Albania, bunkers and goats
“Don’t show fear,” Dmitri cautioned, “Goats can smell fear…”
“Dima”, I replied, “I think it’s more likely that they can smell our lunch!”
There was a group of about 10 goats blocking the path. Six of them were staring at us with undisguised curiosity. They were scrawny, smelt strongly of, well, goat, and a couple of them were equipped with substantial horns.
“Look, we’ll just go round them, OK?”
That was an hour ago. The goats were still following us.
We were spending a few days hiking around the Valbona Valley in the Albanian Alps* – the Accursed Mountains – in the North of the country near the border with Montenegro. This is an outstandingly scenic area that welcomes an increasing number of tourists, though it is still pretty unspoilt.
Further down in the valley there were prosperous looking small farms growing beans, potatoes and what Dmitri assured me, with his usual breezy confidence, was rye. There was livestock too. Chickens, bees and quite a few goats and sheep for dairy. We had bought the ingredients for a fine packed lunch and it was this, I suspect, that was getting the attention of our new companions.
Goats will eat anything, even if it isn’t good for them.
We hadn’t seen any other hikers that morning. The goats had only us to bother. And they were getting bolder. More than once one of the younger males had made to butt us and had to be fended off with a walking pole.
“Dima, this is getting silly. Our lunch is in danger. We need an idea.”
“Fine. Look, there’s a bunker ahead. Let’s put it to use.”
Albania is covered in bunkers. Estimates of the number built varies but it may have been as many as 750,000. They were constructed from the 1960s to the 1980s at the behest of Enver Hoxha, Albania’s leader / dictator for more than 40 years.
Impressively paranoid, Hoxha was convinced that Albania would face invasion either by Nato or by the Warsaw Pact or, possibly, by both in partnership. He had bunkers built everywhere – on beaches, in the mountains, in town centres, in cemeteries, on golf courses (I jest!), everywhere. Tirana was surrounded by rings of bunkers totalling about 75,000 emplacements. The man just loved bunkers.
Being in construction, and quite a fan of concrete himself, Dmitri had taken a keen interest in the bunkers ever since the idea of an Albanian jaunt had been floated. He had explained at some length that there were two basic types: big and small. Both types were pre-fabricated and then assembled IKEA-like wherever they were needed. The building of these bunkers was a tremendous drain on scarce resources and absorbed about 4% of the nation’s GDP, rather more than was being spent on healthcare or education.
The bigger bunkers were command and control centres, about 8 metres in diameter and containing about 400 tonnes of concrete. Today, some of these have been repurposed as accommodation, community centres and restaurants. These were called PZ bunkers
The smaller bunkers were about 3 metres in diameter and were known as QZ bunkers. They were intended to accommodate two soldiers with their weapons. The one happenstance provided us with that day accommodated two slightly flustered late middle-aged men and their daypacks.
Our backs were covered and the doorway was easily defended. But now what? The goats seemed to be in no rush to leave and settled down to chomp on the rough grass that surrounded the bunker.
Time passed. After about an hour, Dmitri started to get fidgety.
“I really need to pee, you know? Prostate.”
“Dima, if you point it out there you realise that there is a fair chance it will be eaten by a goat?”
“What about if we maybe throw them some of our lunch? They might leave us alone?”
“Yeah, because that always works with stray animals, doesn’t it? We’d be stuck with them. We’d have to take them back to France. Imagine what Claudie would do to you if you came home with a bunch of malodourous goats.”
“Where’s the damn goatherd?”
“High on a hill, I suspect.”
And then fortune smiled on us. Some other hikers appeared. They were German. They were young, fit and attractive. They laughed long and hard at the sight of two old men cornered in a redundant bunker by a herd of goats. Right up until the point that the goats decided to switch their affections (capricious beasts are goats) and pursue them instead.
And so, after a brief pause to allow Dmitri time to disappear behind a rock, and to enjoy the sounds of Germanic swearing echoing up the valley (now there is a language you can really curse in) we walked on unmolested.
Gaston
* These are not the same Alps that Switzerland is built on. These are the Dinaric Alps. Completely different mountains. The name ‘Accursed Mountains’ may come from the legend that the Devil escaped from Hell for one day and created the jagged peaks. Or it may come from the idea that invading armies cursed every step they had to take to cross them.
Modern Albania took some making. To understand just how remarkable what you are looking at today is, I wholeheartedly recommend reading “The Accursed Mountains” by Robert Carver. The book was written following his travels in the country in 1996, between the end of communism and the country’s slide into anarchy.
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