Old Roads of Albania

The Turks had done nothing to improve the roads in Albania. They were just the way Nature and the Romans had left them. At one point, we came to a sharp drop between black rocks. The winding path had been used for hundreds of years, so much that a deep channel had been worn into the rock, which was knee-deep when walking. Even though the area was full of rough rocks, it would have been impossible to get lost, because the path had been clearly marked by the feet of many generations of travelers.

The Skumbi River and Roman Bridges

This path led us down into the valley where the muddy Skumbi River flowed, making its way toward the Adriatic Sea. The path also led to a Roman bridge, well-arched and still standing strong, just as it was when the Romans built it. I saw many Roman bridges throughout Albania. Some were still in use, while others were falling apart, with pieces of the bridge washed away in the river. Some were broken in half. But not once did I see a bridge that the Turks had repaired. Large sections of old bridges still stretched over rivers, looking like they were waiting for repairs. Fixing them wouldn’t have cost much, and it would have saved people from having to go far out of their way to find another place to cross Istanbul Daily Tour.

The Broken Roads

I didn’t see any roads that worked well for connecting towns. Instead, I saw roads that were useless. Between the Skumbi bridge and Elbasan, the land was mostly flat. Here, I saw signs of poor efforts to build a good road. The authorities told the people in the area that they had to work for four days each year to build a road from Elbasan to Struga. But at the rate they were going, it would take 4,000 years to finish, and even then, it wouldn’t be a good road.

I saw some of this road-building in action, but it was only in places that were easy to travel through. The ground was smooth and level, but a little rain would make the road turn into mud. In other places, the people hadn’t done their four days of work, and no vehicle could travel through. Occasionally, there was a stretch of road that the government had worked on, with piles of earth like a railroad embankment and stone culverts that weren’t needed. These culverts were meant to let small streams pass through, but they were unnecessary because the streams were so small you could jump over them when they were flowing, and now they were dry.