Rain and sacrifice in Tangier

Despite many physical advantages, Tangier is not an easy place to fall in love with. Nestled under the Rif Mountains between the Straits of Gibraltar and Cape Spartel, this geographically significant city stares out to Spain, straddles the Mediterranean and the Atlantic and also forms a crucial land bridge between Europe and Africa. Yet despite all these natural advantages, modern Tangier seems mean, gritty and indefinably scary. All I saw was a poor town with a dirty beach in the rain.

Others have seen a more romantic side to Tangier when the charm was not quite so faded. It was the city the producers had in mind for the film “Casablanca” and arguably has as cinematic a name. Tangier was the wartime setting for spies and spivs. But when another movie came out in 1942 with the title Algiers, the makers switched Rick’s Café to the more prosaic financial and commercial capital of Casablanca. Tangier has long been the main European diplomatic settlement of Morocco on the fault line between French and Spanish domination. Legally it was an international zone from 1923 until Morocco’s independence in 1956. While the rest of Morocco was under French rule, Tangier was governed by the consuls of eight European nations and had three official languages. During the war it was ruled by neutral Spain but retained an anarchic quality. According to the city’s most notable ex-pat Paul Bowles, Tangier was a place where “every fourth person was a smuggler, a spy or a refugee from justice in his native land”.

Bowles spent the last fifty years of his life here and the town (as well as Fes) was the setting for his first novel The Sheltering Sky. Inspired by Bowles’s description of the city, William Burroughs lived there for several years in two stints in the mid 1950s. Tolerant Tangier was ideal for his hedonistic lifestyle and inspired him to write The Naked Lunch. Back in 1867, another American writer Mark Twain said the houses were so jammed together it seemed like "a crowded city of snowy tombs". The city was also a muse for Henri Matisse. He stayed many times at the now derelict Hotel Villa de France where he painted the view. "I have found landscapes in Morocco," he claimed, "exactly as they are described in Delacroix's paintings."

I got no sense of Delacroix’s paintings when I was there. But I was doubly handicapped. Tangier is probably not at its liveliest in the rain and my wet stay also coincided with Eid al-Adha, the festival of the “sacrifice”. The only people on the streets were the occasional gang of youths putting a ram’s head on a bonfire to re-enact Abraham’s sacrifice in lieu of his son Isaac. I was not aware of my coincidental timing until I woke up in the morning and heard a strange sound of silence coming from the street. The normal mad Moroccan hubbub was missing. All the shops were shut, the streets were empty. Even the hustlers pushing dope were quiet.

This eeriness was in stark contrast to the mayhem of the two days before. I arrived late at night after an exhausting and delayed eight hour train trip from Fes. When we got off the train, I was immediately approached by a petit taxi driver who offered to take me to the centre for 40 dirhams. Thinking the fare should be about half that, I haggled with him and said twenty. His side came down to 30 but I still shook my head in refusal. But he was unmoved and drifted off seeking more favourable succour (sucker?). Suddenly I realised the expected deluge of better offers weren’t there and there were no more taxi drivers around. I turned around to look for my guy and was prepared to accept the 30 but he had disappeared into the throngs.

That left a long walk into town. This was the last thing I needed after arriving two hours late. I heartily cursed my overly hard bargaining stance. As usual with Morocco, there were a distinct lack of signposts giving any useful information but I asked a couple of people along the way and eventually found my way into the heart of town after about 30 to 40 minutes of rolling my luggage along.

There weren’t many hotels to speak of; those I found looked closed for winter. From a distance I could see the imposing landmark of Tangier’s most famous hotel towering over the casbah. The Moorish-style El Minzah was the epitome of international zone elegance but a bit too salubrious for a grotty backpacker. Desperate for a bed, I probably would have paid its exorbitant rates for one night until I spied the more homely accommodation of the Pension Gibraltar across the road. Its seven euros a night accommodation may have lacked a sense of history, but it was much more in my price range.

From here it was just a short hop to the top of the medina and the Grand Socco. Socco is the Spanish word for souk. The market has moved leaving the socco as a meeting place and the best spot in Tangier to hail a cab. In a beautiful 1940s building (the former Rif Cinema) is the new Cinematheque de Tanger with its reputation for showing experimental and arthouse cinema. Across the road are the arched gates that lead to the small but circuitous medina. Down the hill towards the port is the Petit Socco, a supposed hive of prostitution, drug dealing and human smuggling.

Also down the hill lies the seaport linking Morocco with Spain in an hour. The tangle of fishing boats next door ply the waters at a slower pace but the neglect of the city can be seen further on at a beachfront that has seen better days. The end of the International Zone in 1956 was catastrophic for Tangier's economy as the foreigners deserted the hotels, leaving them as decaying and empty shells. According to The Independent, Tangier may be on the rise again. It says King Mohammed VI, who came to the throne in 1999, has recognised the economic potential of the city and is giving it a facelift. “There is an energy and optimism about the city,” says the English paper, “and it seems set to flourish once more.” While I did not see too much evidence of this, I hope they are right. Tangier is certainly a city with great potential. And I’m sure the old lush would have looked a lot more appealing under Bowles’ sheltering sky of sunshine.

Finding my feet in Fes

Most people expect to get lost in the medina in Fes, but my problem was just finding it in the first place. It should be difficult to miss. This labyrinthine sprawling medina is the size of 300 football fields and the largest pedestrianised space in the world. Home to 150,000 people, Fes al Bali is a mosaic of mosques, madrassas and mad souks. For over twelve hundred years people have lived on its tangled warrens of tiny streets and alleys that break out like sores in every direction. The medina is relatively self-contained and is surrounded by forbidding high perimeter walls that are penetrated in a relatively few locations by historic city gates. But where the hell was it?

I had a map which was well-nigh useless. It was torn from the pages of a Fes tourist brochure from my hotel and it showed the three main areas of the city. But it gave little to work on for street level directions. I did manage to find my way to the Jewish medina which was closest to the new town where I was staying. The Jewish medina was about 1.5 km from the nouvelle ville (the new town built during the French occupation) and the main medina of Fes el Bali was another 1.5 km further distant. Or so the man who would be my guide told me.

This was the chap who attached himself to me when I got to Fes railway station the previous night. I had arrived after a long and late eight hour trip from Marrakech. I was tired and glad of assistance. He could speak good English and walked me to towards a local cheap hotel. He stood there waiting as I checked in and asked what time in the morning I was planning to go to the medina. “About 9am,” I thoughtlessly answered before immediately wondering why he was asking the question. “Why do you ask?” I asked. “I am your guide,” he replied confidently.

Well, this was news to me. I certainly didn’t want to be hamstrung by a guide walking through the medina, even if it was a rabbit warren. “I don’t want a guide,” I told him. He told me I needed a guide, “Fes is a big place, you will get lost.” By now I was wanting him to get lost and I insisted I was doing without. Then we cut to the chase. “Didn’t I find you a nice, cheap hotel?” he said. I could not deny this and realised I would have to pay him off now. “Yes,” I said, “and here is five dirham for you.” He was still not satisfied having seen I’d gotten ten dirham in change from the hotel bill. “You give me the ten dirham change,” he insisted. I relented and gave him the ten. I never saw him again.

The following morning however, I was having partial feelings of regret. It wasn’t so much I needed help getting round the medina. It was simply a matter of locating an entrance to it. Surely a 300-hectare walled city would be easy to find? On the map, I followed the road past the Jewish medina that seemed to be taking me to the main Bab Boujloud (Blue Gate) entrance but instead I ended up in a small street that didn’t seem to be going anywhere. I knew from the medina walls and the contours of the hill around that I was in the vicinity but the entrance way eluded me. I decided I would at least explore the Jewish medina while I was here.

Barely 150 Jews now live in Fes but they have long played an important role in the commercial and cultural life of the city. In 808AD, Sultan Idriss II admitted large numbers of Jews from Andalusia. He wanted them for their commercial skills and wide regional contacts. They were also a lucrative source of revenue as they each paid an annual tax of 30,000 dinars. The golden age of the Jewish community in Fes would last for nearly three hundred years. But the community was eventually massacred or forced to flee by fanatical Muslim sects who could not tolerate their presence.

While my presence was tolerated, some of my photography was not. The snaps of the long row of busy market stalls were fine but when I took photos of the royal palace at the top end of the Jewish medina, I incurred the wrath of the local constabulary. After one such photo, a gendarme chased me up the street. He didn’t like the last snap I took. “Show me the photo,” he demanded. I took out the camera and showed him the last photo. “Delete,” he commanded in a voice that brooked no argument. I deleted it there and then. He was satisfied. As he walked away I pointed to the opposite wall and asked was it ok to photograph that. “Yes,” he said.

A bit bemused by local photography rules, I walked along the garden walls north of the Jewish medina where I saw a good-sized map pinned to the wall. It offered me the good news that if I kept walking along that road, I would eventually arrive at the big medina; the Fes el Bali. Sure enough the road led to a large enclosed space and a gate at the northern end of the medina. I wandered through this gate but once again found myself in a maze of unpromising looking and empty pedestrian streets that led to numerous dead ends. Was this to be an episode out of Kafka where I could never find the entrance to the Castle?

I beat a hasty retreat back to the gate and satisfied myself with walking down a marketplace on the outside walls of the medina. Here at least were large crowds. Lo and behold while fascinated by the market wares I suddenly found myself back inside the medina and on what seemed to be the main drag, or one of them at least (as it turned out, it was indeed the main street through the medina).

Pleased but still a bit nervous I cagily walked further into the claustrophobic maelstrom being careful not to take any turns off I could not replicate at a late time. Where was Ariadne and her ball of string when you needed her? I followed the crowds on the main street taking me down the hill. I hadn’t found the Bab Boujloud but it seemed I was doing alright without it. From what I’d read, there were two reasons why a guide was not necessary. The first was that the medina was on a hill, so if in doubt keep walking down and you will eventually reach an exit. The second was the eight-starred signposts scattered around the medina which led to significant landmarks (I hadn’t really noticed these so far).

The streets were full of frenzied commerce. There were sidewalk cafes and souks and endless rows of shops that sold leather goods from the medina’s own tanneries. There were brass works and copper works; there were craft shops and dye pits, electrical goods, fashions and fruits, and there were all sorts of animal foods (pigmeat excepted). The bloodcurdling sight of a camel’s head perched on a butcher’s counter took a bit of getting used to. There were rows of poultry shops all ready to chop off chooks’ heads at a moment’s notice. Meanwhile all around, men carried sheep in trolleys to destinations unknown. Donkeys carrying impossible loads were led by craggy old men who shouted “balek! balek!” (which translates roughly as “get out of the way quick!”) whenever they needed to get past you on a narrow street. This urgency was even more apparent when going downhill as they made a rapid gravity-assisted plunge through the medina.

The straight path of the road finally ran out at the entrance to the massive Karaouine Mosque. The mosque can hold 20,000 people but non-Muslims are not allowed to enter. So I took the right hand turn taking me further down the hill. This way eventually led to a triangular opening at Nejarine Square. Here, said a sign, the medina brass works were all located and sure enough wherever I looked I could see (and very much hear) the clunking of hammers on all sort of brass instruments and utensils. There was no obvious way forward from here and several possibilities. I tried to be a bit more adventurous and took some of the different paths always figuring I could make it back out from here. One of the paths took me to an exit from the medina, the Place R’cif. Great, I thought, now I have at least two escape routes. Working my way back to Nejarine Square brass works, I finally noticed the eight point directional arrows. And at the map in the centre of the square, I realised there were several routes that led between significant medina landmarks.

Armed with this crucial new knowledge, I started to explore some of the paths. The signposts weren’t always there at a fork in the road, or even sometimes wrong when they were there, but generally speaking they were a godsend for getting around the casbah. Through various wanderings I found several other exits including the Bab Guissa and the Bab R’Mila (which I renamed the Roger Milla Gate in honour of the Cameroonian football great). On my way back from one of these gates, I found the entrance to the tanneries. Several guides offered their services for payment but I wasn’t interested. I climbed through some stairs where leather wares were being sold and found the balcony where the whole tanning operation could be admired in all its glory. In the gap between buildings, rows of holes held dyes of all different colours. The process hasn’t changed in centuries. Workers stood in several of the holes and washed the hides. On the side wall, hides hung in the sun to dry. There must have been at least fifty holes of dyes in the part I saw. It stunk which shouldn’t surprise as the dyes are made of acids, pigeon shit and cow piss. As I held my nose, someone shouted at me, presumably demanding money. I ignored this, avoiding eye contact and fled the balcony as quickly as I could. I made my way back to Nejarine Square and finally found an eight-point star that was pointing the way to the mysterious Bab Boujloud.

It turns out that the road that led to the Bab was more or less parallel to the road I took to enter the medina. I didn’t find it immediately, there were several twists and turns and bad bab information that continually sent me back to the square from whence I came. But after taking a different route though the market I found the long alley back up the hill that led to the Boujloud. The monumental gate dates only to the French occupation in 1913 but the ruins of the 12th century original are right next to it. The modern gate was under scaffolds for renovations. After five or six hours tramping around the medina, I finally called it quits and made my way up the hill one last time. The paths were now heaving with people and it took a while to get out. But at least it didn’t require a guide.

Djemaa el Fna: Marrakech’s Assembly of the Dead

It seems odd travelling on an Irish airline from France to Morocco. The onflight ads are jauntily delivered in an Irish-tinged English. Yet the flight is packed with French and Moroccans heading from Marseilles to Marrakech and most of the other departures from the terminal were the same airline’s flights to Agadir, Fez and Casablanca. The carrier is of course Ryanair. The budget airline has a serious bums on seats policy and they have made significant inroads into the French-Moroccan market. As for me, this flight for 10 euro was too good to pass up. The hidden extras of checked-in baggage and credit card payment more than doubled the cost but it was still ridiculously cheap compared to European train travel. Others evidently agreed. There is not a spare seat on this plane.

And so when flight FR5152 landed on time in Marrakech, the happy travellers greet the Ryanair horserace jingle with cheers, clapping and hoots of laughter. When we get off there is much jostling for position in the passport line. The local immigration police take their time processing the queue and have to type in all the garbage information from the immigration cards onto their computers. I say garbage as my handwriting was barely legible and when asked where I was staying in Marrakech (at that stage I had no idea where I was going to stay the night), I put down “Marrakech Radisson” in a probably vain bid to seem wealthy and therefore not worth hassling. I’m not even sure there is a Radisson in Marrakech, but I knew that on my budget I certainly wasn’t staying there even if there was.

Similarly I avoid the fleet of Mercedes “grand taxies” lined up outside the terminal building and find a cheap and cheerful local bus to get me to the “centre ville”. I’m hoping that means the medina and not the new European town. The heart of Marrakech and its undoubted centre ville is the Djemaa el Fna. The name in Arabic could either mean “assembly of the dead” or “place of the vanished mosque” but there is nothing ghostlike about the Djemaa. It is a massive square packed day and night by locals and tourists alike. It is a heritage site listed by UNESCO whose cultural space is a “masterpiece of the oral and intangible heritage of humanity”.

At least, that is what it said on the cracked plaque in the square. It didn’t take long for me to see it. Thankfully the bus dropped off its load in the medina at a convenient spot between Djemaa el Fna and the magnificent 12th century Koutoubia mosque, the largest in Marrakech. Around me was a flurry of activity and noise. The road space was a seething mass of activity and a never-ending contest between cars, buses, taxies, donkeys, carts, horses, mopeds, bikes and many intrepid pedestrians. It looked daunting but when I was forced to cross the road the sea of traffic miraculously parted for me. I made it to the other side safely enough even if a few motorbikes whizzed by a bit too close for comfort.

On the other side of the road, I found my “Radisson”. This was a one star just-north-of-fleabag hotel, perfect for me. It was clean enough, and most importantly it was just a couple of hundred metres from the Djemaa el Fna. The huge square is teeming with people and noise. The squeal of singers is matched by the pounding beat of African drums. From the distance it looks as if the square is ablaze with pales of smoke rising above the rooftops. On closer inspection the fires are from the endless rows of grills and the victims are piles of chickens, pigeons, snails, pigs on spits and a bevy of other unfortunate roasted animals. Perhaps the assembly of the dead doesn’t refer to humans, after all.

Each of the restaurants comes with its own aggressive spruiker or two. These guys won’t take no for answer. Or even several noes. They plant a menu into your hand, attempt to steer you to a table and even if you are still insistently against the idea, they implore you to at least take a look at the kitchen in all its outdoor glory. And assuming you are not vegetarian but are hungry (like I was), you won’t resist their charms for very long.

Charms of a different kind take place in the square during daylight hours. The musicians are still there but instead of beating out a frenzied rhythm, the music now attempts to raise snakes from their torpor. There seems to be dozens of snake charmers scattered along the square and when walking it pays to be careful and watch where you are going. Those snakes seem drugged and probably harmless but I would imagine a dozy viper wouldn’t take too kindly to being trodden on.

Behind the square lies a dense network of souks selling every produce under the sun. And there is a sun here, even in December. It gets very cold at night as winds drift down from the nearby snowy High Atlas Mountains. But during the day, the warmth comes as a pleasant change from the European winter.

The earliest travellers to Marrakech called it Morocco City. The word Morocco is derived from Marrakech which has a Berber root “murakush” meaning land of god. It was the country’s capital for many centuries with the Djemaa el Fna the city’s heart and soul. Here people met and listened to storytellers spinning their yarns. Acrobats, musicians, dancers, charmers and healers vied for attention and money. The square became a hub of trade and entertainment, a gift it has not lost to this day.

Sur les Papes d’Avignon

It should probably come as no surprise that the idea for the world’s largest Gothic building should come from a Goth. Not one of the East Germanic barbarian tribe who terrorised the Romans in the fourth century, nor a black-dressed post-punk pallid type that gauntly haunt the streets of most cities in current times. No, this Goth is Raymond Bertrand de Got, who was crowned pope as Clement V in 1305. A haughty Frenchman, he decided to be crowned in Lyon not Rome. After his election, he went one step further and moved his whole court and papacy out of Rome and into the southern French city of Avignon.

Clement V was a controversial choice for pope. The conclave of cardinals took twelve months to elect him as it was split down the middle between French and Italian cardinals. Clement was a pawn of the powerful French king Philip IV better known as Philip Le Bel (“the fair”). The king’s nickname referred to his hunky good looks not his morals. In truth Philip the Fair was Machiavellian before the word was even invented and used his influence over Clement to destroy the Knights Templar so he could remove himself from the debts he owed them. It was under Philip’s influence that Clement moved his papal court to Avignon so he could be closer the real action that was taking place in France.

Strictly speaking, Avignon was not a French city at the time but a papal enclave surrounded by French territory. In fact Avignon would not become part of France until the time of the Revolution. The city stood on a strategic position on the Rhone river on the main route between Rome and Santiago de Compostela in northern Spain, the shrine of St James, and Europe’s most important pilgrimage destination since the fall of Jerusalem to Saladin’s armies in 1187. Avignon had long prospered from this lucrative trade of pilgrims.

But to get past Avignon required a treacherous crossing of the Rhone. The city’s only crossing over the hazardous waters was the St Benezet bridge (the Pont d’Avignon) which was regularly washed away by the fierce currents of Spring and early Summer when the upstream Alpine ice was melting. The bridge was finally put out of use by a catastrophic flood in 1668 and remains today as a sort of pier poking out over half the Rhone. Yet as the only fixed crossing of the river between Lyon and the Mediterranean, the Pont and the town it served were hugely important.

Clement V (and Philip the Fair) were clearly aware of the town’s importance when he (they) chose it as the site of the new papacy in 1305. But it was one thing to choose a new Vatican, what was really needed was a new St Peter’s. And so began the creation of the enormous Palais des Papes. Clement V did not build it himself and was content to as a guest at the Dominican monastery than overlooked the town but his successors were far more ambitious.

For most of the 14th century, Avignon would become the home of the popes and the imposing Palais des Papes would be their residence. Clement's French successor John XXII stayed in the city and upgraded the Dominican residence but it took a third French pope Benedict XII to build an impressive palace at Avignon befitting the papacy. Under his guidance a massive Palais Vieux took shape flanked by high towers. Under the popes that followed him, Clement VI, Innocent VI, and Urban V, the building was expanded to form what is now known as the Palais Neuf.

While a succession of popes became ensconced in Avignon, Rome never forgot the slight of losing its primary source of power. Finally under Guillaume Grimoard, crowned as Urban V, it won back its precious prize in 1367. But it was a short lived triumph. With numerous cities of the Papal States in revolt, Urban was forced to return to Avignon where he died in 1370. His successor Gregory XI would be the last of the official Avignon popes. After he died, the Romans rioted to ensure the election of a local pope. But the new man, Urban VI, was quickly disowned by the hierarchy. A majority of bishops elected Robert of Geneva as a rival pope taking the name Pope Clement VII and re-established a papal court in Avignon. The great Western schism had begun.

Now thanks to the Church’s own manipulations, Christendom had a pope and an antipope. But which was which? Britain, Ireland, Portugal and Rome supported Urban, while France supported Clement. The Holy Roman Empire could not wholly support either Roman emperor. But in 1398 France withdrew its support from Clement’s successor Benedict XIII and that made him officially an antipope. The Council of Constance in 1414 ensured the legitimacy of the Roman line, and excommunicated Benedict formally ending the Avignon line.

The city remained a papal possession and a nepotistic papal nephew continued to rule the town. Finally in 1797 the treaty of Tolentino sanctioned the transfer of the city to the French state. Today the city of Avignon proudly wears its papal (and anti-papal) history on its chest. The Palais des Papes towers over the city and the Rhone. The city is a capital of culture and remains an important outpost of Catholic history, antipopes or not.

Prague and Kafka: A cage in search of a bird

Franz Kafka was everywhere. Wherever you looked in Prague, the unsmiling visage of the city’s greatest writer popped up. The pensive face was in shop windows, on road signs, postcards, t-shirts, coffee mugs, graffiti and even appearing on beer bottles. Such ubiquity seemed Kafkaesque seeing as the writings of the man himself dealt largely with matters that were usually not quite within reach. In 2008 Prague, it seemed, Kafka was all too easy to grasp.

Yet nothing is ever quite what it seems with this Czech genius. During the Communist era, all mention of Kafka was suppressed. His nightmarish visions were too dangerous a reminder of the totalitarian mentality the country was then immersed in. Indeed it seems bizarre to even call Kafka Czech; for as a German speaking Jew, he could not speak the native language of the city he was born and grew up in. He never explicitly mentioned Prague in any of his work, yet most of it is clearly set here. Like James Joyce and Dublin, Kafka had a love-hate relationship with the city of his birth and the city informed his every written word.

Franz Kafka was born on 3 July 1883 into a middle-class Jewish family. His father Hermann was a merchant and haberdasher and a domineering presence. His mother Julie came from an intellectual, spiritual family of the Jewish merchant and brewer Jakob Lowy. Kafka inherited his delicate intelligence from his mother but also got some of his father’s spiritedness. Young Franz grew up in the Jewish quarter of the old city. Every day he walked through the cobbled old streets to school and he graduated from the German University in Prague as Doctor of Law in 1906. He spent much of his productive years as an employee of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire as an insurance accident assessor for the Workers Accident Insurance Bureau. He retired early due to ill-health and died of tuberculosis in 1924. During this time he also wrote some of the most enigmatic fiction of the twentieth century though very few of his famous works were ever completed.

On a snowy Saturday last week, I went to the newly opened Franz Kafka museum at Cihelná 2 in the riverbank shadow of the castle to understand more about the man and his mystique. In the entry courtyard of the museum is an amusing tableau. Visitors are immediately confronted with the rotating statues of two men en pissant. The gentlemen are not furtive urinators. No, they stand proudly and openly, heads arched back, in a puddle of their own making and wave their willies around with seemingly gay abandon. I don’t recall ever reading anything in Kafka related to urine, but perhaps the sculptor was merely taking the piss.

What I was aware of was that Kafka lived in the shadow of his father. The museum exhibit opens up with a rasping letter that Franz wrote to his father. It begins “You asked me recently why I maintain that I am afraid of you.” It goes on to contrast the businessmen father who was “a true Kafka in strength, health, appetite, loudness of voice, eloquence, self-satisfaction, worldly dominance, endurance, presence of mind” with the son who is “a timid child” and castigates him for failures as a father and his inability to talk calmly about “a subject you don't approve of or even one that was not suggested by you”. The letter continues to forensically diagnose their relationship and perhaps mercifully, was never read by its intended recipient.

Kafka was equally harsh to the women in his life. He was engaged twice to the Berliner Felice Bauer and broke it off both times. Bauer finally married another man in early 1919. She had loved Kafka, but could not endure his depressions and manic episodes any longer. A year later Kafka became involved with the Czech journalist Milena Jesenská. Milena was 13 years his junior but they were very close. But the relationship was severely hamstrung by the slight problem that Jesenská was already married. Jesenská would eventually die in a Nazi concentration camp at Ravensbruck (Kafka's two sisters died at Auschwitz). In 1923 Kafka found a new companion, Dora Diamant, a Polish Zionist. The pair travelled together during the last year of Kafka’s life, and after his death she moved to Tel Aviv.

Due to his tuberculosis, Kafka spent that last year moving in and out of sanitaria. He died of starvation. In the last few weeks of his life his condition made it too painful to digest any food and because intravenous therapy had not been developed, there was no way to feed him. He wrote his last letter to his parents on 2 June 1924, a day before he died. “It is not a shady well, it is life, dear sweet life preserved in a well form”. He died in Berlin with Dora at his side and his body was taken back to Prague where he was buried in the New Jewish Cemetery in Prague-Zizkov.

He ordered Dora and his great friend and publisher Max Brod to destroy all his writings. Diamant complied but Brod refused, after initial misgivings. It is to his credit that we owe the existence to Kafka’s great works “The Trial”, “The Castle”, “America” and “Metamorphosis”. As the Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges observed about Brod’s actions, “we owe a full knowledge of the most singular works of the century to this case of happy disobedience.” But the last words belong to Kafka himself, as quoted by the museum: “the messiah will arrive only after we no longer need him.”

A pilgrimage to Auschwitz

It felt entirely appropriate getting to Auschwitz by train. My slow rattler was taking two hours to get me just 65km from Krakow to the town of Oswiecim. The cold snowy November weather merely added to the terrible sense of identification I was channelling as the train seemed to plough through the whitened fields. But it was superficial identification. For one, I had a view – something which would have been denied the hundreds of thousands who made the fateful journey in the war years - secondly I was here voluntarily, and thirdly I had a return ticket; again a luxury denied those doomed to take this journey in the 1940s.

It seemed doubly shocking that such a place could lie in the shadow of beautiful and graceful Krakow. The former capital of Poland remained the centre of the country’s scientific, artistic and cultural life in the middle of the last century. The city also had a flourishing Jewish population. Yet as the capital of the so-called "general government" during the Nazi occupation (with governor-general Hans Frank setting up his headquarters in the city’s imposing Wawel Castle), it made perfect sense for the area to be the centre of Hitler’s plans for a Final Solution to the “Jewish problem”.

The unassuming nearby town of Oswiecim was perhaps an appropriately grisly choice to house a German death camp. Prior to the war, it had a thriving Jewish population of its own – they even formed the majority of the town. They were a largely Yiddish speaking people who called the town by its German name Auschwitz. The outskirts of the town also held an old Polish brick barracks which was expropriated by the Nazis during the invasion in 1939. Initially the Germans were just looking for a place to store political prisoners and about 700 Polish intellectuals and resistance movement members were interned there in June 1940.

But gradually the scope of Auschwitz increased. There were a small number of Jews in the initial shipment, but it didn’t take long for their numbers to increase. Then came other undesirables and enemies of the Reich - the Communists, the disabled, the homosexuals, the Jehovah’s Witnesses, and the “gypsies”. This word gypsy (Zigeuner in German, which is why they were identified by the letter "Z") was a pejorative word for a people that in central Europe were known as Sinti and in South East Europe known as Roma. Possibly half a million Sinti and Roma perished in the death camps. The Sinti and Roma exhibition in Auschwitz I is one of the harrowing highlights of the visit.

Above the entrance to the camp is the infamous sign “Arbeit Macht Frei”. In 1872 the German novelist Lorenz Diefenbach used the phrase (roughly translated as “work liberates”) as the title of a novel and it was successfully adopted by the 1920s Weimar government to promote their public works program. The Nazis knew a good thing when they saw it and continued to use the phrase in their propaganda program. The commander of Dachau ordered it to be put on the entrance gate to his concentration camp and it was repeated at Sachsenhausen, Terezin, and most notably, at Auschwitz. Here prisoners walked under the gate, accompanied by the strains of a Jewish orchestra.

But not many Jews had this experience. Auschwitz was too small to cope with the growing number of prisoners. The Wannsee Conference had authorised the Final Solution and Germany needed a bigger and more efficient camp to process the vast numbers involved. In 1941, they built Auschwitz II in the woods some three kilometres away in a place the Poles called Brzezinka and the Germans translated as Birkenau. This was a vast emporium of death. No orchestras here, nor any pretence of “Arbeit Macht Frei”. Here, a massive tower overlooked the main gate and the railway tracks led straight to the gas ovens at the far end of the camp.

Auschwitz II was a massive operation and the largest of all the Nazi death camps. Most of the killing, torture, and medical experiments took place here. Cattle cars unloaded their cargo and those lucky enough to be selected not to die immediately were sent to one of the camps to work as slave labourers. These “lucky ones” merely had their fate postponed to overwork, hunger, sickness and a slow lingering death. But the vast majority were sent straight to the gas chambers. Four crematoria fuelled by the hydrogen cyanide insecticide known as Zyklon (Cyclone) B efficiently murdered 20,000 people each day. Evidence of the vast numbers involved is retained in the museum. Behind one glass exhibit are a vast collection of 20,000 pairs of shoes, yet this barely represents one day of gassing. There are also masses of suitcases, spectacles, human hair and other poignant reminders of the daily lives of the hundreds of thousands who died here.

By January 1945, the Red Army were closing in on the camp. Himmler ordered the camp to be destroyed and sent 60,000 survivors on a mid-Winter death march back to the Reich. Only 20,000 survived. Another 7,500 too weak to march were left behind at Auschwitz and liberated by the Russians. At least 1.5 million died (other estimates are as high as 5 million) in the camps themselves, the vast majority at Auschwitz II.

The word “Auschwitz” continues to be synonymous with the Shoah as a whole. It remains newsworthy on an almost daily basis. This week for instance, The Scotsman told the story of how educational trips to Auschwitz were saved despite government cutbacks. Meanwhile Germany is pursuing the arrest of Holocaust denier Gerald Frederick Tobin who argued the Auschwitz death camp was too small for the mass murder of Jews to have been carried out there. Across the pond, the Isthmus of Madison, Wisconsin reviewed Mark Herman’s “The Boy in the Striped Pajamas” about the 8-year-old son of a German officer appointed the commandant of the camp, while the LA Times reported the death of 80 year old art dealer Jan Krugier who survived the camp and the subsequent death march. As for me, having spent several absorbing hours of tramping around these sacred grounds, I silently took the train back to Krakow thinking about the frailty of human reason.

Sikorski and me: a cryptic journey through Krakow

My hopes of seeing the crypt today at Krakow's Wawel Cathedral were dashed by world events. I had made it to freezing Krakow after an overnight nine hour train journey from Prague and I was eagerly looking forward too visiting the cathedral and castle on the acropolis at Wawel. But the cathedral crypt proved to be a no-go area.

I had wondered why there were so many TV cameras hovering around the cathedral grounds. It seems the body of General Wladyslaw Sikorski, the exiled Polish WWII prime minister, was exhumed from the crypt yesterday in an investigation into his death in 1943. He was now being reburied after an autopsy this morning. He certainly deserves a bit of peace. 65 years after his death, the poor chap was forced to undergo DNA analysis, computer tomography, radiology and toxicology tests. The results of the test will be announced in a few weeks time.

Władysław Eugeniusz Sikorski was the hero of the Polish-Soviet war of 1919-21 when the young Soviet Russia invaded Poland intent on taking revolution to the heart of Europe. Things were looked bad for the Polish until Sikorski masterminded the "Miracle of the Vistula" defeating a numerically and materially superior Russian army near Warsaw. Shortly after, the Russians sued for peace and abandoned the idea of international revolution. Sikorski and a young French instructor with the Polish army, a certain Charles de Gaulle, saw how lightning fast warfare would be the way of the future and were both instrumental in the new science of blitzkrieg.

Sikorski was rewarded for his efforts by becoming the Polish army chief of staff and served in the national government in the mid 1920s. He withdrew from politics after Poland became a dictatorship in 1926 and spent much of the next ten years in Paris. He returned prior to the war he predicted would occur but escaped to London after Poland was invaded (where the Germans showed they had been paying attention to Sikorski's blitzkrieg techniques). There he was appointed Prime Minister in exile and placed at the head of the large Polish army based in England. After the German invasion of Russia, Churchill sent Sikorski to negotiate with Stalin to reopen diplomatic relations. But Stalin wanted a piece of the Polish pie after the war and demanded unacceptable concessions.

In 1943, the German Wehrmacht discovered the mass grave of Katyń where the bodies of 4,500 Polish officers were piled up in several pits. The Soviets had killed the officers in 1940 after they had carved up Poland with the Germans. Radio Berlin gleefully reported the news in an attempt to put a wedge between the Russians and Polish. The wedge was successful. The Russians claimed the Nazis had carried out the killings in 1941 but Sikorski didn't believe them and wanted the matter investigated. The Russians used this as an excuse to break off diplomatic relations with Sikorski's government and Stalin campaigned for a Soviet-backed Polish government led by Wanda Wasilewska, a dedicated communist.

Sikorski was becoming a serious thorn in the side of the relationship between Britain and Russia. He was conveniently removed from the equation after he died in mysterious circumstances. On 4 July 1943, he was returning from an inspection of Polish forces deployed in the Middle East, when his plane crashed on take off into the sea off Gibraltar killing him and eight others (including his daughter). A British court of inquiry found no reason for the crash merely saying the "aircraft became uncontrollable for reasons which cannot be established". The files of the investigation were to be kept secret until 2050. In the absence of hard facts and the absurdly long secrecy requirement, conspiracy theories have abounded.

It didn't help when it was revealed a Soviet aircraft was parked next to Sikorski's unattended plane at Gibraltar. The head of M6 on the Rock at the time was Kim Philby, who would later be exposed as a Soviet spy. Security was casual in Gibraltar, by wartime standards. Sabotage was certainly possible and there was a strong motive. With the imposing Sikorski out of the way, it proved a lot easier to install a puppet pro-Soviet government in Warsaw once the war ended.

After his body was recovered from the Mediterranean, Sikorski was buried in a brick-lined grave at the Polish War Cemetery in Newark-on-Trent, England. In 1993, his remains were exhumed and transferred to the royal crypts at Wawel Castle. In July this year, Polish prosecutors announced they would reinvestigate the matter and the Archbishop of Krakow gave permission for Sikorski's body to be re-exhumed. "Given Sikorski's important role in Poland's history and having the tools and the know-how that we have now," said Ewa Koj, the prosecutor overseeing the investigation "we cannot let this remain a historical mystery." Good luck to them, at least the mystery why I couldn't see the crypt today has been solved.

Dubrovnik: Pearls of the Adriatic before swine

I landed in Dubrovnik after a short hop north up the coast from Kotor. While “The Pearl of the Adriatic” is a highlight of any trip, perhaps I was spoilt having coming from Montenegro’s fjord coast. I wouldn’t quiet go as far as saying I was underwhelmed. But yet I found myself preferring the understated appeal of Dubrovnik’s southern neighbour. Maybe it was the fact it was a Saturday and the old town was packed with day-trippers and visitors from the several parked cruise ships. Certainly the town looked a lot more attractive at night when all the tourists had gone and I had the old town to myself. And I had to be impressed by the magnificent rebuilding the town had undergone in the last 15 years.

Although the city was without military value, it was the victim of sustained attack during the Balkans War in the early 1990s. Serb mortars poured down from the hills while the Montenegrin Navy took potshots from the bay. Nearly two thirds of the city suffered bomb damage during the war. During the eight-month siege of Dubrovnik, about 100 civilians died and more than 30,000 fled their homes. Of the 824 buildings in the old town, almost 70 percent were struck by shells. Dubrovnik's walls sustained 111 direct hits and there were 314 more on Dubrovnik's baroque buildings and marble streets. UNESCO and other international organizations rushed to the rescue. Teams of skilled workers laboured through most of the rest of the decade to restore the town to its former glory.

The area around Dubrovnik was originally called Ragusium by the Romans. The town of Ragusa was formed in the seventh century when Byzantine coastal residents took refuge there to protect themselves from barbarian invasions. City walls were quickly built to protect the new settlement. Ragusa made its living from trade with its Mediterranean neighbours. Over the next 400 years Ragusa became increasingly prosperous and attracted unwelcome rival attention. In 1205 it fell under the control of Venice but it managed to break away 150 years later.

By the 15th century the Republic of Ragusa was trading with the Near East and Europe and a major rival of Venice for control of the Adriatic waterways. It maintained its independence from powerful neighbours through cunning diplomacy and used its wealth to expand its cultural influence. But the seeming inexorable progress of the town was cruelly destroyed in one act of nature.

In 1667, Dubrovnik was devastated by a major earthquake which destroyed most of its Renaissance art and architecture. After the earthquake, Dubrovnik fell into decline, hastened by the emergence of other European naval powers. It was Napoleon who finally put an end to the republic in 1806 when he entered the city and announced its annexation. In 1815, the Congress of Vienna ceded Dubrovnik to Austria to whom it remained attached until 1918. It passed into the hands of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes which renamed itself as Yugoslavia, before finally becoming Croatian after its horrible baptism of fire in 1991.

(pic shows the extent of damage to Dubrovnik during the war)

By then, Dubrovnik was a household name across the world. The city began to develop its tourist industry in the late 19th century. Luminaries such as Lord Byron, George Bernard Shaw and Agatha Christie were awed by the town and Dubrovnik became a major tourist centre in post-war Yugoslavia. Christie spent her second honeymoon here. GBS said “if you want to see heaven on Earth, come to Dubrovnik”.

The London Times would seem to agree. The city walls of Dubrovnik made their recent list of the world’s 50 best walks. It described the hour-long circuit of the old town’s battlements as unforgettable, as it was “around an Escher-like collection of sand-castle sentry posts, helter-skelter stairways and crumbling catwalks, all poised on high cliffs against the bluest bit of the Adriatic.” And having walked around the walks, I can see the point of this Adriatic pearl of wisdom.

Waiting in Sarajevo

I’m sitting in the Sarajevo bus station though it’s a train to Zagreb I’m catching in three hours time. It’s warmer here and you can sit down without having to buy something, unlike the train station which has plenty of cafes but nothing approximating a waiting room.

I don’t expect much sleep with a rattling night ahead. The train has got to be better than a bus though there’ll be a border crossing into Croatia around 3am to contend with, a process I'm becoming intimately familiar with. I’ve already had three goes with the Croatian authorities today. My bus left Dubrovnik early and we passed the string of islands that fill our ride up the coast before we hit the strange Neum corridor which is about 15km of Bosnian coastline and the country’s only access to the Adriatic.

The corridor was defaulted in 1699 by the Republic of Dubrovnik to the Ottomans in the Treaty of Karlowitz. The wealthy merchants of Dubrovnik were worried by the approach of the Venetians and were happy to have an Ottoman buffer between them. The corridor was inherited by Yugoslavia, and now the sovereign state of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Croatia places a passport check going in and out of the corridor but there is no Bosnian presence on either side. Nor it seemed were there any connecting roads with Sarajevo in the corridor. In the town of Neum itself where we stopped for coffee, the restaurant owner showed his colours with a Croatian scarf placed prominently on the bar and he accepted only Croatian money or euros.

I passed through Croatian borders a third time further north along the coastal plain where the Sarajevo road splits from the Split road. This time the Bosnians were on display complete with their national insignia. It was not far to the city of Mostar, though the winding road meant it took another hour. The journey was sensational through deep ravines alongside the rushing Neretva River surrounded by scrubby mountains on both sides. I was trigger happy with the camera for most of the way.

A funny thing happened in Mostar. I was hoping for a photo of the famous ‘stari most’ (old bridge), the symbol of the city which was destroyed by the Croatians in the 1993 war and subsequently meticulously rebuilt. There was no view of the bridge on the bus journey itself but I saw a sign pointing to it as we headed towards the bus station. When we got to the station, the bus driver turned off the engine and said words to the effect of ‘dieci minuti’ roughly translated that we had ten minutes here before we pulled out. I calculated it might be possible to run back to the river and catch a quick photo of the bridge. But as I started running from the station I began to think this was madness, it might be at least five minutes there and then I needed to get back again too.

I gave myself four minutes to get there. It took me almost exactly four minutes of full pelt run to get to the river. I eagerly peered over the bridge but there was no sign of the famous ‘stari most’ in either direction. I took photos anyway and realised I’d better rush back to the bus. Only on the way back did it occur to me that I might have been on the bridge itself, though from knowing its distinctive shape, I doubt it. It turned out the bridge was around a bend, and not visible from where I stood. But with the time ticking, I rushed back to the bus, puffing madly. To add insult to the injury of not finding the bridge, the bus driver waited the best part of 20 minutes anyway. As we pulled out, it was obvious there was another bridge the other side of the station that was even closer, no more than one minute walk away. Oh well, there’s a reason to return to Mostar some day.

(pic: The bridge I did not see in Mostar).

I made up for the disappointment with fabulous scenery shots elsewhere as the views got even better between Mostar and Sarajevo. Coming in to the capital, the views turned grim. The grey and closing weather didn’t help but any of the high Stalinist-looking flats could easily have hosted sniper alley. Thankfully the inner town was much nicer. I dropped my bags at the train station and walked along the river to the centre. It is a beautiful and ornate old town, very stately and grand. Most of the buildings have been rebuilt after the war.

I can see why Archduke Franz Ferdinand might have liked it here until he made it to the bridge where Serb nationalist Gavrilo Princip shot him in 1914, which knocked down several royal houses of cards and led to the death of millions in World War I. Oddly enough Sarajevo itself escaped any further damage in that war. However I can also see the result of the gunfire of more recent bouts of Serb nationalism. I pass several pock-marked and bullet-ridden buildings. The siege of Sarajevo lasted four years from 1992-1996 with Serb forces high on the hills taking pot shots at anything that moved below. I’m wondering whereabouts in the city is their entity, the mysterious Republika Srpska?

Kotor: Fjord Perfect

Kotor, Montenegro is that rarest of entities – a town on a Mediterranean fjord. Think of Norway or Milford Sound in New Zealand - only with added sunshine. Admittedly it's quite cloudy when I'm in the Bay of Kotor, but that is understandable for early winter. I’m staying five or six kilometres outside town in a village called Prcanj, having been talked into accepting a €15 room at a private home by a taxi driver at the unassuming Kotor bus station when I arrived this morning after a dazzling coastal 30 minute bus drive from Budva.

But the driver (who owns the house) was happy to take me back to the station tomorrow morning and I was happy to walk the distance today sans bags. He offered me some local firewater at his house which I turned down, preferring to stay sober in Kotor at 8am. He also offered me a lift back into town which I also refused. It was a lovely walk along the narrow road beside the fjord. At the station he told me it was “just 2 kilometres” but a road sign tells me Kotor’s “stari grad” (old town) is “8kms” away. Neither my landlord nor the Kotor council are right, it’s closer to 5km and it takes me just under an hour to make the trip around the bay.

Kotor is possibly the most stunning place I’ve stayed in two months of travel. I climbed the city walls 500m above the town to San Giovanni fortress. There has been a fortification on this site since the Byzantine emperor Justinian sent the Goths packing in 535AD. No visable Goths or Visigoths today or indeed any other sign of humanity. I was supposed to have paid €2 entry fee but there is no-one here to collect it. I have the entire mountain to myself.

At the top, I stare out towards the exit of the fjord though I cannot see the Adriatic from here hidden behind the tall mountains on either side of the fjord. The Montenegrin flag flies proudly from the top of the fortress. The water looks perfectly still and hardly a sound from the old city penetrates this far up. The flag has stopped fluttering as the wind has died down and all I can hear is the barking of distant dogs.

I climb back down to the old town which is beautifully preserved and full of young people. The town is proud of its nightlife and the city has a carnival atmosphere in summer. It is a lot quieter in November, but there are occasional echoes of Kotor notoriety. Everything happens under the watchful eye of Mount Lovcen.

Kotor’s heyday was the Middle Ages when it served as an important artistic and commercial centre. Called Cattaro, it was an independent republic from 1395 to 1420. From 1420 to 1797 Cattaro fell into the hands of Venice. The Venetian influence is evident in the architecture. By the treaty of Campo Formio in 1797 it was acquired by Austria. Then at the end of World War I, Kotor became part of Yugoslavia, where it remained (apart from brief Italian hegemony during WWII) until the country’s breakup in 1992.

Many of Kotor’s monuments including the fortress were badly damaged by the devastating 1979 earthquake, which measured eight on the Richter scale. Kotor’s old town was restored with UNESCO help. But Montenegro is no longer impoverished and the country is making rapid strides towards western European standards, evident in Kotor’s more expensive shops.

Things are still cheap enough here generally though as more people discover this magnificent unspoilt coastline (and proceed to spoil it) that will change. Already the Hotel Splendido down the road charges €160 a night according to mine host, a local whose house has splendido fjord views of its own. Viva Cattora!

The Full Montenegro

Having safely jumped the Albanian hurdle, it was time to check out the delights of Montenegro. I was in Ulcinq, the first town across the border. Immediately I felt a wealth that was not present in Shqipëria. Montenegro was seriously courting the EU and its money. Even at the border the flag flying was not the new red and yellow Montenegrin flag with its coat of arms of Nicola I (Montenegro’s only ever king whose reign was cut short by the end of World War I) but instead the blue EU flag with its 15 yellow stars. And the roads to the coast were being upgraded courtesy of Brussels’ grants too.

But the most noticeable marker of their ticket to prosperity is the currency. Montenegro switched from the DeutschMark to the Euro in 2002. On the switchover the Montenegrin government deliberately asked for as many small coins as possible so that shopkeepers would avoid the temptation to jack up prices and fuel inflation. That may have worked as an economic measure to begin with, but there is little doubt that Montenegro, while still relatively cheap, is quickly catching up with mainstream European prices.

Its efforts to go European are in marked contrast with its relationship with its most powerful neighbour and former ruler Serbia. Montenegro dissolved the union with Belgrade in 2006 after a referendum. There was a 55 percent threshold required and it was just passed with 55.5 percent voting in favour of full independence. Podgorica became the world’s newest capital city. But I gave Podgorica a miss. Nothing terribly much against it, and it is supposedly pretty enough by other accounts, but I wanted to stay on the coast and eventually get to Dubrovnik.

Ulcinq bus station would be my springboard. Ideally I wanted to get to Kotor, sited at the head of the Mediterranean’s only fjord. But there didn’t seem to be a bus for several hours. A German I’d met in the hostel in Tirana had recommended a closer town, Budva, as a nice place to visit too. Noticing there was a bus direct to Budva in an hour’s time, that was good enough incentive for me. I booked a ticket and sat down for a couple of very enjoyable local pivos (beers) while waiting.

When the bus got going we quickly headed to the coast and stayed there for the remainder of the trip. The scenery was gloriously spectacular. The mountains hugged the coast and roads peered over the Adriatic while dipping under cliffs. We zigzagged our way slowly north. I was happy to go slow as it meant more time to admire the view and take photographs. It was like driving Victoria’s Great Ocean Road, only complete with 14th century old towns every twenty or thirty kms (I wonder what Lorne will look like in 2508?) The bus stopped in several of these towns and a couple of times I was half tempted to get out and spend the night there on spec. It is little wonder that Montenegrin tourism is on the rise, the country is a hidden wonder.

After about 90 minutes, the bus arrived at Budva bus station. Next door was a tourist bureau where I asked was there any cheap and nearby accommodation in town. The well spoken lady there told me I could stay in a “private residence” for 12 euros. That was ok by me. All along the coast I had seen signs for "sobe/rooms/zimmer/camera" advertising in four languages the fact that rooms to rent in private homes were commonplace. The lady made a phone call and then told my landlady would be here in three minutes. Good, I thought, she can’t be driving too far. Even better still when she arrived, I discovered she had walked and I would be staying a handy three minutes from the bus station when I needed to leave in the morning,

The accommodation itself was pleasant. A small room with ensuite totally separate from the main entrance and just a ten minute walk to the ‘stari grad’ (old city). Budva is one of the oldest towns on the Adriatic with at least 2,500 years of continuous settlement. Its old town is not quite of that vintage but was built by the Venetians in the Middle Ages. Venice grew wealthy on trade and acquired a network of cities on the Dalmatian coast from the Hungarians who were devastated by civil war.

Budva is reliant on the old town and nearby beaches to bring in the tourists. The city has expanded drastically in the 1990s and many locals have become cashed up by selling their properties to wealthy British, Irish and Russian citizens. Russians first came to Budva looking for bargains after the end of the Balkan Wars in the 1990s and they have kept coming. The local mayor Lazar Radenovic told the New York Times Russians were attracted to the Balkans by a cultural connection stretching back to the 18th century. Serbia and Montenegro share a Slavic Orthodox identity with Russia. “When Russians come here,” he said, “they don’t feel like we have crossed over the border.”

trying to tour Tirana to Ulcinq

It's time to leave Albania. There are decent bus connections out of Tirana to all of the countries Albania shares a border with - except one. That one is the recently independent Montenegro, on the coast directly north. And that’s annoying because that is where I want to go next. The two nations are not on the best neighbourly terms, for reasons I have yet to fathom. However, from scattergun research, I believe it is possible to get across the border from the northern city of Shkodra.

Supposedly, I read, there are buses there that meet the “furgons” from Tirana. Every country around the eastern Med has its own word for minibus. Turks make do with “dolmus” while you need to take a “sherut” to get around in Israel. Here in Albania, its a "furgon". A furgon is simply a van with eight to ten seats that doesn’t set off for its destination until every seat is full. Because of this, a set arrival time is no furgon conclusion and I’m happy to take a proper coach to Shkodra which gets me in at 10am. I’m hoping then that somehow I will be able to find the bus to Ulcinq (the first town across the border in Montenegro).

This is easier said than done as Albania does not believe in bus stations, and you have to be aware of where people congregate which is often at makeshift shelters. The other problem I have is conflicting information. One source tells me there are supposedly two or three buses a day to Ulcinq though I read elsewhere there is only one, and that leaves at 9am, worryingly an hour before I am due to arrive. And I don’t really want to stay in Ulcinq itself as there is not much there, but I might have to if I get there late.

The following morning I set off from Tirana. Encouragingly the bus leaves on time at 8am. It is barely 80km between Albania’s two largest cities but the journey takes two hours on crowded and narrow two-lane roads. But it eventually arrives in the centre of Shkodra at 10am. I ask the driver where I might find a bus to Montenegro. He grunts and points in the direction of a large hotel on the other side of the busy square where we park.

But I am barely half way across the road when I’m accosted by a taxi driver who speaks English.
“Montenegro?” he said, “Ulcinq?”
Maybe, I replied hesitantly, clearly unnerved by his prescience.
“I take you there for 30 euro”. This is at least four or five times the price of the bus there.
I shake my head and say “No, I’ll take the bus”.
“Bus is gone,” he said. “9 o'clock”.
“But there must be another one later today?”
"No", he replied, "not till 9 tomorrow”.

I was not sure whether to believe him but his words did tally with the more pessimistic information I’d received the day before. And even if there was a second bus, it was likely not to being going until late afternoon. Then there is problem of actually proving there was a second bus with little or no customer information available. At least this guy could get me over the border quickly and I had a chance of getting on to one of the nicer Montenegrin places like Budva or Kotor tonight. So I tried haggling.
“20 euros,” I said.
“no, no, 30” he insisted.
So I started to walk on towards the hotel.
This has a reaction. “25 euros, lowest price”, he said. I think about this some more and finally accept the 25 euro fare. The advantages outweigh the expensive disadvantage and the uncertainty of the bus.

And so we set out for Montenegro. The first obstacle was the long single lane bridge over the river that leads north out of Shkodra. From here there were signposts telling the distance to all points north including Dubrovnik, Belgrade and even Vienna, some 1,200kms away. But never mind Vienna, it was proving difficult enough to get one kilometre out of town. The rule of this particularly road was whoever got to the halfway point of the bridge first had right of way. The loser had to reverse all the way back to the side he or she came from. It can become hairy when drivers on both side put the pedal down in that elusive race to get to the middle first. My driver failed on the first attempt and swore profusely in Albanian, but otherwise accepted the outcome as he reversed back muttering darkly all the while.

The second attempt was more promising and he easily made the middle ground first and even got two-thirds of the way across when confronted with the other driver. But hold on, the other driver and the driver behind her got out to remonstrate with my driver and after much shouting and gesticulating it seemed somehow they won. There was even more swearing and a shrug of the shoulders. “Ach, Albania!” he said to be me as he reversed back once more. I just smiled back. I didn’t understand why it was still his obligation to reverse until the two cars came across and one was towing the other. So normal reversing rules could not apply.

At the third attempt, my swearing Albanian made it over the river, sending another non-towing car reversing back to the opposite side. I was then surprised how quickly we made it to the border, it was only about 5 or 6kms away. At the border the driver unscrewed his Albanian taxi sign and had to cough up five euros to get into Montenegro. It cost me nothing with my EU passport.

We quickly made it on another 15km to Ulcinq bus station where I thanked him and handed over the 25 euros we’d agreed. But he wanted more. “Border visa“ he said, darkly. “Five euro”. Ah, I didn’t look at the fine print of the contract, it seemed I would have to pay his visa and he would get his 30 euro after all. I wasn’t happy but he agreed to accept the balance out of my otherwise worthless collection of Albanian leks, which, given the testy relations between the two countries, probably would have been too difficult to exchange anyway. I gave him the money and sent back to his Shkodra bridge race. I was now at a real bus station, with real information and hopefully a real timetable that would see me end up in Budva or Kotor for the night.

Talking Tirana

Having established myself for the night at Pedro’s gracious accommodation, it was time to discover Tirana. The city lies in the shadow of Mount Djat and is a surprisingly neat and well laid out town with plenty of colourful architecture to admire. The capital of Albania is an oddball city, typically post-Communist and full of contradictions. Beggars line the streets next to a bevy of Mercedes (Albania’s most popular car, all smuggled across the border from Montenegro). A good meal and a beer can be had for $3 next door to a $US3000 a night hotel. Garish casinos are sited next to Stalinist government buildings that look like local versions of an Orwellian Ministry of Truth.

Outside the museum is a heroic mural that is supposedly a panoply of Albanian history. Ancients with shields and swords stand side by side with 20th century peasants and thinkers while farmhands with raised fists march forward towards independence or EU subsidies, depending on one’s imagination. In the centre of the painting, a white dressed woman holds aloft a rifle while her male companion waves the Albanian flag. It’s not hard to guess who wears the trousers in that revolutionary relationship.

Inside the museum, exhibits tell the story of Albania from Neolithic to modern times. It was always an important stomping ground on the way south or north through the Adriatic coast, though its many mountains made it mostly fiercely impenetrable. The Illyrians established a capital in the northern city of Shkodra and ruled until they were knocked off their perch by the Romans. Then known as the province of Epirus Nova, Albania remained in Roman hands for six centuries. It was inherited by the Byzantines and the Ottomans and remained an important but externally governed province until the 20th century. That was apart from the brief interlude in the 15th century when the “Dragon of Albania”, Gjergj Kastrioti Skanderbeg, successfully held off the Ottomans for 20 years. Skanderbeg is the nation’s greatest hero and his impressive statue dominates the square named for him in the centre of Tirana.

In 1912 Albania gained independence as the Ottoman Empire collapsed amid the Balkan wars. Its neighbours did not take kindly to this and a coalition of Christian forces from Montenegro, Serbia and Greece launched a war against the new entity. Albania was formally recognised as a nation after the second Balkan War a year later.

Founded in the 17th century, Tirana is a relatively young city by Albanian standards. It was not until 1920 that it became the capital. It wasn’t an easy time for the citizens of Tirana. For four years the city was pounded by the Serbian army and forces loyal to ousted Prime Minister Ahmet Zogu who was later to give himself royal delusions as King Zog I. Zog was a lucky, if hated, man. He survived no less than 55 assassination attempts including one time where he returned fire at his would-be killers. But having been supported by Mussolini, the Italians demanded more power and when Zog refused, Il Duce’s forces invaded and forced Zog into exile.

In World War II Mussolini used Albania as his launching pad to attack Greece. When that ended badly, the Germans took over in both countries. A local resistance organisation grew to defend Albania from the Italians and then Germany. Led by the French-educated Enver Hoxha, the resistance movement was extraordinarily successful and overthrew the German regime without Soviet support. Albania also protected its Jews and was the only country in Europe to have more Jews at the end of the war than it had at the beginning.

Hoxha had also supported the Yugoslav resistance and was helped into post-war power by a grateful Tito. He instituted his own form of Communism but Albania gradually became more isolated as Hoxha accused Yugoslavia of interference. He would lead the nation until his death in 1985. He became increasingly weird the older he got. He built 750,000 bunkers across the country in case of war. He banned beards. In 1978 his Code of Lekë made women property of their husbands stating: A woman is known as a sack, made to endure as long as she lives in her husband's house.

The fate of women and sacks remained precarious through the uncertain times of the late 1980s. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the country made cautious moves towards reform. The Communists were routed in elections. Albania, like many of its neighbours, is now dealing with life as a full tilt capitalist country. The currency is still the lek, though the euro is accepted in many places. Tirana remains a very cheap city though as it works out how to attract tourists, that will quickly change. For now Tirana, like Albania as a whole, is in transition. The old certainties are gone - though perhaps nothing was certain under the unstable Hoxha.

Entering Shqipëria

My first test in Albania was the toilets. The overnight bus from Athens had crossed the border an hour ago and the driver decided to stop at a mountain inn for refreshments. Sixty minutes of heavily potholed roads had left me in need of bathroom and I dragged myself off the bus to find the facilities. It was freezing cold outside, a shock to the system after the warmth of Greece and the Middle East.

I found the toilets easily enough, the problem was the choice. There were two doors; one marked “burra” and one marked “gra”. But which was I – a burra or a gra? There was no symbol to go with the words that might have helped. Burra sounded a bit like boy or brother but I had no faith in such transliteration of the Albanian language.

I knew full well the trap the unwary fall into in Ireland when confronted with the anagrammatically upsetting “mná” (women) and the feminine sounding “fir” (men). So I stealthily opened the door marked “burra” and peered inside. The lights were off and there were no, ahem, distinguishing features inside. I hesitated further only to finally have blushes spared as a man from the bus behind me marched confidently through the “burra” door. Aha, I’m a burra, bro!

I certainly needed the toilet. We were still some hours away from Tirana. Albania may be a small country but the multitude of mountains and the poor quality of the roads make for slow travel. The six-lane (I initially typed this as six-land, clearly affected by travel) motorways that took us north from Athens are a distant dream, though dreaming was a rare commodity as I did not get much sleep in the 14 hour trip.

It had been a long day. This particular day actually started at 2.30am two countries and two days ago. My flight out of Tel Aviv was at 7am but I knew I needed to allow three hours to get through tight Israeli security. Wanting to save a cab fare, I walked 40 minutes to get the train to the airport; hence the 2.30am alarm start. I stayed the night in a Tel Aviv hostel and there wasn’t much sleep beforehand anyway as my mostly Israeli roommates were in a mood for conversation until midnight.

I got about two and half hours sleep and got up again. I had done the walk earlier so I knew where I was going but this time it was with wheelie luggage. Today was the day I regretted not going the backpack. The pain was forgotten at the train station and the search there was light by Israeli standards. A sleek train got me to Ben Gurion on time.

I got through the fine tooth comb checks of Israeli airport security with stoic and bleary-eyed indifference and reading before we finally boarded the flight. We landed in Athens two hours later where the immigration policeman barely glanced at my passport. He would never get a job at Ben Gurion.

In Athens I knew from previous experience where to seek out the Albanian bus lines. And so for €35, I was booked onto the bus to Tirana leaving at 6pm. I busied myself with a day of ancient Athenian antiquities before we finally got underway. I was the only non-Albanian on the bus. The other passengers quickly got through passport control at the border into Shqipëria (what the locals prefer to call Albania). I was held up with paperwork but was finally given a visa for the princely sum of €1 (it had been reduced from €10 at the start of 2008, presumably to encourage more tourism).

The bus finally got into Tirana at what I thought was 8am. Except, it turned out to be 7am. Only later did I find out we moved into Central European Time when we crossed the border. I wanted to stay at the recently opened Tirana Backpackers Hostel which had gotten some good reviews on the internet. I didn’t have a map of Tirana but I had an address “85 Rruga Elbasanit” (Rruga means street in Albanian) and the knowledge that it was reasonably central. So when the bus finally reached Tirana, I went up to the bus driver and said “Rruga Elbasanit?” in my most inquisitive voice. He made a grunty hand signal that amounted to “straight ahead, then veer left”.

I asked several more people along the way. All bar one kept me going in the same direction (the odd man out must have misheard me as he tried to send me back in the direction of the bus). I walked through Tirana’s main square, named for its 15th century nationalistic hero Skanderbeg (and whose statue prominently adorns the square) before finally veering left as promised. It didn’t help that Tirana didn’t seem to bother with signs for street names or street numbers. But I kept faith in the pointing and my constant questioning refrain of Rruga Elbasanit. I kept rolling those first two r's whether I was supposed to or not) and kept asking. Sure enough after about my tenth or 12th victim, I was in Rruga Elbasanit. Before too long I found the hostel at number 85. There I was greeted by a friendly bearded Swiss gentleman named Pedro who made me feel quite at home. I had a feeling I was going to like Tirana.

Israeli mayoral elections tomorrow

Israel prepares for its general election next February with municipal and mayoral elections to be held throughout the country tomorrow. Jerusalem, the largest city, is the flashpoint and the race has highlighted religious rifts splitting the city and, by extension, the entire country. Although the major parties do not contest mayoral elections, the vote will give some indication of the thinking in advance of the national poll.

The two leading contenders for the job are ultra-Orthodox rabbi, Meir Porush, 53, and Nir Barkat, 49, a moderate city councillor and high-tech entrepreneur. Neither is likely to win the race outright and will rely on middle ground. Shmuel Sandler, a political scientist at Bar-Ilan University near Tel Aviv, said the contest has become a culture war and a battle between secular and religious forces. There could be a backlash by voters against religious parties in the countrywide ballot if Porush wins, Sandler said.

Porush has asked not to be judged by the length of his beard but there is little doubt he plans to promote an ultra-religious agenda if elected. Last week he stirred the pot by saying no Israeli city would have a secular mayor within 10 to 15 years. While his speech was delivered in Yiddish and intended for a private audience of supporters, they were taped and shown on TV news with Hebrew subtitles. "We are growing and multiplying at a fast pace,” he said. “Within 10 years there will not be a secular candidate at all in any city, except maybe in an abandoned village.”

If this wasn’t enough to worry people in secular neighbourhoods, they are also concerned their areas have been encroached in recent years by the ultra-Orthodox. Pnina Dadon told The Guardian her west Jerusalem district has seen a steady increase in synagogues and religious kindergartens. The original inhabitants are moving out. "The secular people are running away, especially the young. They just don't feel comfortable any more," said Dadon. "It's not that I hate them. It's just that I want my freedom."

But the campaign of secular candidate Nir Barkat is not without its issues either. His concern, similar to Dadon’s, is young people fleeing the capital in greater numbers. His plan is to build thousands of new apartments in East Jerusalem, which Israel occupied after the 1967 Six Day War and later annexed. Such settlements would not win Israel any friends internationally and would present further obstacles to peace with the Palestinians. But Barkat is not fussed by international opinion. "The young people are leaving Jerusalem," he says. "This is a real danger to Jerusalem's future and causes a decline in the general standard of living in the city."

The third candidate in the Jerusalem election is the Russian-born wildcard billionaire Arcady Gaydamak who is attempted to court the Arab vote. This will be difficult as the elections are a purely Jewish affair. Most Palestinian residents, who make up almost a third of the city's 700,000 population, are expected to boycott the election as they have done since Israel conquered East Jerusalem in 1967. "Our religious and national positions on the issue are clear,” said Mohammed Hussein, mufti of Jerusalem and the Palestinian territories. “They forbid participation as a voter or a candidate in these elections for an authority that represents the Israeli occupation.”

But Jerusalem activist Akram Salhab disagrees with this strategy. He says the boycott is an example of “the lazy thinking” dominating the Palestinian political scene. He says real gains are sacrificed to maintain a purely symbolic boycott that doesn’t achieve anything for the Arab population. Despite having 30 percent of the population, they only receive about 10 percent of council funding. “In the blink of an eye you are transported from a modern, well maintained high street with neatly painted red and white curbs, to a pot-hole ridden road from somewhere in the third world,” he says.