Can We Drive Our Van Into Albania?

Today is a big day. Moving day! First of all, it's a little sad because we're leaving this beautiful coast and beach here in southern Montenegro. But more importantly than that, we enjoyed an amazing sunset last night. So Montenegro gave us a nice farewell. But the sadness... What an amazing small country. Yeah, and but the sadness is short-lived because today we head to a new country. Look out, Albania. We are on our way. It is time for a border crossing. How many countries? Goodbye, Montenegro. We're headed to our 21st country in the van and our 32nd country all together. That means the cats, G-Money and Vanna, are going into their 21st country. They're the most traveled kitties in the whole town! They are some traveling kitties. Let's go. Doesn't matter how many times we've done it. Crossing the border always gives me the butterflies. And we are getting real close to the border of Albania. Whole new country and we all know as soon as we cross that border everything changes and we have to learn all the stuff again. At first. This is gonna be the first time in a long time we have to get new money. They don't use the euro. Yeah. In fact, I need to Google that. See how much I need to pull out at an ATM. Let me do that real quick. I'll be right back. All right, I'm back. I had to hurry up and Google that because as soon as we cross the border our cell phones won't work for a little while till stuff starts to kick back in or we get new SIMs in Albania. But the Albanian money is called a Lek. L-E-K. 100 Leks is basically one dollar. So there we go. We have to get insurance. Yeah, we cross the border. We check out of Montenegro. Then as we're checking into Albania, we will have to get insurance for the van which we hope Fingers crossed we can do at the border. One of the last things we did before heading to the border is fuel up the van. Fuel is cheaper in Montenegro than it is in Albania by quite a bit. 30 cents a liter? Based on research, it looks like it's gonna go back to Italy and France prices of like a dollar 80, dollar 90 or euro 80 or 90 a liter. So eight, seven dollars, eight dollars a gallon. So we fueled up before we left Montenegro. So we haven't gotten out of our car yet. We were kind of driving up towards the booths where the border agents are inside. But a border agent comes out and takes two or three vehicles documents with him into these little buildings and then you just wait. So that's kind of odd that you hand over all your documents and then they wander off. And you don't really know where they are. We never feel comfortable about letting our original documents out of our sight. He had like, he went like seven or eight cars. Yeah, so he gets a bunch of them and so I think we'll check and make sure we have all of our documents before we pull out of here. And this is the border checkpoint for leaving Montenegro and it is an odd bright lavender purple color the entire building. Kurt thinks it's supposed to be soothing. It's not working. It's not working. But we're in the process of leaving of Montenegro. We probably started this process at about 1120. 1131 we have all of our original documents back. We are out of Montenegro. Now we're driving the short distance to the Albania check-in point. So so far so good. We are quite confused. We have not seen anywhere where we officially check into Albania and we're a few miles down the road already. We're thinking maybe that checkpoint was a check-in check-out where both countries work together. Because we are in Albania and we don't feel like we went through a border checkpoint. So I mean we checked out we handed them our documents. It was definitely the Montenegro police and we slowly drove through and there was nothing else. So we're gonna just head on to our campsite that we have picked out here and do a little research and make sure we're okay because it won't be far if we feel like we need to come back. But we didn't get insurance. Yeah, it was really strange. It was a very very unusual thing. It was like no border checkpoint. Yeah, they have to share. Montenegro and Albania must share right there. But uh maybe somebody at the campsite will be able to help us. Yeah, interesting, huh? But we are in Albania whether or not that is official. I don't know guys. I don't know. But surely we are. You can't just drive into another country and we did hand our documents over and they handed them back. So I think we are officially in Albania. We will do some checking on that. But that means 21st country for the van. 21st country for Vanna and G-Money. 32nd country in total for all of our lifetime for me and Kurt. Here we go. Albania. All right, looks like diesel is 186. That is Italy pricing right there. We did good by topping the tank off because it was what 149? 147 in Montenegro. Do they do insurance here, Kurt? I'm asking. He said it was one quarter. Oh, okay. That's good news. All right. So we have stopped off for Kurt to get a SIM card for his phone. I've been testing out an eSIM thing and it seems to be working. So I'm gonna stick with that and we'll see how it compares to Kurt's SIM phone, SIM card here. So we checked out and in with the same little customs agent guys and we are officially good to go. But we need to get insurance for the van which we can get here and also the SIM card. It's gonna be 25 euros for 30 gigs per month of data. And the insurance for 30 days is gonna be 69 euros. So once we get down here, we're ready to go. All right. I like it. Hear that singing? We've been told that it's a sound we'll hear a lot now that we've crossed into Albania. We passed a mosque about a half a mile back and it is prayer time. Now Albania is known and famous for being a very religious tolerant nation with two, three and four different types of religions setting up churches on the same block and being friendly and simultaneously practicing their own specific religions side-by-side for centuries. So maybe not centuries, but within the 1900s, I do think that's for sure. But it is a heavy Muslim country and the daily prayers are a thing that is done and I'm still sitting here in the parking lot while Kurt is getting his SIM card and buttoning up the insurance for the van and we are experiencing the very first Muslim prayer time for us here in Albania. Did you hear the prayer? Yeah, the call to prayer. That was cool. They do that five times a day. Five times a day. Five times, a lot of praying. I got everything hooked up. It was 94 euros in total. I got to throw away my free SIM card. I got 30, I got 10 free gigs of data. So I got 40, actually I got 11 free. So I got 41 for 25 euros. So that's pretty good for one month. Nice. I need to find the SIM card holder for you. All right, guys, we're in Albania. We're good to go. We are officially in Albania and we're good to go and that makes it the fastest border crossing we have ever done. We left Montenegro and entered Albania with us and the van in eight minutes. It's a miracle. It is a record for sure. Normally after crossing a border we're tired and stressed. So we usually plan to stay at a nice campsite the first night in the country and that is where we have just arrived. We are just outside of the city of Shkodër, Albania. And we are going to get settled into our campsite where we were meant to relax from a stressful border crossing. But now we'll just relax from the fastest and easiest border crossing to date. Good morning, and welcome to Albania. I can tell you what, we found the camp spot that the cats like. They've been on several walks through here. We're just outside of Shkodër, which if you remember back to Montenegro, we went on a boat ride in Shkodër Lake. And so this is the lake. We're just on the other side. We had views of Albania. Well, guess what? We're here. This campground sits at the base of a pretty cool fort and we're gonna go have a look at that later before we move on to our camp spot on the lake. And we're gonna play there. But I did want to take a minute and show you this campground because it's pretty cool. And it's kind of unique and Albanian style. It has a huge pool in the middle. The pools drain. There is nobody here. Of course, it's wintertime. And so we've been seeing this all along this Adriatic Sea coast where like we're the only people there. It's kind of weird. But in any event, they've got a full line of bathrooms and showers. This place is pretty big. I assure you this place is filled up with people who want to have adventures on the lake, see the castle, the historic town of Shkodër and just kind of get away. It's also got kind of a hotel, a big event space and these little, I think they call them chalets, I call them cabins with some unique artwork. They have a restaurant with a really big garden. We didn't eat at the restaurant. Again, most everything here is closed. We haven't even seen the owners, only the maintenance workers. I don't even know how we pay for this place. But in any event, welcome to Albania! We're gonna get out and have some We're gonna get out and have some adventures in short order, but we'll see you soon. Our original plan was to leave the campsite today, drive through what we thought was a small little city of Shkodër, see a lake, and then start heading south. But when Kurt went up to pay at the camping reception office, he learned some pretty fascinating stuff. First, we just absolutely can't leave today, and we're gonna tell you why in a little while. But second, we decided to drive into what we thought was the small city and just scope it out. This is no small city. Shkodër is big, and it is hectic, and in the middle of a weekday, there are people buzzing about everywhere. And one of my main first impressions of Albania, the driving culture is very different. The roads, the people, the crosswalks, the bicycles, the double parking. It is an adventure, isn't it, Kurt? Yeah, really. They clearly are very polite drivers. The pedestrians have the right-of-way. The bicycles have the right-of-way. A lot of times people just walk out in the streets, you can tell. They just know the vehicles are gonna stop. So definitely a culture of that. But Snow's right. It's a bustling little town. Yeah. Now, we drove through because the lady at the campsite had told us that we would be able to drive our scooters down here. And we think we can. It'll be a big adventure, but we think we can, and it may be the only way we get to really get a good look at this city. Right now, we're leaving the city and driving just a few minutes to the south shore of the lake. This is the same lake we took a boat tour on in Montenegro. Half the lake was in Montenegro, half the lake is in Albania. So we are gonna ride up there and take a look at that. But what you need to know is we're gonna tour this area the best we can. There's some cool stuff here to see here. Some rivers, some bridges, some beautiful mountains in the backdrops that are snow-covered and iced over and you can't even get to them right now. But in a few days, this town is the place to be for a very special festival. So we have decided to stay at the campground so we'll be able to take you to that festival. That's the scoop. So we're gonna be here for a little bit. Next stop, the lake. We found a place to squeeze the van into right down here at a nice little park area along this waterfront. Looked like there were a lot of little restaurant type places. We're gonna take a stroll and see what we can find. You guys know I love a fishing culture and although there's not a lot of activity going on here I can definitely see some nets and it looks like these are kind of like hoop nets almost like fish traps. And so those will kind of stretch out for a long ways. The fish swims up in there. Sometimes they bait those types of things. Also looks like they might have some gill nets here. If you see the boats here all painted yellow and they're made out of metal. So they're metal boats and it doesn't look like this is fishing season but that's definitely a freshwater lake and they do some fishing there. So interesting. This looks like some kind of grilled zucchini. As usual the music was playing during lunch, but it didn't take away from the food. It was tasty, but we couldn't vlog. Yeah, so we ordered that first appetizer plate just to kind of get a it was a sample of he called it Albanian appetizers and then we liked two of them so much we ordered another plate with just those two on them. We had a Greek salad. The food was delicious. What was your favorite? Well, I like those little eggplant things that were I think he said there was cheese in there like little fingers and then they had these other little fried balls. Yeah, little croquette looking things. Little croquettes. I don't know what was in them, but they were good. And the dipping sauce in the middle when you look at it, you're thinking it's gonna be like that cucumber Greek sauce But no, it was more like a French onion dip tasting sauce. It was just really good. They were really kind in there. It was a nice place to stop and get some food. Plenty to eat and it was 15 euros and we're stuffed. Two drinks, two giant orders of appetizers and a Greek salad big enough for two people. We've heard the food prices at the restaurants in Albania are gonna be a little bit more budget-friendly and I think we're off to a good start. We'll see. And it was a beautiful scene out the window with this lake where we've walked out here now. Birds all around us and you're gonna see over here behind us. That's the, I guess we call them the Albanian Alps in the background. Just beyond these are a few famous hiking trails. But we can't get to those right now. They don't even open until June because the mountains are so big back there that everything is froze over. But Kurt has his eyes set on that hike whenever we return one time in the summertime, don't you? I do indeed. All right, we're gonna go do some more driving and some more adventuring. Albania is off to a good start. I think we have to do some googling because I think this sign is telling us the kind of marine life that's in this lake. It looks like saltwater marine life. There's like three or four different kinds of octopus and there's shrimp and all sorts of cool looking things. But this is a lake and I think it's fresh water. So bit of confusion guys. Got to figure it out. Today's outing is gonna be a short one. We ate too much. Now we're in a food coma and we need to go back to the campground. Don't worry. We'll be exploring this area some more. Probably tomorrow. Nap time, right Kurt? So as Snow is saying, there's been a big change of plans and we're gonna be sticking around in this city for a few extra days. Because Carnaval is in town. It is gonna be a big festival and we are excited to join in. But there's no way we can cover this all in one video. So we will be back tomorrow. Turn your notifications on. Make sure you subscribe. Because we have a full party downtown and we have a special invitation to a dinner party. Full costumes, masks, the whole deal, food, music, traditional Albanian festival guys. And we can't wait to see it and we can't wait to show you. So please join us tomorrow. We'll see you guys soon. Cheers! If you liked this video, be sure to subscribe to our channel and hit that notification bell so you guys know when we put out new videos. And don't forget, you can always follow us over on Instagram to see what's going on in between videos. Cheers guys!