Driving in Albania (aka "Chicken and Frogger")

This is where I get to pause to talk about driving in Albania.  Or, what I like to refer to a mixture of Frogger and Chicken.  Driving in Albania is…adventurous, to say the least.  Traffic in the cities is terrible, highways are more open, but scary.  The cars are mostly small, and in various states of disrepair (though carefully-maintained and clean) as most of them are quite old.  Only the very-rich have nicer transportation, I could probably count the number of new vehicles we saw.  As I stated before, not everyone has a car, but in a city with almost 700,000 people and very small streets, it can get crazy if even half of those people have a car. 

I let my husband do all the driving as he’s more experienced in international driving habits.  There are no lane markers, and where may be some faint lines on the road, Albanians use them as merely a suggestion.  If a road is wide enough for three lanes, there’s always one in either direction (though not straight lanes as cars often drive staggered in order to pass or turn at any given moment), and the third one is utilized as a passing lane for *both* sides.  So, at any given moment, you could be playing Chicken with oncoming traffic.  Even in a “driving” lane, a car might stop traffic by remaining perpendicular to it until they can make the turn they want to – which could be a while, since traffic going in the opposite direction generally doesn’t let people through unless they have to.  There’s no right of way, no yielding (I think Albanians think it a show of weakness), even the red lights aren’t really red, unless there’s a police officer around, which was of course rarely, many times there is no signaling when changing lanes or turning. I came so close to so many cars during our time there, I could have kissed the other passengers as we passed by each other.  

Ah, but that’s not all!  Remember all those people without cars? They are walking the streets of Tirana, with nary a thought to their own or their children’s safety.  Driving in a large traffic circle (rotary/roundabout), I was amazed at the number of people that would walk in between cars, without a clear path to the other side, while traffic was merely backed up for a moment-no lights or walk signals-they just started across, and quite often had to either wait in the middle of the road for an opening or jog the rest of the way across.  (Frogger, anyone?) Let me explain the jogging pedestrians here for a moment.  Remember how aggressive I mentioned drivers are?  They drive quite fast for residential roads too.  So, if a pedestrian is crossing the road, and a vehicle is bearing down on them (clearly with not enough time for the pedestrian to get out of the way), the car merely beeps at them to warn them of their impending doom should they choose not to finish pick up their pace.  The lesson here is that if you’re crossing a Tirana street, and you hear a beep, don’t look, just start running.  I had this happen once or twice myself.  I have to say, Albanians are quite brave!