Rubik to Rreshen Hike

Pavjo and Don with Rubik in the Background.

Home of the villagers who gave us directions

Pavjo checking out the GPS.

During the last weekend of August, I planned to a hike from Rubik to Rreshen. Rreshen is the primary city in the region I live in. Think of Tucson and Pima County. The city is about half an hour away by furgon and is located directly east of my town over a few small mountains, really just big ass hills. The volunteer who recently finished her service introduced me to a fresh graduate of the high school and suggested we have a coffee. I have been friends with Sarah, the PCV from above, for the past year and she waited until the week before she left to introduce me to this kid. Just a little background, there is maybe one guy in Rubik who speaks enough English and is not a d-bag (aka high school dropout and unemployed, the ones who do graduate usually go onto college and therefore leave Rubik). But unfortunately, this particular Bik is not interested in hanging out with an American. Needless to say, after almost a year and a half spending Monday thru Friday sitting with men more than twice my age it was a nice change to hang out with a Albanian my age who is actually interesting. Sarah called it a bro-mance, hahaha. Anyways, after I had a coffee with Pavjo, I invited him to come on a hike with me that following Sunday. He showed up around 9am with a friend of his whom I had met once or twice before named Eladon, or Don for short. They were both very happy to be out of their normal routine and out in the wild. None of us knew exactly where we were going but I did have my Garmin GPS for mapping tourism trails and we knew that we were bearing east. After about an hour we realized that the trail we had originally begun on was, um, not a trail anymore. Before we knew it we were knee deep in thorns, bushes, and some particularly itchy plants! At one point we were scaling the side of a fairly steep rock embankment. This continued on for about three hours until we fell upon a house which appeared to be abandoned. After calling for “Zoti Shpias” or man of house, we came to the conclusion that the broken down home was abandoned. After two or three minutes a hunched over woman with a stance resembling the bell keeper in Notre Dame with a face of a weathered grandmother came out of a house parallel to the one we were examining. We didn’t even see that house there due to the overgrowth around it. We exchanged the normal 3-5 Albanian introductions, “Si jeni? Si a kolut? Je fortё? Shёndet, mirё?.” This is just another thing I love about the hospitality of Albania. This woman was just going about her Sunday business caring for her land when three boys suddenly appeared in her front yard atop a secluded mountain. She was not fazed at all. Her son, who lives in Rubik and was up for a visit and to assist his widowed, elderly mother came out from the house and took over the conversation. We asked him for directions and he offered us some water from a continually running spring. We talked and cleaned our many wounds for a bit and then headed on our way. We had walked maybe a kilometer when the elderly mother popped out from behind a rock, nimble as a puma with a hoe over her shoulder. She told us we were going the wrong way, directed us to the correct path, and disappeared again into the brush. Even Don and Pavjo thought this was a bit strange. This woman was out doing all the work while her son stayed back at the house. We were having a bit of trouble hiking around on these paths and this woman wasn’t even using a path. She was also caring water and yard tools not to mention she kept appearing and disappearing without a trace.
We followed the trail that she directed us to for a few more kilometers until we found a water spring to fill our bottles. We decided we would look for a good spot with a cool view to have lunch. Pavjo and Don had not gone on many hikes in their lives and I was supposed to be the experienced one. But, I forgot to pack a lunch. I suppose I thought that the hike would not last that long but I was wrong. In true Albanian fashion, both of the boys had packed food specifically to share with me!! We ate a typical Albanian meal; tomatoes, cucumber, bread, white cheese (which I don’t like), and sausage. I was actually really hungry by now and I have never tasted better tomatoes. When I lived in the states I never really enjoyed fresh tomatoes very much. I ate them and they were good of course but I never saw a tomato and thought “owww, that looks so good right now.” The produce in this country is so fresh and free of any manipulation, it really is delicious. After lunch we headed to a peak where we could see Rreshen clearly. The rest of the hike took about three hours and in route we stopped for a bit to pick Thanё (a red berry that kind of dries out your mouth and eventually gives you a bit of a stomach ache, but for some reason intrigues you to eat way too many.) They also make an ass flavored Raki out of Thanё in some of the poorer villages. After about 6 hours of hiking we emerged into Rreshen with bloody legs and smiles on our faces. It was really interesting to talk to Pavjo and Don. Both of them had been to America at least once for a theater camp in Texas. The trip was organized by a Peace Corps Volunteer four years ago and a group from Rreshen has gone for all but this year (they had trouble finding funding). It was fun to talk about how Texas has its own culture and is actually made fun of by the rest of the country. Come to think of it, Texas is a lot like Mirdita (the region we live in). The people are really proud of the area but folks from other parts of the country make fun of how they speak, that they have less culture, and that they are a bit wild. I will post a few pictures of the hike and I will also post the trail on our Bunker Trails website as soon as I get around to processing it.