Ruins in Apollonia, Albania.
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“Albania? Why do you want to go
there?” the Greek policeman asked us, frowning,
bushy eyebrows arched in disbelief, as if to say, Why
leave this paradise island for that hellhole? “What
purpose do you have for going there?”
“We are going for a wedding,” I replied slowly
and carefully.
The man choked on his coffee and called out
incredulously, “Hey, Niko! Costa! Check this out!
They are going to Albania for a wedding!”
The port authorities sauntered over.
"A wedding, huh?” said the short, fat one,
Nikos. “What's in the barrel?” he asked,
pointing to the large, dark red, molded-plastic container
we carried.
“Wine,” responded Wayne, my traveling
companion. “Wine for the wedding party.”
They all frowned now. “Open it,” ordered
Costas. He reached his coffee cup into the barrel.
“Sure enough,” he announced, smacking his lips.
“It's wine. Red wine. Is it from Nemea?”
“Yes,” I replied. Of Greek red wines, Nemean is
one of the best.
The others dipped their cups into the barrel. Bam! Bam!
The policeman stamped our passports with exit visas.
“Good luck in Albania,” he said. You're going
to need it, he implied.
Earlier, as we boarded the ferry, wine and all, the
captain had collected our passports. To prepare the
paperwork, he said. The boat swayed, cresting another
swell. We seemed not to be moving, perhaps moving
backward. Certainly SarandĪ, our goal, drew no closer.
The bilge pump coughed. The captain sat down next to
Wayne.
“What do you have in the barrel?” he, too,
inquired, offering cigarettes, which we politely
declined. He adjusted a weathered blue fisherman's cap.
“Wine. For a wedding,” I answered.
Nonplussed, he nodded and returned to the bowels of his
boat. Moments later he reappeared, toting a stack of
plastic cups. “For myself and the crew,” he
shrugged. What he meant was, You don't have much choice.
I unscrewed the lid and he filled his cups. All across
the deck, passengers turned to stare at us, watching
enviously. I screwed the lid back on, determined not
to dispense any more of our precious cargo.
We rounded a headland and SarandĪ slowly emerged. The
city was a small one, a town really. Buildings of tan
limestone, stacked like a child's blocks, clung to the
shore of a shallow bay and stretched up into foothills
studded with blooming bougainvillea. Above the town
loomed two gargantuan apartment complexes. Laundry
fluttered in open windows like flags of welcome. It was
two o’clock in the afternoon, the hottest part of
the day. All was quiet; no one stirred; the people
snoozed.
SarandĪ is the largest town in the southernmost province
of Albania. Or, if you are Greek, Agia Saranda is the
largest town in the territory of northern Epirus,
illegally awarded to Albania after World War I. Many
Greeks, especially nationalists, would love to have her
back. In reality, the border between Greece and Albania
has, through the millennia, melted and moved – as
borders often do, especially in the Balkans – not
firmly placed but fluid and slippery. Albanians and
Greeks alike have crossed this unmarked frontier
repeatedly, in times of war and of peace, so that many of
the place-names in Albania happen to be Greek and many in
Greece, as far south as the Peloponnese, happen to be
Albanian – though no good nationalist on either side
of the border would ever admit this.The Greeks, employing
Corfu as a base and sponsored by the city of Corinth,
first colonized the coast of Albania in the sixth century B.C., at
Durrachium (now DurrĪs), Apollonia (near Fier), and
Butrinti (just up the road from SarandĪ). These colonies
survived and the region, once referred to as Illyria, was
eventually incorporated into the Roman empire. As a
result, Roman roads still snake in segments out from the
coast into the hinterlands, the greatest of these being
the Via Egnatia, which once crossed unbroken the whole
width of the Balkan peninsula, passing through
Thessalonika on the way to Constantinople.
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