Mini-golf up a mountain

We had absolutely no plans for today, so we decided to take it easy and go up a mountain…by cable car!

I finally got up just after 9am, which meant we would make breakfast and even though I wasn’t particularly hungry, at least I could have coffee. It didn’t take us long to get ready as I only have a small selection of clean clothes left since it’s been crazy temperatures for most of the holiday. We had decided to take a trip to Dajti mountain (pronounced Die-te) and take the cable car to the (almost) top. The mountain is about 8km from our hotel, so we thought it best to ask how to get there; we were expecting bus, but no, reception said taxi. Fair enough, and as it turned out, it was a mental journey through lots of side streets. It really does feel like you are taking your life in their hands here. Anyway, we made it and paid 14 euros each for a return ticket on the cable car.

The full cable car trip took 15 minutes and it is the longest cableway in the Balkans. The views from the top were fantastic, but there is way more to do than just take a few pictures. For starters, there is an adventure park, horse riding, paintball with an AK-47 or any other type of gun, as well as a restaurant, revolving bar and most importantly, mini-golf. To be honest, I was more looking forward to the rotating bar in the tower, but it was closed. Iain on the other hand, was dying to beat me at mini-golf! He did, but only just. 

It was starting to get pretty hot so we had a beer from the self-service bar, then decided to take the cable car back down and a taxi back to the city. Because there were only two of us, the ride back down the mountain felt a bit more precarious, we could definitely feel the sway from the wind; I’m sure it has passed all the safety checks!

The taxi dropped us at Skanderbeg square so we decided to head to Bunk’Art 2, a history museum inside a preserved Communist-era nuclear bunker. There are loads of bunkers throughout the city which were built during the Hoxhaist government led by Enver Hoxha from the 1960s to the 1980s. More than 750,000 bunkers were built during his time, but never used for their intended purpose. There are two bunker museums, one near the mountain, while the other is not far from the main plaza. Bunk’Art 2 reconstructs the history of the Albanian Ministry of Internal Affairs from 1912 to 1991, and in particular the secrets of the “Sigurimi” who were really the secret police.  

So let me tell you a bit about the history of Albania at this point, although I am no expert, but I really had no idea until I came here. I was aware there was a dictator at some point, but I was never aware that there were concentration camps or anything like that. Enver Hoxha governed Albania from 1944 until his death in 1985; he brought about lots of good changes in the country after it had been destroyed during the war like increasingly literacy, building a railway, electrifying the country as well as lots of other things. However, this only came about through the use of brutal tactics like executing religious leaders (the country was made atheist) and executing any opposition or disloyal people within his own party. I mentioned the Sigurimi earlier, they were there to prevent counterrevolutions and suppress opposition to Hoxha; they controlled the people through interrogation or incarceration in labour camps as well as monitoring private phone calls and conversations, which was widely done during this time. Hoxha became more and more paranoid and envisaged war against Yugoslavia, NATO or the Warsaw pact, which leads us to the policy of “bunkerisation.” Many of the bunkers are used today, but for cafes and restaurants or  museums like Bunk’Art 1 and Bunk’Art 2.

It was quite humid in the bunker so we decided it was time for a refreshing drink; there is a nice pedestrian area within the Justinian Fortress Wall with bars and restaurants so we ended up in a place called Opings Cocktails & Beer. An Aperol Spritz is back to just over £4 so I was happy.  

We stayed for a couple of drinks but I was starting to get hungry so we found another place called Millennium Garden; I was fed up with meat so I went with Carbonara and another Aperol Spritz, I should have asked for sponsorship for this trip from Aperol.

Although we hadn’t done too much today, I think our step count was only 6000, we were shattered. We walked back to hotel, taking a picture of the oldest mosque in the city as we wandered past as it was all lit up; we would visit there tomorrow.