Montenegro?

I have found myself on a coach bus without my passport in Albania.

...The storm outside the plane was raging. A two year old behind me was screaming her lungs out and her mother was desperately trying to calm her down while crying herself. Fierce gently grabbed my hand and said, "This is terrifying." Soon, the captain was on the intercom saying that the weather was too bad to land. No kidding. He said they were rerouting to Tirana. I was like cool, hopefully it's the next major city from Podigorica. The girl sitting next to me asked if I had ever been to Albania before and then it dawned on me that we were rerouting to another country!

The plane started it's descent and I just thought to myself, there is no way he landing this plane at this speed while the nose is still on a crazy angle upward. Sure enough, the captain was speaking again to inform us that he would get back to us when they had more information. There is nothing quite like realizing no one has a plan while you are in the air circling an airport. We didn't wait much longer though, the weather was obviously clearing up and we did land safely in Tirana. Everyone clapped with real gratitude. We were alive.

We hadn't landed at a gate, so three buses came to get all of the passengers and brought us to the airport so we could go through border control. The airport wasn't expecting us so we just followed the crowd like sheep to get our luggage and asked whoever was present about the way out. Ryanair said they would arrange for coach busses to pick us up and bring us to the Podigorica airport. We waited about an hour and during this time, the girl I met on the plane helped me contact my hotel to tell them we were going to be very late and she even asked them to send a taxi to the Podorica airport. She was from Montenegro, spoke Montenegran and was an absolute life saver.

While on the bus we were checking if there was wifi and just a locked one belonging to a Michael was available so we joked around about trying to find him on the bus. Not ten minutes later as we are getting to know the people around us, the guy sitting behind her offers her his wifi and says his name is Michael. Small world, of wonderful blessings folks. She was able to connect and then let the taxi/hotel know our status.

Then we arrived at the Albanian border about two hours later. It took forever, but they let us through. Arriving a few minutes later at the Montenegro border, it also took another "forever" only this time they rounded up our passports. Before they took ours, we realized that the Albanian border control at the airport never stamped out passports. After we handed them over for them to be prossesed at this border, we started talking about the idea that if something were to go wrong at this point, none of us would have our passports and no one would know that we were in Albania because there wasn't any record of our entry/exit. We simply didn't exist for about two hours. I have traveled a lot, but this was an earie feeling. Looking back on it, the airport had scanned the passports, so it was probably fine, but we had been through a lot at this point. Soon, the oddities just kept coming. The stack of passports/Visas were handed to a man at the front of the bus and then the bus took off. So many people were asking the bus to stop so the passports could be distributed and check to make sure that everyone got theirs returned. Nope...just kept going. A lady jumped up and asked for half the stack and they divided and conquered by calling out different countries. Thankfully, that worked and we were driving up to Podogorica airport thirty minutes later. We were all so happy to be in the rain getting our luggage and heading to our rides. The girl I befriended had arranged to join Fierce and I so we dropped her off first and then we headed to our hotel. All was going well and I was loving trying to make out the mountains in the glow of the street lights. There was no one on the streets, just our car at 4am. Until there was a cow with big, brown, round eyes walking toward us on the road. The cow was calm, my eyes were big, Fierce was sleeping and the taxi driver's foot was slamming the breaks into the floor of the car.

Everyone's nerves a bit dialed up, we made it to the hotel and the taxi driver, who was an employee of the hotel, showed us our very large and comfortable room. Goodnight everyone. Tomorrow we reset. It's been a day that started at 7:30am and is now ending at 4am the next day. I want to say a special thank you to the girl sitting next to me and also the hotel staff that went above and beyond for Fierce and I.