New friends and madness at the Schatzi Racing offroad event

They night before the event I spent in a national park right next to Tirana, the capital of Albania.

The next morning hundreds of offroad cars gathered in Tirana. It was super cool to see so many cars and people sharing their excitement about offroading. Right when I got there, I found a really nice group of guys. I don’t know why but it’s always that way in Albania: you just meet nice people and they are immediately interested to getÃĪtigt today know you or what you are doing and if you want, you can just have a good time and make new friends. Thanks for the sausages again, btw.

We started our drive to a location in the mountains 50km away from Tirana. Most of the drive was on asphalt and curvy mountain roads. The last part was a proper offroad tour on gravel, stones, mud and snow.

The location was kind of an crater on the top of a mountain and there the madness started. Lots of people shredded through everything they could find, bugged their cars, crashed into trees, crashed into ditches, burst their tires, helped each other, had a barbecue, listened to the music of a DJ and had some beer and a lot of fun. Btw the DJ played some proper eurodance style music. I love it.

Shortly before I started my way back to Tirana, I got interviewed by a Albanian TV station. You can watch the interview on YouTube. After the interview I thought that I have been saying only crazy rubbish but actually it’s as bad, I think.

An abandoned camp site at Lake Orchid

From Albania I made a short trip to North Macedonia and Lake Orchid. In this area there were none of the small mountain roads I use mainly in Albania to go offroading and to find cool spots to stay for a night or two. On the way I took around the lake, all official camp sites were closed because of the winter off season.

But then in the dead end of a small road directly at Lake Orchid, I found this abandoned camp site. It is really crazy because everything is still there. The reception building, the rest rooms, the small bungalows, wrecked caravans etc.

I had a lot of fun just going around and exploring this special place. By the way the lake and my spot were really cool, too. Rosinante parked right on the former volleyball field at the beach. After a morning run I tried to take a swim, but the water was cold like crazy.

At the evening three very friendly police officers knocked at my door, checked my id and we had a short but nice conversation about the Rosinante and the region around Lake Orchid and they had no problem with me staying on the volleyball field.