2022 World Tour – Albania
Hello from Albania, my sixteenth (Durres) and seventeenth (Tirana) stops on the trip and my 52nd country.
Below is the standard summary:
– Cool Ranch Doritos: No
– Thai ATM Card Works: Yes
– Thai Debit Card Works: Yes
– Thai Internet Purchase Works: Yes
– USA Credit Card Works: Didn’t try
– Worldwide Telephone/Data/SMS eSIM Works: Yes
– Spanish SIM Card: No
– Magic Jack Works: Didn’t try
– VPN Works: Didn’t try
– COVID Compliance Chronicles: No Requirements
– Internet Works: Yes
– Drone Flights: I can fly with only common-sense guidelines!
– Cost of Living: $$
– Currency: Leke L 114 = USD $1
– Language Issues: None
Since I know little about the Balkan countries I’m going to be traveling through, for both ancient and very modern chaotic history, I’ll do a little summary here as I go along. This will also be tainted by my own view of events, so don’t go updating Wikipedia based on it, OK?
In ancient times what is now Albania was home to the Greek then Roman then Bulgarian then Ottoman Empires until 1912. A series of republics and kingdoms ruled through 1939. At the start of WWII Italy invaded and occupied the region. At the end of the war, the communist Socialist People’s Republic of Albania was launched, headed by the brutal dictator Enver Hoxha, who aligned with the Soviets and neighbouring Yugoslavia. More on him and his buddies below. His reign made Albania one of the most isolated countries in the world. His regime collapsed along with other communist states throughout Europe in 1990. Economic and social chaos followed, leading to a mass exodus. After a decade of political turbulence a constitution and true democratic parliamentary system was ratified in 1998. Albania is a member of NATO and applied to become a member of the European Union in 2009, with Ascension talks starting in 2020. The Euro is not official, but is widely accepted in shops at a terrible casual exchange rate of 100:1 instead of the true 119:1.
When I last left you in Italy, I was in the port city of Bari in the southwestern corner of the Adriatic Sea. My overall plan is to go up the western side of Eastern Europe to Poland and come back down the eastern side of Eastern Europe, avoiding actual wars along the way as best I can. There are over a dozen countries in a relatively small area so I’m going to try to hit every one I haven’t been to before on the way up or down. Bari is the main ferry port to get to the other side of the Adriatic to the Balkan Peninsula so it’s a natural jumping over point for me.
There are several ferry lines that go the same route, and they all make overnight crossings so the only job is to get to the right place in the port to buy tickets and roll on board. I took the bus to the port and guess where it dropped me off? Go ahead, guess. At the ship docks. Great, but that’s not where you buy your ticket, because the ticket offices next to the ships are closed! Imagine if you will, you have to take a free 10 minute bus ride around the port to the small building that sells the tickets, then the same bus 10 minutes back to the ships. It’s all very Italian and chaotic, but I did get my ticket and get on the ship. Now the ship is HUGE, and I think is mostly designed to bring large transport trucks back and forth, with passengers an afterthought. There are hundreds of cabins though, and my ticket was not cheap at USD $77. When I got to the cabin, wow, it was SMALL. Small as in you could turn your body around in a circle on the floor and that’s about it. Small as in Rhode Island could beat the crap out of it in a war. Sorry, that was an “Arthur” reference. A flip-down bunkbed was suspended over mine on the bottom. The pillow and bed were nice and soft, a good bathroom, a nice reading light and plugs for charging my devices. I have to say it was a pleasant surprise after the shock of how small it was. We pulled out a little late and spent nearly 11 hours on the water, going only 237 km, until arriving in the port of Durres, Albania around 9 am. I think they keep the ship in first gear all the way over, I could have swum faster but my luggage would have slowed me down.
The immigration building in Durres was modern and clean and efficient. I’m not sure what I expected for a post-Soviet-dictatorship but I’m happy that the country seems to be slowly moving forward. I’m always leery of random taxi man at a bus station, train station or airport but a big burly guy with excellent English came over and offered to take me to my beachside hotel. He said without asking that he’ll use the meter and it will cost about 11 Euros. I agree and off we go. Turns out he’s been to Toronto to visit relatives there and he also gave me a mini history lesson about the country on the way. I took his number and plan to call him to drive me to Tirana tomorrow.
I walked into reception at the Majestic Hotel, but the lady can’t find me in the system. I checked my booking and both the address and hotel name are correct. I asked her to call the contact phone number shown on my booking. Turns out what I booked is a private apartment in the next building over from the hotel! The host just used the Majestic as a location helper. Well, that’s not a great strategy for your guests or the confused staff at the Majestic… I’m told the guy will be over in 15 minutes to take me to the apartment. 45 minutes later he shows up and walks me 5 minutes to the apartment. Wow, this is nice! Huge bed, great bathroom, large living room with big TV, fast Internet, full kitchen with beer and liquor and a washing machine, all for â¬48 for the night. This is my kind of country!
I changed and headed over 3 minutes to the beach and found the beach chair and umbrella situation similar to the grid in Rimini but on a much smaller scale. The north end of the beach was bordered by a small creek and a barbed-wire-fenced military area (!) and to the south it went for kilometers. I paid 500 Leke for my spot and settled in. Caught some sun and walked up and down, seems like lots of local families out for the day.
I check the drone rules for every country that I enter and each one so far has had some unwelcome restrictions like registration for me or the drone or passing an exam. Refreshingly Albania didn’t have anything other than common sense guidelines like don’t fly at the airport, over large crowds or over military bases. I grabbed the drone and did a flight up and down the beach, positioning it just over the water, and nobody seemed to care, so that’s good.
For dinner I had a Kosovo-style goulash which was mostly beef cubes, gravy and bread, and a Kosovo beer. The waiter must have been from Kosovo because he was very happy with my order. 2 scoops of gelato along the beach as I walked the shoreline at sunset. At bedtime there was an extremely loud DJ playing at an outdoor bar across the street but after closing the windows it was tolerable.
I rang the taxi guy in the morning, who said he would pick me up in 30 minutes because he was doing his yearly car registration paperwork. 1.5 hours later he shows up, apologetic for the bureaucracy that seems to exist in all motor vehicle offices, and drives me to Tirana, the capital. That was a stiff â¬55, would have been cheaper on the bus but I got door to door service and was happy to help this nice man out.
It turns out my Tirana apartment booking only has the street name, not the number, so the taxi guy calls the host lady and she tells him where to go. Ugh. It seems like Albania needs to work on their on-time and location accuracy. The apartment is again quite nice, run by a mother and daughter. The 10 mb/s DSL Internet connection is achieved by running a wire out the 5th floor window frame and across the street to a telephone pole. Hey don’t knock it if it works!
I walked to the massive Tirana town square via small streets with a gorgeous farmer’s market and tiny shops selling second-hand everything. Many tokens of the Soviet time like hats, medals, pins, signs and coins. It’s clear the people are still struggling to get the country running well again after the collapse of communism. It’s all a bit scruffy looking but the people are proud and hard-working and I give them all the credit for that.
A protest parade went through the downtown but I couldn’t read the signs. It was being covered on live TV and the cops had the roads shut down and were guiding the protesters along their route. Everybody was calm and polite, which was a refreshing change from recent events in ‘Merica.
I went into “Bunk Art 2”, an underground bunker built for the Communist elite of the Ministry of Internal Affairs but is now converted into an art piece / museum of the days of the dictatorship. Each room had a theme and went forward in time. There were rooms for the secret police, intelligence gathering against citizens, listening devices, political arrests, torture, propaganda, and the conference room and bedroom for the Minister. Very powerful and informative since almost none of this got out to the West as it was happening.
In the morning I started looking for bus tickets to Skopje, North Macedonia but kept getting told “no” in every travel agency I went into. Travel agencies are a big deal in Europe and especially here in the Balkans so far so I’m puzzled. I’m starting to worry that there’s no bus, thinking about renting a car or flying but why are there no buses from the capital city of one country to the capital city of the next country over? Well, it’s because most of the travel agents stopped selling bus tickets during COVID and just didn’t start again. I finally found one agent who was happy to sell me a ticket for the next morning, 7 hours for â¬25. Yay, now that’s settled. As you can tell, half of my trip is just planning on how to get to the next place and it’s always an adventure. Google Maps actually has some very good information on bus schedules if you give it the starting and ending bus stations but it’s coming up a little dry here in the Balkans.
I walked to the remains of the Old Castle, which has had a modern shopping and dining area built on top of it, nothing to see but a gate in a stone wall. I decided to put on my big boy pants and take a cable car ride to the top of the mountain, you can see how dramatic it rises up just on the outskirts of the city from the pictures. I found the right bus to take me close to the base station and after an exhausting 15 minute uphill walk I arrived. I paid Leke 1000 and got on. Now, I have a thing about heights. I may have mentioned this before. Anything over 10 feet and I’m sure I’m going to plummet to my death. There are dozens of painful ways to die in a cable car, at least. Well, this cable car takes 15 minutes to get to the top and at points is hundreds of feet off the ground, it’s not great for my head but I managed by focusing on a sign inside the car and muttering curses at the designers and builders all the way up. At the top there’s an excellent restaurant with a great view of the city and I had an amazing cheese and spinach risotto, yummy. Now I’m still in Albania so I brought the drone along. I launched it and flew back and forth across the face of the mountain and over the restaurant peak area, staying far away from the cable car station and the cables. I’ll edit the video to include the Durres beach flight and post it when I can get a strong Internet connection. I hope it comes out as good as it was in real life.
I packed up and went down, even more terrifying as it goes nearly straight down the cliff face at the start, far worse looking than on the way up. I rode the bus back into town, walked to the big Taiwan Park and had a cold soda and let myself relax after all of that adrenaline firing through my system.
To summarize: a country with a very dark and isolated past trying to hard to join up with the rest of the world. I see very positive results so far and hope for continuing improvement and integration. Both Durres and Tirana are worth a visit if you’re in the area.
Next up: Skopje, North Macedonia.
