Albanian Rail

The Economist’s correspondent also wrote about Albanian rail travel” which I appreciated just because it’s such an obscure topic here, let alone for outside readers.

I remember making my way through Bosnia in the spring of 2007 and being amazed at the mountains. I took an overnight train from Zagreb, woke up in Split and then took a minibus down the Croatian coast to Ploce. The Croatian coast is full of dramatic views because the road is literally on the side of a mountain with nothing but a couple hundred meters below you and the sea on the horizon. The minute we headed north towards Mostar in Bosnia, the mountains became more and more intense. I remember thinking that I had never seen mountains like that. When I found out I’d be spending two years in Albania, and after I looked through pictures of the country, I had a feeling the landscape would be like Bosnia. I was right. Mountains and geography are part of the reason why travel is long and grueling. Always a fan of rail travel, it was disappointing in that regard to be sent to Albania. There are only a few lines (Tirana to Saranda in the south, Tirana to Shkoder in the north, Tirana to Pogradec via Durres and Elbasan to the east). Most people who have traveled on a Deutsche Bahn ICE then taken any train in Eastern Europe will usually complain. In most countries, the rail systems are/were government owned and not maintained really well. Certainly they fall below Western European standards, often hilariously so. I used to joke that the thermostats in the cabin could have been replaced with M&Ms glued into where the button should be, after spending freezing nights or sweltering nights curled up on a far too narrow seat. I won’t even mention the bathrooms. But these are reasons that make them so alluring and endearing, especially for an American born far too late to experience what a connected rail infrastructure may have been like. Say what you want about the trains, but the lines can usually get you exactly where you need to go. And when they aren’t creeping or stopping at every tiny town, they’re pretty comfortable, too.

This article may answer a question most of us have wondered at one time or another: given that Albanians didn’t have private automobiles until the 1990s, how did they get around? Think about that for a second. As Americans where seemingly everyone has a private car, imagine not having any at all. Many Albanian families still don’t. Having a private car here is still very much of a luxury. That alone is a hard idea to wrap your head around, let alone trying to imagine what the roads would have looked like twenty years ago with all these first time drivers out there sans licenses. And we thought Albanian driving was suspect now… can’t imagine trying to cross the autostrada when people started driving. There are still a lot of problems with travel and driving here, highlighted by last weekend’s accident in the northern part of the country that killed 14. Two days ago, there was an accident at my site on the road I cross every day that killed a man. You always have to be so careful.

What I’ve read and what I’ve heard about Albanian rail is this: they are powered with late 70s engines from Czechoslovakia and furnished with a number of antiquated passenger cars from a number of Western European countries. It is important to note that usually a train is just one engine and two to three cars at most. I’ve heard they may or may not have bathrooms on them, which is a challenge since some rides could be upwards of five hours long. I heard that during the upheaval in 1997, people took to the tracks to remove spikes, part of a series of destroying things for no really good reason. People joke that the reason trains go so slow (I’ve heard upwards of 1 ½ hours from Tirana to Durres, which takes about 35 minutes by car) is that going any faster would cause a derailment. Like most jokes, I think there’s at least a half truth in there. I’ve traveled to the eastern part of the country which gets more mountainous the nearer you get to Lake Ohrid and the Macedonian border and I’ve been amazed as I saw train bridges a hundred feet tall or more as well as a number of tunnels. If the ride through to the east is pretty in a furgon, I bet it’s even more beautiful by train. A plan to go from Librazhd to Pogradec in the September is already in the works.

The most telling line is: “In theory they have 78 locomotives, but only 18 to 20 actually work, and the rest are cannibalised to keep the others going.” This is typical of many things here, not limited just to the rail system. Albania has a lack of knowhow, partly because of brain drain, and a fundamental lack of resources. It’s hard for the country to be able to fix anything by itself, even if it’s willing to. The article mentions a train linking Rinas, the airport, to Tirana. For an airport that serves over 1 million people a year, it would be great to connect the two places currently separated by a half hour bus ride. Like many other things, the project didn’t work out. The failed project

“ was a railwayman’s dream, the managers tell me, but far from being downcast their eyes are now firmly fixed on Brussels. An EU feasibility study has been completed and if the project is approved it could see up to €225m being used to fix much of the network.”

It’s another issue entirely to wonder how the funds will be manage and distributed and what the time frame would be on any eventual project. Even when funds are secured, corruption and mismanagement hinder the process. As for the EU, it seems like membership is being dangled like a carrot. I think most Albanians have high hopes for what life will be like when Albania joins the EU. But their hopes are unrealistic. Money isn’t going to rain down and life won’t change overnight, which is something both sides need to get clearer on. Albania has a long way to go until it’s ready for the EU, especially with the growing acceptance that the EU overexpanded in the first place. In my opinion, Poland is the only solid newer member out of the whole bunch. But that’s a topic for another blog. The number one thing preventing Albania from joining the EU is corruption and lawlessness as well as a strong set of laws. The EU has seemingly infinite laws that members must adapt. Based on previous experience, Albanians won’t conform to EU regulations when it comes to gathering grass to feed cows after one day instead of seven days… so I have no idea how they would adapt and enforce EU laws here. But in the meantime, cooperation can ensure the process keeps moving in a forward direction.