Police, money and coffee

Do you need money for coffee? Did you give someone money for coffe? Can you imagine to have nightmares for coffee-money for a couple of months?
I like Europe very much! There are so many places and many very different cultures with a long historical tradition. However unfortunately I was not everywhere.
In the past years we decided to travel from south Italy to Greek by ferry and then through Macedonia to Kosovo by car.
I was very happy to visit these countries: I was a child as we planned to have holiday in Yugoslavia, but at this time the war began and it wasn’t possible to travel there. It was an old dream to visit the Balkan-countries.
We arrived in Greek in Igoumenitsa very early in the morning, we just had a little break to have a quickly breakfast: it was very sunny and we was happy to be there and to begin our tour.
In Greek there are often tortuous mountain roads and the most road’s indications are in Cyrillic alphabet. In this way we needed more time to arrive to the border between Greek and Macedonia, but we hoped to arrive in Kosovo in few hours and to have lunch there.
At the border in Macedonia the officer told us, we couldn’t go in, because we had not a visa to transit in Macedonia. Hmmm… We didn’t know, we need a visa at all! However he said: if you want to travel to Kosovo, you can travel through Albania. They haven’t problem with visa, because you can apply for a visa directly at the border and the border between Greek and Albania is not far from here. We went back to Greek and then we followed the indications to Albania. Many people was on the road in the same direction: some people by bus, by feet (?), or by taxi. Few by own car.
At the border we needed to pay for “disinfecting” our car (you need just to drive in a hole with water and to dip the wheels!), but we went in.
Albania is a wonderful country: you can really enjoy the landscape! But … do you need a highway? Sure: in this direction! And if you are lucky, you can find the direction: they have had no roads (practicable roads) and no road’s indications.
On the road you can find easily donkeys or people (many young children jumping on the road like cats). And you can find many police officers: they ask you just money for coffee! If you are very very lucky, maybe you can drive without stopping for 5 kilometers.
Or… stop! Do you have money for coffee?
I have had nightmares for months… Stop: do you have money for coffee?
I was so happy to arrive in Kosovo and to meet the KFOR (Kosovo Force). We had paid again for “Disinfection”, but no more for coffee!

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