It’s the corner of Europe that tourism sort of keeps skipping over for its neighbours up the road and over the fence. When you travel Albania you travel an ancient land seeped in history and overflowing with concrete bunkers.
I once ended up travelling in Albania.I never planned to be there, but then I’m not sure how many people do, it’s not exactly a bucket list destination.
The unofficial tourist slogan is; Come Visit. Chances are your car is already here. Apparently Albania has more Mercedes-Benz per capita than any other European country. I didn’t see too many Mercedes factories on my travels there, – but that’s beside the point – it’s insinuated there’s some unofficial car stealing ring going on . And in the last sentence, ‘insinuated’ is doing all the heavy lifting.
Albania is a proud country of three million people who proudly pronounce recently sainted Mother Teresa of Calcutta as perhaps the most famous Albanian, followed closely by John Belushi’s brother Jim, followed by an American astronaut whose mother may have Albania heritage. However, it does appear Saint Teresa was born in what is now Macedonia while Albania’s main airport in the capital Tirana bears her name. Claims well and truly staked. I tended to believe a ten year old kid brandishing a Kalashnikov on the Albanian border town of Pogradec in 1997 – he had an itchy trigger finger. At the time Mother Teresa was on the front page of Albania’s national newspaper, she was gravely ill.
This olde-worlde country sits on the Adriatic sea, surrounded by Greece, Macedonia, Montenegro and Kosovo. In the 20 years since I was there, I’m still waiting for the tidal wave of travel stories proclaiming it to be the next biggest thing in world travel. Albania travel warnings might have something to do with it*.
Plenty of impoverished countries have emerged from communism, wars, political uprisings and even ethnic cleansing to suddenly pull in the tourist dollar. South Sudan are you listening to this!
Back in the late 90s there was optimism. The local postcards though didn’t want to appear too pushy.The Choice is Yours……. The seven dots represent at least seven possible reasons why not to go there. Top of the list in August 1997 should have been the collapsed ponzi scheme = 10 year olds with guns.
Still for me, it was void of ALL tourists (they had been airlifted out the previous winter) and after discussing this with three other backpackers in Macedonia we were keen to dabble in a bit of war tourism and travel Albania. I had just read PJ O’Rouke’s Holidays In Hell – what can I say? I was inspired.
Just getting into the country was a hassle at the time. After encountering NO border queues, hearing faint bombing sounds, that were apparently road building, we checked out of Macedonia and walked through no man’s land where we found the United Nations camped out. Two very bored Finnish United Nations soldiers we shall call Dolph and Otto were lifting weights in their compound. They were a little bemused by us walking into Albania and quickly got the rest of their Finnish bodybuilders together to start a sweepstake on whether we got out alive or not. So at odds of 4000:1 we marched around the corner to the Albanian border. What we saw next can be vaguely compared to a biblical scene where Jesus walks into a huge crowd of peasants, surrounded by their worldly possessions, with mouths agape, quietly part to let JC get through on his way to customs and immigration. There were no cameras or fingerprint analysis, just a bored official hunkered down inside a dilapidated shed who dutifully stamped our passports – the ink pad had dried out long ago so my passport stamp simply says Alba.
We exchanged $10US for a backpack full of Lek notes and tried to be tourists. One of the first things you notice driving around the country in a furgon or minibus are the thousands of concrete bunkers dotting the landscape.
Like a dog left to shit in his own back yard, Albania’s communist leader of 40 years, Enver Hoxha, had 700,000 of these unsightly shells built randomly all over the country. Sometimes you don’t see any for miles and then you see a cluster of three – it’s like Auckland’s public bus timetable. Still, Air BnB might turn these ugly things into tourist holiday stays.
Any hope of simply following the Lonely Planet guide to travel Albania was quickly crushed like a seedless grape when we started our hunt for accommodation in the lakeside town of Progadec. The Places to Stay section had now become Places to Defecate. We wandered the streets of Progadec and door knocked trying to find a room. After we explained we were not selling Amway, the locals were generally very happy to help. Which is one thing I will say about the Albanians – at first a little suspicious, once you approach them for help they smile and put out an APB to cousins, aunts, shopkeepers, prostitutes, local politicians, 10 year old boys carrying guns, literally the whole town to solve your travel crisis.
Our first night was with a family who gladly booted grandma out of her room (once they got her in a wheelchair) and magically four beds appeared. Dinner was on the top floor of their house with views out over Lake Ohrid and a nearby street where kids picked their way through used needles and condoms.The squid was delicious.
Next stop on this pre-burial tour was Albania’s capital Tirana, a two and half hour journey on the floor of a furgon. As the only female of the group I was told to stay out of sight and we had to leave early in the morning to avoid any bad men with guns who randomly pull over traffic to relieve you of your possessions then your life. We heard three people had been shot and killed on the same road the previous week.
Tirana thankfully was a bustling metropolis compared to Progadec and actually quite a lively city. In 1997 it felt relatively safe. In fact, in the main square we found an amazing alley full of restaurants and bars and for a second we felt like we were on some Mediterranean 18-30 club holiday. Excitement reached fever pitch when we found dodgems. Being the height of summer in a hot, dusty, landlocked city, we tried in vain to swim in the pool at Europapark – it sounded like a camp for the recently displaced and impoverish Albanians of Tirana but was in fact a pretty swanky hotel. Due to our mildly dishevelled appearance, we were denied access so spent the afternoon at the Tirana Park with old men playing chess and swilling beer.
From Tirana we took a day trip out to the coast, hoping for beaches, cocktails and a swim in the Adriatic sea. Instead, when we got to the port town of Durres we found out where most of Albania’s household rubbish ended up. A hike up the hill for a view and to visit one of the Lonely Planet’s ‘must see’ features in Durres revealed that King Zog’s famous pink and white villa had been badly vandalised and was being used as a military base. The military might still be there according to recent tourist reports and it’s not possible to look inside.
Perhaps Kruje – only 20km from Tirana – offered the only glimpse of hope for tourists coming to travel Albania. It felt clean and it felt genuinely quaint. In fact, someone must have alerted the townspeople that we were coming because we encountered what could loosely be described as souvenir stands. Older ladies of Kruje were selling odd bits and pieces and out of date postcards on crates with tea towels draped over them. They might need to up their game for the next wave of tourists but as we drove back through bush and clean air to Tirana I felt like I had seen a little of the Albania I had hoped existed.
Footnote. Dolph and Otto and their Finnish UN buddies welcomed us back into Macedonia a week later as only the Finns can – emotionless recognition. I can’t be certain but I thought I saw one bloke running around like a demented jack rabbit on heat when he caught a glimpse of the four war tourists returning. The odds had thankfully been on our side.