
This is Theth, a small village in the karst valley of the Albanian Alps, by River Theth. It’s an old settlement famous for their kullas, tall stone towers where people would go into ‘hiding’ after killing someone as their and their victim’s relatives settled the blood feud. The main drag consisted of a clinic, a minimart, and a grocery store whose parking lot also served as the pick-up point, i.e. terminal for buses and vans. We joked that in Theth, there’s not much to do besides hike, look at the pretty mountains and admire the clear blue rapids. If not for tourism, all the locals probably would have already abandoned Theth save for a few farmers.
We had hastily booked our accommodation in Theth the day before on Booking.com without paying careful attention to its location. We knew that it’s a few kilometers away from the main drag, but as we walked further and further away from town and still no civilization in sight, I became more and more irritable. Only after we passed all the farmhouses, crossed a few streams and a bridge that we reached another settlement called Okol, with a few guesthouses and a large lawn packed with tents. However we didn’t see any signs bearing the name of the guesthouse we’re supposed to stay in and from the GPS that we were given, it looked like the guesthouse was quite a ways behind the road but we couldn’t find any roads leading to it. We asked around but nobody seemed to know the place, so we kept walking until there was no more houses along the road. An old man was walking out of the house and we asked him if he knew where ‘Cold Spring Guesthouse’ was. He shook his head side to side at first, but when we showed him the name of the guesthouse, he pointed to the road uphill. He said something in Albanian that we guessed meant, “That way!”
But the road uphill took us up a gravel road towards the woods with no houses in sight. This did not look promising at all.
“Do you think he actually know where we’re trying to go?” I asked Gabriel.
“Maybe we should turn around?” Gabriel asked me.
We were both unsure if we should keep going or head back down to the settlement and ask someone else. It was frustrating and a somewhat philosophical quandary. We knew exactly the GPS location of the guesthouse and we knew exactly the GPS location of where we were, but knowing your location and your destination is pointless when there’s no road to the destination.
We kept comparing the reality of the woods that surround us and the two-dimensional colored maps on our phone screen. The pin – where the guesthouse was supposed to be – was located right in the middle of the hairpin loop that was the road we’re on. “Perhaps the entrance is on the other side of the loop?” we guessed. But that means climbing further uphill, further away from Okol, from settlement where we knew there were houses and people and food.
Right, we were exhausted from the hike, and hungry, so the lack of direction and the not knowing when we’d finally be able to put our bags down and rest and eat was particularly frustrating.
“I’m sorry,” I said to Gabriel again. It was the second or third time in the last hour that I said it. Admitting my mistake loudly was my verbal self flagellation that I hoped would invite pity and pre-empt blame. “Stop saying that,” Gabriel said. “We all made mistake. Now let’s just move on and find the place.”
We decided to continue walking uphill on the road to see if there was another entrance on the other side. At this point we were both in a foul mood. I was blaming myself for not double-checking the location of this guesthouse before I booked it and felt so defeated by such a rookie mistake. In my desperation and frustration I started composing a scathing online review of this guesthouse, about how impossible it was to find the place, how far it was from town, how unreliable the provided GPS location was. I would write the most negative review I’d ever written without sounding the least bit like a privileged whiny tourist with a first-world problem.
Another 1 kilometer and still no guesthouse in the horizon, so we stopped to consider our options. We could walk to the next guesthouse at the top of the hill, or walk back towards town.
“Or I could try calling the guesthouse,” I said.
“Or that.”
Why I didn’t try doing this earlier could only be attributed to my precipitously low blood glucose level. But now that we’re further away from town, the cell signal wavered between full bars and no bar. So there I was holding my phone up, even though I read somewhere that doing so did nothing to cell reception. I dialed the Albanian phone number listed on the booking confirmation. The phone on the other end was ringing but no one was picking it up.
We were just about to give up and walk to the other guesthouse when my phone vibrated. Albanian number.
“Hello?”
“Hello. Someone called me from this number, American number.” On the other end was a woman, with Eastern European accent, but perfectly good English.
“Yes! This is Selina. I’m supposed to stay at your guesthouse tonight,” I said as quickly as I could, fearing I might lose the cell signal at any moment.
“We’re lost,” I finally said, admitting the pickle we’re in. “We followed the road up the mountain and now we don’t see any houses. We could not find the entrance to your guesthouse.”
“I’m right here,” she said. “I sent you the GPS.” I thought she sounded defensive.
“Right,” I replied. “But we didn’t see any signs or any roads leading to your GPS location and a guy told us to go up the road leading to the mountain and now we don’t see any houses. Just trees.”
I must have sounded so pitiful or exasperated or close to tears, or all of the above because as soon as I said it, she changed her tone and started apologizing and begged us to turn around and that she would meet us on the road.
“Yes, just please turn around. We’re right across the white house with all the tents.”
I wanted to tell her that that was a vital information that she could have included in her last message to me, along with the GPS information. We started walking back towards Okol as I continued to perfect the imaginary negative review in my head. I felt angry, though I wasn’t quite sure what I was angry at.
Does anger always require an unfortunate recipient? Is anger like a burning ball of fire one has to spit up and throw at somebody else lest it burns oneself? Gabriel tried to talk me through my seething rage but at times like these, I recognized that it often feels better, more “fun” to keep the anger burning than to accept and let go. For to accept seemed like a defeat. A passive acceptance of the external circumstance. No. When the strong wind blows, I want to be the sail that’s battered and tattered fighting against the wind, not the folded sail.
In that moment, I saw so clearly how my desire to keep the anger burning was my choice, and that was the truth. That our angers (and fears) are there because we choose to keep them by our sides, because there’s something so satisfying about nurturing these inner demons that also allow us to maintain the story in our heads that we’re the heroes fighting against our adversaries, forgetting that we are our own enemies.
I asked myself, which is the truth and which is fiction?
I made a mistake for not checking
the location of the guesthouse
prior to booking and now we
realized it's 5km from the town
We are tired and hungry
I am an idiot who makes this kind
of stupid rookie mistakes all the
time and now the Universe is
giving me a lesson for being an
idiot
I am being punished by my own
stupidity.
The owner of the guesthouse is
deliberately making it difficult for
us to find her guesthouse by hiding
information from us.
Once I separate the truth from the fiction, the anger slowly subsides…