{"id":8927,"date":"2018-03-12T13:24:59","date_gmt":"2018-03-12T13:24:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.battleface.com\/battlezine\/?p=8927"},"modified":"2018-05-15T10:27:40","modified_gmt":"2018-05-15T10:27:40","slug":"monica-axelsson-in-albania","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.battleface.com\/blog\/monica-axelsson-in-albania\/","title":{"rendered":"Monica Axelsson in Albania"},"content":{"rendered":"<span class=\"span-reading-time rt-reading-time\" style=\"display: block;\"><span class=\"rt-label rt-prefix\">Approx read: <\/span> <span class=\"rt-time\"> 2<\/span> <span class=\"rt-label rt-postfix\">mins<\/span><\/span><h2>Monica continues her solo journey from Sweden with a little luggage and a big motorcycle.<\/h2>\n<p>I could stay in Greece forever, if it only was hot in the winter. When the cold came crawling at the end of September, I felt it was time to go on and discover other parts of the world.<\/p>\n<p><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-8931\" src=\"https:\/\/www.battleface.com\/battlezine\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/20171018_161557-1024x667.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1024\" height=\"667\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.battleface.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/20171018_161557-1024x667.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.battleface.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/20171018_161557-696x454.jpg 696w, https:\/\/www.battleface.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/20171018_161557-1068x696.jpg 1068w, https:\/\/www.battleface.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/20171018_161557-645x420.jpg 645w, https:\/\/www.battleface.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/20171018_161557-300x196.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.battleface.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/20171018_161557-768x500.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.battleface.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/20171018_161557-330x215.jpg 330w, https:\/\/www.battleface.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/20171018_161557-690x450.jpg 690w, https:\/\/www.battleface.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/20171018_161557-1050x684.jpg 1050w, https:\/\/www.battleface.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/20171018_161557-951x620.jpg 951w, https:\/\/www.battleface.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/20171018_161557.jpg 1200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>As usual, I didn&#8217;t have a certain plan, but some places attracted me more than others. Croatia and Sicily for example and perhaps northern Italy to visit a friend before the winter. These countries are not in a logical itinerary, but it doesn&#8217;t matter in my world. So I simply drove to Albania on my way north. I loved to explore the exotic Albania! It&#8217;s strange that there can be such a big difference between two countries just by crossing a border. Nature, landscape, people and buildings, everything was different.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-8928\" src=\"https:\/\/www.battleface.com\/battlezine\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/PSX_20171009_193200-1024x768.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1024\" height=\"768\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.battleface.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/PSX_20171009_193200-1024x768.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.battleface.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/PSX_20171009_193200-80x60.jpg 80w, https:\/\/www.battleface.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/PSX_20171009_193200-265x198.jpg 265w, https:\/\/www.battleface.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/PSX_20171009_193200-696x522.jpg 696w, https:\/\/www.battleface.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/PSX_20171009_193200-1068x801.jpg 1068w, https:\/\/www.battleface.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/PSX_20171009_193200-560x420.jpg 560w, https:\/\/www.battleface.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/PSX_20171009_193200-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.battleface.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/PSX_20171009_193200-768x576.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.battleface.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/PSX_20171009_193200-330x248.jpg 330w, https:\/\/www.battleface.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/PSX_20171009_193200-690x518.jpg 690w, https:\/\/www.battleface.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/PSX_20171009_193200-1050x788.jpg 1050w, https:\/\/www.battleface.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/PSX_20171009_193200-827x620.jpg 827w, https:\/\/www.battleface.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/PSX_20171009_193200.jpg 1200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><br \/>\nAlbania is like a mix of Balkans with a touch of India. The mountains look the same as in northern Greece, but naked. The people are serious but friendly like in Slovakia and the traffic is chaotic as in Macedonia. The major roads are good, but most of the roads are small with decimeter-deep holes here and there and plenty of goats, dogs and cows in the middle of the roads, like in India.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-8929\" src=\"https:\/\/www.battleface.com\/battlezine\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/PSX_20171009_200109-1024x748.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1024\" height=\"748\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.battleface.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/PSX_20171009_200109-1024x748.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.battleface.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/PSX_20171009_200109-696x509.jpg 696w, https:\/\/www.battleface.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/PSX_20171009_200109-1068x781.jpg 1068w, https:\/\/www.battleface.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/PSX_20171009_200109-575x420.jpg 575w, https:\/\/www.battleface.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/PSX_20171009_200109-300x219.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.battleface.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/PSX_20171009_200109-768x561.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.battleface.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/PSX_20171009_200109-330x241.jpg 330w, https:\/\/www.battleface.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/PSX_20171009_200109-690x504.jpg 690w, https:\/\/www.battleface.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/PSX_20171009_200109-1050x767.jpg 1050w, https:\/\/www.battleface.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/PSX_20171009_200109-848x620.jpg 848w, https:\/\/www.battleface.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/PSX_20171009_200109.jpg 1200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>It was tough for the old V-max in Albania. Some roads were even steeper than in Greece. It was dangerous and it made me think that I needed to take a look at my insurance. I was in the middle of nowhere and needed internet. In addition, there was bad weather in the north, so I simply decided to take a ferry to Italy instead of crossing Albania so that I could get better internet and where the bike wouldn&#8217;t have to work so hard.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-8930\" src=\"https:\/\/www.battleface.com\/battlezine\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/PSX_20171009_192147-1024x684.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1024\" height=\"684\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.battleface.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/PSX_20171009_192147-1024x684.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.battleface.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/PSX_20171009_192147-696x465.jpg 696w, https:\/\/www.battleface.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/PSX_20171009_192147-1068x714.jpg 1068w, https:\/\/www.battleface.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/PSX_20171009_192147-628x420.jpg 628w, https:\/\/www.battleface.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/PSX_20171009_192147-300x201.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.battleface.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/PSX_20171009_192147-768x513.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.battleface.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/PSX_20171009_192147-330x221.jpg 330w, https:\/\/www.battleface.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/PSX_20171009_192147-296x197.jpg 296w, https:\/\/www.battleface.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/PSX_20171009_192147-690x461.jpg 690w, https:\/\/www.battleface.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/PSX_20171009_192147-1050x702.jpg 1050w, https:\/\/www.battleface.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/PSX_20171009_192147-928x620.jpg 928w, https:\/\/www.battleface.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/PSX_20171009_192147.jpg 1200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.battleface.com\/battlezine\/?s=Monica+Axelsson\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">More reads from our favourite Swede<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Monica continues her solo journey from Sweden with a little luggage and a big motorcycle. I could stay in Greece forever, if it only was hot in the winter. When the cold came crawling at the end of September, I felt it was time to go on and discover other parts of the world. As [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":31,"featured_media":8949,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1064],"tags":[945],"class_list":["post-8927","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-solo-travel","tag-solo-traveller-monica-axelsson"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.battleface.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8927","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.battleface.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.battleface.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.battleface.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/31"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.battleface.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8927"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.battleface.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8927\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8950,"href":"https:\/\/www.battleface.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8927\/revisions\/8950"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.battleface.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8949"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.battleface.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8927"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.battleface.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8927"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.battleface.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8927"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}