Where does one country begin and another ends? It sounds like a simple question with such a simple answer. Just look at the map, and you’ll know. There are numerous lines that neatly demarcate each country, just as a child imagines these lines as real physical structure like a line in the sand. You’re there, I’m here. This is your territory, this is mine.
In reality, borders are always porous. Even when there are walls, rivers, mountain ranges and border crossing formalities that mark the leaving of one country to enter a different country. Borders are always porous.
From the moment we boarded our overnight bus in Athens, we were already in Albanian territory. Never mind that the border crossing was still three hours away. We’re definitely no longer in Greece.
The common parlance on the bus was Albanian, not Greek. It’s a language isolate, surprisingly, which means that it bears no resemblance to any other language around. To my ears, I could only discern it as “Eastern-European sounding” and “not Russian”. But I wouldn’t be able to tell it apart from Czech, Serbian, Montenegrin, etc. I wondered if that’s what Westerners think of Japanese and Korean and Cantonese and Mandarin, similar-sounding though to my ears they’re radically different.
The nice thing about listening to a language you don’t understand is that, the mind turns it into white noise after a while. Everything sounded (or I imagined that they sounded) like regular bus conversations – people introducing themselves to the passenger next to them, benign questions about the purpose of their travel and where they come from, trivial Q&A about nothing important. I was settling into a comfortable position, in front of the bus, listening to this lullaby of foreign babbles, when the driver started blaring Albanian (I think) music on the stereo. I had no preconceived notion of what Albanian music was supposed to sound like, but it reminded me of Turkish / Middle-Eastern folk music. Each song sounded just like the one before it – same instruments, same melody, same rhythmical patterns, same scales – but different.
It’s a 12-hour overnight journey so technically the two drivers were supposed to take turns driving. Six hours, and switch. But that’s not how it works in Albania. In Albania, the drivers would take turn driving but the non-driving driver would stay up and talk to his buddy, and help him find the next box of cigarette or the lighter. They also stopped every hour at a rest stop for an espresso shot. I suspect the loud music was a deliberate strategy to keep them (and everyone else on the bus) awake.
At the beginning of the journey, the bus was quite empty. But not for long. Every hour or so, the bus made a stop to pick up more passengers and cargo. An elderly lady dropped off by her family on the bus stop, which is no more than a sign by the shoulder of the highway. We saw three men loading the bus with a gigantic 72-inch flat screen TV. Once we witnessed a man handing over an envelope to the driver through the window and the driver quickly stuffed the envelope in a lock box next to him. Another time someone tossed a box of what-looks-like-drugs onto the seat next to the driver. The drivers always took the cargo without first inspecting it.
And so the whole night we followed the same pattern: drove an hour with the drivers yapping away and music blasting on the stereo, quick pit stop to pee and get coffee, drove 15 minutes, another stop to pick up passenger/cargo, repeat.
We’re finally at the border after 4 or so hours and we cleared immigration without even having to get off the bus. The border agent boarded the bus, collected everyone’s passport (or ID card, if you’re Albanian) and told everyone to stay put. Not ten minutes later, he gave the stack of passports and IDs to the driver and waved us goodbye. That’s it. No stamps to mark our entry into the country, no bag check, no questioning, no police inspection. Nada. One could be forgiven for thinking that Albania is (already) part of the EU with this seeming lack of border.
I was slightly disappointed, since I was expecting some fanfare from the border crossing. Albania, after all, used to be an isolated communist country, much like how North Korea is right now, up until 1991. There were stories about how back then tourists had to be escorted (and heavily monitored) while in the country. You weren’t allowed to take any pictures without your handler next to you. And – not sure if this was an urban legend – they made you wash your feet at the border crossing, as if to say: clean your dirty capitalist feet before you enter our country! Now they just let everyone in.