand. This didn’t look to good, It was completely stuck. We both tried to remove some sand and kept looking to see if this dog wasn’t coming.
Then I tried again, and after some digging and trying the car was able to move a couple of centimeters, and after this tedious work we managed to turn and the Benz stood in the opposite direction. We were able to go back to that intersection again.
We now guessed the other direction, hopefully this is the right one.
We thought about stopping and trying to get some sleep, if this would take much longer, it was already around midnight already.
Without good sight and navigation we continued the dirt road. After a while we passed car! That at least was a good sign. Far away we were able to see some lights, possibly a city, we were not sure which one, but didn’t mind at all anymore which city it was, if only we knew where the hell we were! From high up in the mountains it became clear to us, a city loomed up in the dark. After quite some curves through the mountains we were getting nearby, we were reassured we would make it now, it would last too long from now on. But 5kms? I think he meant 50kms! After we got out of the mountains we entered a tarred road again, it felt like we were stepping on land, after floating on a raft while being lost in the open sea.
A bit further there was a nice bridge to be seen, and in a short time we saw lots of youngsters walking in the streets, coming back or heading to a party or something. We drove along the water and crossed the bridge and went searching for a hotel in the city.
When crossing the canal we saw it was a very big city, this had to be Berat, as there was no other big city in this area.
Berat is quite a nice city, much different then Korce. Chances were high to find a hotel here, but the question was if it was open or not.
It was a relieve to find a hotel in a short time, as we were pretty tired. It was in a narrow street, which was close to a bigger street. The hotel had very big castle like doors which were closed, so that did not look too good. We got out and tried to push it, with a crack it opened. “It’s open?” Melissa asked. It was 00:30u, were we lucky? We walked in slowly, it looked very nice, dark wood all over, a lot of tables. It had a very nice, cosy interior of a very old restaurant some 100 years ago. At a bar a friendly man was standing and walked towards us when we approached. He gave us a warm welcome and we tried to explain we wanted to stay for the night. We wanted to know what he would charge us, as we did not have much albanian money.
We wanted to know if we could pay with Euros too. He tried to calculate this on a small paper and it seemed a hell of a job, we ended up saying that we would pay him tomorrow with albanian money, if there was an ATM around, because he seemed not to be able to work it out After we were done he showed us our room, it was not very expensive but the room was pretty nice, it had a balcony too. We agreed with the room and thanked the good man and took all our stuff from the car.
Melissa cooked us a dinner and after that we sat on the bed and opened a bottle of wine and chatted a bit more. I had one glass of wine and after that I fell asleep right away.