We met in the parking lot of Tirana airport: I, David, Nora and Amina. We had spoken for weeks in chat, but live no one yet knew what space to occupy in the group. The trunk was too small, the navigator suggested different roads and after ten minutes we had already wrong exit. It was a little elegant beginning, but perfect to dissolve tension.
We had eleven days and a ring itinerary: mountainous north, inner city and a few days along the coast. The only rule was not to drive tired and not to transform every stage into an obligation. We split fuel and parking with a shared note, assigned two people to navigation and left to those who drove the last word on the stops.
The roads that force to slow down
To the mountains the road is narrow and the time indicated by the map stopped making sense. Behind each curve were crude, jobs or landscapes that deserved a stop. At first we tried to recover the minutes; then we realized that it was useless. We canceled a planned visit and arrived at the guesthouse before dark, still glossy enough to enjoy the evening.
The house had a stone courtyard, few rooms and a common table. The family that ran it served us a dinner prepared with what was there. We didn’t speak the same language, but between gestures and translations on the phone we managed to tell from where we came from. That evening our group stopped looking like a sum of people and began to have a proper pace.
A rubber, four reactions
The real test came two days later when a spy forced us to stop. Nora wanted to call the assistance immediately, David proposed to continue until the next country, I was looking for the car kit and Amina kept an eye on the position. For a few minutes we all talked together. Then we stopped, we evaluated the security of the point and contacted the rental.
It wasn’t a serious failure, but we lost almost three hours. Instead of looking for a culprit, we used the wait to have lunch with what we had and reorganize the stages. That episode showed the differences of the group without turning them into conflict: who was cautious protecting us, who was practical found solutions, who kept calm kept others together.
The coast without racing
Arrived at the sea, we gave up changing the beach every day. We chose a simple base, reachable on foot from the village, and alternating bathrooms, small paths and slow dinners. After so many kilometers, doing nothing together was surprisingly important. Everyone could disappear for a few hours without the group interpreting it as a rejection.
For a journey by car between newly known people, the most useful deals have turned out to be the trivial ones: maximum departure time, rotating music, stops declared without embarrassment, no luggage added at the last moment. They did not make the journey rigid; on the contrary, they freed energy for really interesting decisions.
Return
When we returned the car, the trunk seemed even smaller and we much less strangers. Albania has remained in the photographs of streets, mountains and flat tables, but the strongest memory is how four different characters have learned to coordinate. We didn’t become friends because everything went well. We became it because when something went wrong, no one pulled back.