Not a very exciting day. I had breakfast, got my bus, and headed out to Albania. We ended up briefly back in Podgorica, which shocked me since I didn't think there was any conceivable reason to go back there. I guess Montenegro doesn't have very many roads, so all of them go through the capitol. I met an Irish guy on the bus who's running a vaguely similar route to mine, though he was continuing on to Tirana. We may try to meet up at some point in the future. We had a hilarious moment where he started talking about this crazy conspiracy theorist he met in Bosnia, and I quickly put together that this was the same flat earther everyone in my Sarajevo hostel was complaining about. We exchanged stories about Patrick for a while, since there were slightly different angles to the experiences people had with him.

Albanian border crossing was easy. Honestly, aside from the Croatia-Bosnia border it's been a completely smooth experience to cross borders outside Schengen. The drive through southern Montenegro (well, really all of Montenegro) and into northern Albania was amazing. Mountains and lakes everywhere. I checked into my hostel and it's nice, but doesn't seem too lively. I guess that's the price I pay for visiting a midsized town in the middle of the Albanian countryside in the off season. Speaking of prices, it's real cheap around here. The lek is about a cent, and my hostel for tonight was 800 lek. So yeah, whatever money I'm spending on these busses I'm more than making up for in accomodations. I took a nap when I got in and then went out to get some dinner. 500 lek got me some great kofta-like thing and stuffed peppers at a restaurant simply called "traditional food". I haven't seen much of Shkoder yet, but it seems strange. On the one hand it appears rather poor, on the other it seems bizarrely fancy for no obvious reason. There certainly are tourists here, but I wouldn't think it would be enough to support this many classy sit down restaurants, especially not year round. Meanwhile on the outskirts of the city people are selling chickens live in cages on the street corners. Weird vibe. I sat in the common room for a while at night and read. The people here are mostly somewhat older than me, so it feels a little strange and I don't really want to chat with them as much as I may have in the past. Looking forward to exploring the city tomorrow though.