Bus traffic

Oftentimes, it seems that things don’t work out right. We hear about people who have missed a bus or a phone call possibly by just seconds. I heard once about someone who stood in line for 8 hours in an effort to have 60 seconds in front of a performance artist in the basement of the New York public library—the guard put his arm down in front of her signifying that the person in front of her would be the last person to gain such an audience. She took this disappointment and wrote about it. I’ll write, too.

            I have a similar story. I was in Pristina, Kosovo for two days. The bus ride from Tirana is about four hours long. When I arrived, I took a card from the bus that listed the return times as 05:00, 16:00, and 22:00. The first option was a bit early even for an early-riser like me, and 22:00 is a pain, for one because it gets terribly cold here at night—it’s like the desert.

            So 16:00—4:00 in the afternoon. Fine. I ask my hotel when we should check out. 12:00. Also, fine. I watched some television for the first time in 25 years (It’s amazingly addictive. Why would I laugh at such stupid plot lines and inane fanciful situations? Who has ever heard of a lawyer inspiring the jury to join her in a chorus-line type song and dance routine in the middle of a trial?) I studied some Russian and took a short nap.

At 11:45, I left my room and hobbled over to the elevator, the same one the day before I had ridiculed—the idea that a person would take the elevator down to the swimming pool and exercise room to get exercise seemed preposterous—my knee shooting pangs of discomfort with each movement. I hadn’t spent a lot of time down in the fitness area, but enough to annoy the gods of orthopedic discomfort. 

            As I paid my bill, Vetan, the receptionist, cussed a bit as the credit card reader was not where it was supposed to be. Once he found it, or at least found something, I tried with my Sac City State Bank card. When I use this card in Tirana, depending on the direction of the wind, sometimes it works, sometimes, not. One day, I used it to pay $50 for the MRI of my knee and all was fine. Thirty-five minutes later, I used it to pay the down payment on my new glasses, and it didn’t work. So, I had to scamper 5 blocks from the optical office to the Societe Generale Bank ATM machine where my Sac City Bank card did work. I used it yesterday in the Belgrade airport, all was fine.

            For Vetan, in Pristina, the SCS Bank card didn’t work. No fear, I also have a Capital One card. This one worked. By this time, the taxi was outside. I had called a taxi because I had realized earlier that I would not be able to walk to the bus station, or even walk down the hill to catch a bus. Vetan had told me earlier that the ride to the bus station was a set price for guests of the hotel at 3 Euros, a very good price. When I arrived, I had paid 8 euros for the same trip, after feeling a bit smug that I had talked him down from 10 Euros. 

            When I got in the cab, I made sure that the driver knew about the arrangement. Vetan let him know that, by agreement, I should pay only 3 euros. It was a new driver, Ilir, so he was unaware of the deal. He had to call his dispatcher to check things out. Yes, it was true—3 Euros to the bus station.

            Some people reading this may find it interesting the Kosovo uses the Euro for their currency. Kosovo is not part of the EU. Kosovo is not even a country in the eyes of the entire world, especially not in the eyes of Serbia—the country that they are trying to break away from. Kosovo was part of the former Yugoslavia. Interestingly enough, Yugoslavia was one real mish-mash of countries. After the fall of Yugoslavia, every member wanted independence, including Serbia, of course. The trouble is that a piece of Serbia, located along the border with Albania, was full of people who were ethnically Albanian. The Albanians saw this as their opportunity to be free. The story is long and complicated. Suffice it to say that Kosovo is in limbo; they aren’t rich, they don’t make their own money, so they use the Euro. Done.

            We took off in the taxi, and things were groovy. On the way down, I understood that Ilir wants me to help him get a visa for the United States. He loves the US and it is his dream to see the country. Him, and everyone else in the Balkans—ok, not everybody but more than 85% of them. I tell him that I have no idea how to help, he accepts this with a dose of disappointment. I offer to take his number and tell him that I will write to him so he will know at least one person from the US. He’s happy. This happens just as we are getting to the bus station. He doesn’t want to take a ticket and drive in to the parking lot because that would add to his bill. Even though I have to walk very slowly without bending my knee, I agree; I’m not in a hurry. He stops in front of the arm that controls entry and starts typing his name into my phone. At this point, a massive bus pulls up behind us, like buses do in front of a bus station, and gently activates its horn that nearly made my knee brace fall off. Ilir apologized profusely as he indicated that he needed to move, so I needed to get the rest of the way out of the car and wait for a minute. Ilir drove over the curb and onto the unoccupied area in front of the parking lot control booth. The bus drove in, Ilir finished the phone number, I paid him 4 Euros—an awesome 25% tip, which is surely unlike me, but still a tiny sum when I think that on the way TO the hotel, I’d also given a 1 Euro tip—for a fare that was already more than 200% too expensive.

            I started limping to the station, some 100 meters away. I was nearly four hours early for the 16:00 bus to Tirana.

A toilet. Good, that will take some time.

Thirty cents for the toilet, I’ll wait.

I thought, “If I pay now, I might have to go again at some later point during my four-hour wait.”

So, I went off in the other direction to the place that looks like the station where I might be able to buy a ticket. The place was miles ahead of Tirana in this regard. In Tirana, buses to different towns leave from different areas; a centralized bus station is something that Tirana hasn’t felt the need to create. Another interesting thing about Tirana is that a major landmark is the train station. The thing is that the train station doesn’t exist. I haven’t been able to get a clear answer as to if it did exist, or if it hopefully will exist, or what. I think the trains used to come to Tirana, and they used to come to the general area that people refer to as the ‘train station.’ A sad thing that is incomprehensible why there are no trains in Albania. It would seem that Albania could enter the wider world if they could join the European train system.

            I walked into the Pristina bus station. It looks like it was made for 10 times as many buses with a similar increase in people. There are two rows of twenty windows on either side of a basketball court-sized open area, and the home team is not playing today. I could imagine buses from all over Yugoslavia going to everywhere else in Europe, or at least Eastern Europe.  It looks like 4 of the windows have men behind them. There are 10 women are sitting on a line of chairs, waiting. Their chatter dies away and I feel each pair of eyes studying my every move. They aren’t looking because I am especially attractive or interesting, but because there is nothing else to look at. Then I open my mouth and say, “Can I buy a ticket to Tirana here?” identifying myself as a foreigner—another thing that makes me an oddball. The man behind the glass pointed to an identical kiosk directly across the basketball court.

I mention all these things, the hobbled knee, the card reader, the need to confirm the price, giving the driver my phone number, the bus’s propitious arrival, and my detour to the toilet to emphasize that I may have made it to the bus station a bit earlier. If I had avoided all of these bits, I might have made a difference of as much as 15 minutes in my arrival time to the station.

As I neared the window, someone I couldn’t see on the other side of a column, yelled, “Tirana! Tirana?”

Had he heard that I wanted to go to Tirana?

The kiosk guys said, “Tirana, 12:30.”

I didn’t know the time. I stammered, “But...wha--? I thought it was 4:00.”

“Ok, 4:00,” and the man started to relax.

“No, no, no, 12:30 is fine.”

I looked at my watch. 12:26. The dude from the other side of the column had already grabbed my bag in an effort to get my butt on the bus. Holy good graces and happiness. I made it to the bus by less than 5 minutes. This was a different bus company than the one I had used to come to Pristina. What’s more, on the way up, the bus was completely full. This bus was 20% full and I could stretch out fully on the five seats at the back of the bus and take a nap.

Sometimes you wake up on the right side of the bed.