Hey you guys – this post is not very pleasant to write since I’m sitting in Pogradec, Albania with a wrecked car waiting on repairs. But let me start from the beginning..

On Monday morning, I got up and came down to the lobby of my hotel in Fier, where I was greeted by the same gentleman who had checked me in the night before. Little did I know, breakfast was included with my room (which had only cost about $20/night) and it was a pretty nice spread. I enjoyed my stay in that little hotel.

After eating, I asked the guy who he would recommend if I wanted a full service cleaning of my car. I’d seen a lot of carwashes in Albania and assumed they must be pretty cheap, and the Fiesta definitely needed a good cleaning since I’ve been traveling in it for so long through dusty roads and the inside of the car especially was pretty filthy. My thought was to get it done in Albania for cheap since I was going to be picking up Anna Maria and Mary in a couple days and then it would be nicer for them to ride in. He told me about some guys down the road and then took me there and translated for me about what I wanted. They cleaned the heck out of the car and only charged about 3 euros!

After the cleaning, I got on the road for the 3 hour drive to Ohrid, Macedonia. The drive was across east central Albania and there was some nice mountain scenery at times..

Shortly after taking the above picture, it occurred to me that I had missed my turn to the Macedonian border. When I looked at the navigation, sure enough, it was not navigating anymore because of the picture I took. It’s some kind of glitch on my phone that causes the camera app and the maps app to clash with each other, and sometimes it stops navigating when I take a picture (without me knowing that it stopped unless I look at the maps app). After re-navigating to Macedonia, maps was showing that I had to drive about 20 minutes the wrong way before I would be able to turn around and go back to the road I needed to the border. Impatient, I started to look for an opportunity to make a quick u-turn in the middle of the road. I came to a straight stretch that looked good, put on my hazards, and went for it. A split second later – CRUNCH – I realized I’d been hit by a car that was behind me (who I hadn’t noticed) and who had gunned it to pass me when I put on my hazards and slowed down. I got out and ensured that he was ok, realized I was ok as well, but that both of our cars were pretty messed up.

The other driver wasn’t very happy with me, and I have to say that I wasn’t very happy with me either. It was a dumb place to try a u-turn, even though it would have worked if he hadn’t been driving so aggressively. This was the first time in my life that I’d ever been in a car accident and of course it would be in a country where I don’t speak the language or understand the laws, driving someone else’s car, and two days before my wife is flying to Europe to spend time with me. Murphy’s law.

We waited for about 30 minutes for the police to show up. Luckily they spoke some English and it didn’t take them long to decide that the accident was my fault. They took all my documents and made me take a breathalyzer test. They then called a tow truck and said they would meet me in the city about 20 minutes away called Pogradec where the station was and where all the mechanics would be located.

Along the way, the tow truck driver (who didn’t speak English, but did speak German) was making calls to several garages in Pogradec looking for someone who would take the car. The first two places refused because they were too busy, but the third place said to bring it. This place was about 5 miles on the other side of the city. The tow truck driver called his nephew, Andi, to meet us at the mechanic because Andi spoke some English and could act as a translator.

When we got to the garage, it was quite an ordeal getting the car down off the bed of the tow truck – but the crew there managed to get it done. They gingerly drove it into the garage, and said that they would have to look at it in the morning to see if it was fixable, how much it would cost, how long it would take, etc. I got some clothes and the live or die things out of it and asked them very nicely to please take care of my other stuff since I had no choice but to leave it in the car (i.e. Please don’t steal my guitar and amp from the trunk). They said they would take care of it.

In the meantime, Andi drove me back into the city and took me to the police station where I had to fill out a statement and pay a fine for the bad u-turn (only about 20 euros) before the police would give me my passport and vehicle documents back. After that, Andi took me to a hotel where I got a room for the night, and he told me he’d be back the next afternoon to take me back to the mechanic to see what the verdict was. I thanked him very much for going out of his way to help me out with the rides and translating and he said it was nothing.

I spent the whole evening at the hotel racking my brain about what the options were for making things work with Anna Maria and Mary’s arrival with me stuck on the Albania/Macedonia border for an as yet undetermined amount of time. At this point, there were many unknowns – not the least of which was wether or not the car was even repairable. Of course, Anna-Maria was very supportive and said she could take care of herself until I got things figured out. It was stressing me out, so I basically just decided to pass out and hope for good news on Tuesday.

I got up on Tuesday and had breakfast and checked out of my hotel room. I had to wait until the afternoon for Andi to come pick me up, so during that time I did some further plotting and research about what to do once I found out what was going on with the car. While waiting for Andi, I asked my friend Albano from the hostel in Serande to call the mechanic (who doesn’t speak English) and get any information that he had at that point, and through that I found out that the car was going to take about 4 days to fix and cost 1200 euros. This is a lot of money and wasted time, but it brightened my spirits to learn that the car was fixable!

One option that I had explored was renting a car from Albania to make it to Skopje in time to pick up the girls, but this was an unfavorable option for multiple reasons. First, there are no legit rental companies in Pogradec, just a couple little lots that rent cars. The cars are like older model Mercedes that are in tough shape for the most part and they are expensive at 40-50 euros a day. Also, I have to prepay in cash for a car from one of these guys and I have to buy a special “green card” to take the car outside of Albania, which is another 100 euros. I really didn’t want to do that and risk having something else go wrong.

I decided to wait for Andi and go talk to the mechanic face to face and get the full story on how fast we could get the car done. It basically comes down to the parts. They had already ordered all the parts and they are supposed to arrive on Wednesday. The mechanic said if they come early in the day, there’s a chance they can get the car done late Thursday. Most likely it will be done on Friday, and Saturday at the very latest. I had to decide then what to do, and I encouraged them to work as fast as possible (I even offered to pay a little more if they could have it done on Thursday) and made the decision to just stay in Pogradec and wait out the repairs.

I grabbed some more clothes out of the car and Andi took me back into the city to get another room here for a couple nights. I found a different hotel for only 20 euros a night, with breakfast and strong WiFi, so at least I got that going for me. As much as I hate this idle time, I think I’m making the best and most cost efficient decision to wait until the car is fixed rather than renting a junker just to be at the airport in Skopje.

Instead, Anna Maria and I have come up with a new plan for her and Mary to hang out in Skopje for a couple days (Thursday and Friday) and see the sights without me and then take a rental car from Skopje Friday-Sunday so they can come to Ohrid and meet me there on Friday night or Saturday (assuming everything goes ok with the car repair). It’s not ideal, but it’s the best I could come up with in this situation. On Saturday evening, we will take both cars back to Skopje since Mary has to be back in Skopje for her flight home Sunday and then Anna Maria and I are hoping to be able to drop off the rental at the airport and continue on for the rest of her 2 weeks with me in the Fiesta.

So that’s the latest. I’m definitely upset that my dumb decision on the road has caused all this cost, stress, and inconvenience – but I have to look at the positives in that no one was hurt and that it looks like we have a path forward for the rest of Anna Maria’s visit with me and for the rest of my Euro trip. Keep your fingers crossed for me that the car gets fixed quickly and fixed right and I’ll update the blog when I have some new info.