Opening up to the spaciousness of the nearby Adriatic, the mountain motorway joins a precariously built roundabout National Road 1-bound, the main artery linking the country from North to South -Montenegro to Greece- quiet on a Saturday morning. Farmers wearing winter jackets sluggishly walk next to the four-lane road and their houses, built arbitrarily in the marshland, vomit clouds of smoke and burned turf.

Motorcycles heave through the chaotic traffic on approach to the Albanian capital and just as another day is about to start in the city, the motorway comes to a complete standstill. Once the bus stops at some sort of makeshift terminal , I walk across long avenues sheltered from the sunshine by robust trees, the cafes around me serving the odd early customers with Italian-made espressos. Interesting and at times disorienting, the layout used to build Tirana’s busy city centre is of some sort of star shape pointing into an area of two main squares and a pedestrianised zone.
The buildings around me are numerous, yet neglected. The cheap glitter and neon lights adorning the few stores at ground floor fail to reach the rest of the structure, the top floors looking wistfully unfinished and their red-bricked skeletons protruding through broken windows covered in tarpaulins. At street level, plastic bags have embedded in the dirt of narrow side streets over time and their ripped handles flirt with the light breeze and the numerous cats that now own the overflowing rubbish containers.

Granted, my first impressions of Albania do not seem to be pleasant and, aware of the decades of dictatorship endured by this small nation squeezed in between the EU-backed Greece and the former Yugoslavia, I slowly realize of the struggles of one of the poorest nations in Europe. The capital might not be the cleanest, nor the prettiest. Scanderbeg Square shows a large mural that seems to dig into the deepest of the nationalist sentiments and explosively displays it to the world, that same sentiment of the new and the reborn seen all across the Balkans. International hotel chains have encountered their playground around Tirana’s centrepiece, their modern and manicured tall buildings playing a game of light and shade with the sterile tiles of the main open spaces. A small clock tower next to the mosque complete the set of main attractions, all done and dusted within the first hour.

Just like the brief explanations about the war and former Albanian dictatorship given by the Bunkart exhibition some four stories beneath ground level, the key to enjoying Albania lies underneath the obviousness of its simple sights. It lies in digging into the simplicity of its people, in finding warmth in the elderly hotel receptionist’s broad smile and awkwardly hearty greeting hug, not a single word of English spoken, in finding comfort in the Greek restaurant owner offering me a coffee for free -just because- or even in finding some humour in the young barber patiently cutting my hair with a precision never seen before.

I decide to make of Tirana my next pit stop. The few days in Albania better spent looking at the pedestrians weaving through the heavy rush hour traffic in an agitated choreography of car horns and exhausts, the afternoon hours sipping on overpriced coffee by the Hotel Plaza and the evenings half-drunk with cheap Albanian wine across George Bush Boulevard.
On my last day in the country, I walk to the nearby Great Park and like the locals, indulge in a morning sunbath by the shores of the polluted lake, refreshing the dryness of the last days of warm weather in a verandah of red bricks, can of Coke in hands.

The rain casts some sort of weekend spell over the valley as I wait for my flight to be called at Mother Theresa International Airport. The lights of the bright terminal show entire families boarding flights to Italy -where most of the Albanians emigrated in times of dictatorship-, while outside, the darkness of the night engulfs the rest of the place in a melancholic horizon of dim lights vanishing amongst the hills.

Kudos to Olympic Airways for the full meal service on this one-hour hop across countries. Courteous and pretty, the flight attendants offer me a sandwich, a coffee with biscuit and a water before our small turboprop starts its bumpy descent through a series of turns and bends over the Peloponnese.

I once landed in Athens when I worked as crew for Qatar Airways. I remember the aircraft gliding over rooftops that seemed to collapse on top of each other. It was a long flight pushing the limits of crew flying time and, at four hours each way, it was the longest turnaround in our network. I remembering landing and opening the aircraft doors, the warm breeze entering the cabin in an intoxicating mixture of jet fuel and Mediterranean aromas. I promised myself I would be back one day.

The turboprop touches down and loudly hits reverse, the thin cabin seeming to veer off the main runway before banking right towards one of the terminals.
It is almost midnight and the airport is empty. A text message welcomes me back to the European Union and an involuntary sigh of relief feels surprisingly compelling. At the metro station, the last passengers of the night alight for the last train of the day. Their tired faces and worried grunts alert me for what a short blond guy at the platform alerts me for: Suburban Athens is not a place to wander around at night. Albanian by birth, his existence has mostly unfolded in Greece, the place he excitedly talks about in broken English, at times interrupted by memories of muay thai competitions and happy-ending massages in Thailand, tzatziki recipes and Athenians neighborhoods.
My entrance into the Greek world is far from glamorous at this time. My backpack has now glued to my back in a puddle of stinky sweat and, while running across the dark corridors of Monasteraki station, I find myself squeezing into graffiti-covered carriages along with the last of the youngsters now heading home after an early night of drinks and cheap cigarettes. Around Viktoria Station, my pace is of a power walk short of running, panting in relief at the hotel receptionist once I finally check in.

Athens is a frantic mess. From early in the morning, students negotiate their way amongst the Sub Saharan touts selling fake Gucci handbags, the goods resting on vibrantly-coloured cloths that clog footpaths over several blocks. Oblivious to any of the morning rush, the elderly carry small bags with the daily shopping with a surprising peace.
The city seems to spin around the round lines of Omonoias Square, as fast as the wheels of buses swerving in ripples of smoke and old motor noises.
The last EU outpost in the edge of Eastern Europe, the Greek capital is the ultimate crossroads of both locals trying desperately to preserve their own identity, yet slowly being overpowered by the constant movement of people that, just like me, happen to be here merely as bypassers, watching the city implode in a constantly controlled chaos. A city where the Chinese tourists follow red flag-waving guides, where the Americans chug on blocks of feta cheese and lettuce leaves clumsily served on white plates adorned with blue lines, and the thousands of migrants awaiting their fate in their own limbo of cheap Chinese knockouts.

Oblivious to the havoc below, the Acropolis sits on top of a rocky plateau in the most stately of the positions. Mesmerising, the intricate history of this ruin complex stretches for centuries, from the early settlers of the Middle Neolithic era, to the titanic efforts of Pericles, who led the refurbishing and reconstruction of the main temples during the Golden Ages of Athens. The Parthenon is the centrepiece of the dusty hill emerging some seventy meters over the streets of the Greek capital. Decayed and preserved, rough and exquisite, like a snow globe of history shaken by the passing time.

At Panathinaikos, the roar of the first Olympic Games send chills through my spine, for a second reviving my frustrated sporting dream. I smile at the many tourists taking pictures in the most bizarre  racing poses and climb the marble steps to the very top, to the exact same view that was once enjoyed when the winner of the first ever marathon completed the 42-kilometer journey across the Peninsula and with that, the largest sporting event in the world was born.

Gyros are a must in Greece. Either chicken or pork filled, the succulent mix oozes through the layer of pita bread in pure tzatziki-drenched satisfaction.

I see blue. It is everywhere in Greece. Defining its traditional icons, its flag, its sky and its sea. Only an hour South of Athens and at the mere cost of a metro ticket, the Italian-built tram transports me away from the concrete madness of the city centre and with every kilometer conquered, the streets turn leafy and hushed. Suddenly, the tram sharply negotiates a corner and, on the flick of a left turn, the buildings open to the bright reflection of sunshine above the blue sea, flooding the now empty tram with its overpowering force. From here, it is only ten minutes following the coastline to the last stop at Voula.

I cannot think of a better way to reflect about the recent days, nor a better way to close my time in the Balkans. The warm water matching the pleasantries of the autumnal breeze, my feet sinking in the soft sand releasing my body from the stress of traveling through six countries, and the Chinese woman pushing a half-hour massage to undo the shoulder knots of carrying a backpack through them all.
As the sun sets, small plates of fresh seafood are served at Afroditis Crescent, my body later lethargically hypnotised by the clacking of the rails and succumbing to a short nap only interrupted at Syntagma Square.

With a few hours left, I check into a cheap hostel in the bohemian Plaka and, exhausted and hungry, my feet stomp over the wet cobblestones . The minutes pass and the streets mumble soft notes of Latin and Greek music through the numerous loudspeakers hanging from the nightclub doors. I notice how my mood changes, how the city has finally worked its way through me, warning my integrity on arrival, wearing my body down during the walks through its congested core and finally, soothing my soul with the calmness of its seaside. On my last four hours in Athens, I finally understand it, Athens becoming a place to remember, to relive and perhaps, to revisit.

I learn how impossible it is to sleep in a hostel room in Plaka. The loudspeakers outside playing music until it is time to leave the damp dorm room and with that, embark on yet another early morning departure, another half asleep commute to the airport.
Alitalia 823 is cleared for takeoff and, different to my last time in these runways, I now take the memories of Greece in my mind, forever cast in tones of blue and gold as vibrant as the sky beneath us. Thunderbolts hit the peninsula below us and aggressively cut through the dark clouds above the city we now climb away from. It is a message from Zeus, as magical as the city itself.