Border Crossings
I would consider Ben and I to be experienced travelers. Before we were married, we’d each lived abroad for various durations and had individually visited over 40 different countries. Since being together, we’ve had numerous adventures both in the US and overseas.
That being said, anytime we cross a border from one country to another, especially a land border, we each get a sense of uneasiness. Having both been deported from a country (Ben Russia, me Panama), we know little discrepancies can cause big problems. We also know that in these moments, we are completely at the mercy of strangers in a strange land and that they have all the power in the situation.
So we definitely set ourselves up for some tense moments with our planned drive from Croatia to Greece by way of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Montenegro, Albania, and Macedonia in the span of 5 days.
First, there was the adventure of driving a 9 passenger, stick-shift van through narrow goat path “roads” with hairpin turns up steep mountain passes. I’ll admit, despite my dad and I being able to drive stick, we were more than happy to let Ben take the wheel. He did an incredible job and has remarked a couple times that all his years playing Mario Cart were truly paying off.
As we left countries where Ben spoke the language and ventured into Albania, where none of us knew a lick of the language and few Albanians we came in contact with spoke strong English, our brains had to work overtime. Not to mention the chaos of Tirana, which was the most crowded, populated, and traffic congested city we’ve visited yet. Even compared to Paris, if felt overcrowded with traffic at a standstill in many places.
View from our hotel balcony of downtown Tirana at night.
Luckily, the hotel we stayed in, Hotel Mondial, was gorgeous, with fantastic rooms, a great restaurant and rooftop, and a central location. As we were discussing the idea of staying one more night and breaking up the road travel, the choice was made for us. While reorganizing my backpack and putting our passports away, I realized that one was missing. At first I thought it was mine and that the hotel attendant hadn’t returned it after check-in. That was not the case. Then, I thought maybe it fell out of my bag in the van, but it was not there. I then feared that as I jumped out of the van amid crazy traffic to secure parking, it may have fallen onto the street, but it was not their either. After an hour of searching, I reexamined all the passports and realized it was Ben’s that was actually missing.
Our only other thought was that when we crossed the Border from Montenegro to Albania, the Border Guard, only handed us back 6 passports instead of 7 (remember, my parents are traveling with us). Our best bet was to call the US Embassy in the morning and hope that the Border Guard had the passport and we could drive the two hours back to the Border to get it. Otherwise, we’d have to get a new temporary passport from the Embassy, which could take a couple of days. Either way, we were spending another night in Tirana.
After a night and morning on pins and needles, the Embassy confirmed that the Border Guard did have Ben’s passport. We just had to drive back to the Border and get it. While we were all thrilled, we were kicking ourselves for the rookie mistake of not confirming we had all the passports returned to us before driving away from the border. We will NEVER make that mistake again!
Thankfully, the rest of the journey to Greece was smooth (and on paved roads!). We were treated to the most amazing hospitality and dinner in Skopje with Ben’s old friend and colleague Zoran and then, at Zoran’s recommendation, had the best lamb of our lives at a local Macedonian restaurant just before the Greek border.
Our reward for all the driving, is two days at a gorgeous seafront apartment in Thessaloniki and then onto Athens to meet up with Ben’s mom Maddie and my brother Billy who are joining us for the next several countries. We cannot wait to see them and are ready to confirm we have 9 passports at each of our upcoming Border Crossings.
Below are some pictures from the road…
