Tag: mountains

My offroad overlanding dream became true in Albania

About two years ago I really started to play with the idea of an worldwide offroad overlanding journey with a 4×4. I watched a whole lot of YouTube Videos, read a lot and got really hooked. When I think about the YouTube Videos I watched, GrizzlyNbear Overland always come to my mind. I think their videos are the ones that I enjoyed and I’m still enjoying the most.

In my mind the picture of going offroad with a 4×4 vehicle in an remote area, finding a camp spot on your own and living there as long as you want got created.

And here in beautiful Albania this dream became true.

For me Albania is really different in so much terms. The people are friendliness like crazy, the roads are perfect for offroading and there are very much things that where new and different for my mind. For example: before entering my first offroad tour, I met two Guys from Schatzi Racing Albania and they gave me there phone number, stickers and a beer and said that I can call them anytime if I would have any problem in Albania.

I started a offroad tour, that I got from Pistenkuh, crossed a bridge that was missing a few parts (after I crossed it, I talked to the guy living next to it and he was ashamed of the conditions of these bridge when I took photos of it, I gifted him a bottle of German beer and he was happy), did my first little river crossing because another bridge was not fully constructed and found a super cool spot to stay two nights.

More about it in the next post.

Bye bye Croatia on an abandoned military base

Croatia was so cool and beautiful! It’s the first country on my journey that felt really different than Germany and “western Europe”.

In contrast to Germany everything seems to be not so “over organized”. For example they have only approximately one thousandth of prohibition signs. E.g. there are beaches with rocks and there are no “danger, don’t climb the rocks” signs 😆🤯

I talked to some locals and although things are not so organized/ restricted what leads to a certain feeling of freedom, they have to deal with a lot of corruption and inequality. Often there is no straight way to accomplish things. You have to deal with things as they come. And if you want to get a business started, it seems to be very impractical or impossible to make this on a one hundred percent legal way.

Most of these shops are very smaller than in Germany and so e.g. there are very few big hardware stores and the ones that are big, are from the German Bauhaus company. You simply can’t get everything everywhere. And there is an invasion of German companys going on!

Of course are the streets very different as well. To go offroading it’s perfect. If you should wants to get really fast from A to B in the remote areas, it could get difficult, I think.

I talked a lot about what rules, prohibitions etc. do have impacts of your mind and thinking and once it’s more sorted in my brain, I will write about this.

Huge parts of Croatia are all into tourism and in Winter without or just a few people. First I thought this is the case because of the Covid situation, but locals told me that this is normal in Winter. E.g. one peninsula has around 1500 inhabitants in Winter and 20000 including tourists in Summer! Between November and April most things are closed. Even every second parking lot on the highways. For me at the start of my journey it’s perfect that there is a lot of space, silence and solitude 💫

This abandoned military base on the photos was my last stop with some lost places feeling and awesome sunsets in Croatia. There I meet a very nice and clever guy from Germany who helps people installing everything about electricity in their camping vehicles: https://tinoeggert.com