That Time We Stole a Car

But not really

Renting a car in Albania is a little different from renting one in the rest of the world. I mean, sure, there are a few major car rental agencies at the airport like Europcar and Hertz, but if you try to book at the last minute, they’re likely not going to have availability. Ask us how we know, LOL. The good news is that there are a ton of local car rental places you can use.

However, you don’t really know the reputation of the place or where the cars have come from. I mean, they’re probably legit, right? There’s a fair amount of palm greasing that happens in Albania, so it does make one wonder. Anyway, we needed a car to get to Vlore and couldn’t find one through one of the global names, so we asked our first AirBNB host (who was amazing) if she could help us. We told her we needed a car with full insurance and we were willing to pay for this. Well, turns out full insurance isn’t really a thing in Albania; the most you get is about 80% coverage. Hmm, we weren’t comfortable with this. So she tried a different source and found someone who could rent us a car with full coverage. We asked if this would be in writing and she said they could write it in by hand on the contract. Uh, what? Would that be legally binding? Hahaha. I know laws in Albania work nothing like they do in the US.

Our only other option to get to Vlore was to hire a driver, which was about the same cost, but we really wanted the freedom to make the journey ourselves. So we rolled the dice and said yes to the car rental with the handwritten policy. We took a taxi to where we were to meet the guy and we were expecting to arrive at some sort of business with a variety of cars for rent. Nope! The car was parked on the side of the road where the guy was waiting to meet us. No business office, no car lot. He greeted us, handed us the key and the contract, pointing out the handwritten note, and told us to have a good time. We paid him and that was pretty much it. Oh, and he mentioned he had added some gas to the car.

The girls opened the back doors to find a bag with someone’s stuff in it. We yelled after the guy and he walked back to collect it, nonchalantly. That’s when we looked at each other and mouthed, “Is this his car? Did he rent us his car?” We really weren’t sure. We got ourselves situated and Chris turned the ignition on only to discover that “put some gas in it” meant the car had a quarter tank of gas, LOL. I had read about this being typical, I think because the cost of gas is so high. People just add a bit here and there as needed to get around rather than filling the tank up. I opened the center console to look for something (I don’t remember what) and it was full of someone’s stuff. Yeah, this definitely felt like someone’s personal car, not a full-time rental, LOL. So then we started joking that we had stolen the car because all we really had was this flimsy piece of paper with a handwritten note, in Shqipe, which we couldn’t read anyway. How did we know it was actually a rental contract of any kind? We had paid the guy in cash, so there was zero proof of any transaction. (So much happens in cash in Albania.)

And that’s the story of how we “stole a car.” We never did find out whether it was the guy’s car or an actual rental that just hadn’t been cleaned well. It’s an unsolved mystery! Do you have any interesting car rental stories? Do tell!