Albania: The Undiscovered Country

[livius drusus]

There's a nice little article (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/10/travel/10budget.html?th&emc=th) in the NYT travel section about Albania. Apparently it's now stable enough for tourism, but still backwatery enough to be unexplored by fureigners and cheap as hell.

The capital, Tirana, with its brightly painted apartment buildings and molto Italiano cafe culture, is a fantastic starting point, especially since it’s hard to spend more than $15 a person at the city’s nicest restaurants.

Start in Gjirokaster, a beautifully warped city that produced two of Albania’s most important 20th-century figures: Enver Hoxha, the country’s dictator for 40 years after World War II, and Ismail Kadare, the novelist perennially mentioned as a Nobel Prize candidate. Gjirokaster is built on slippery, cobblestoned hills so steep they seem to defy human habitation, yet the town of stately slate-roofed Ottoman houses bustles.

Southern Albania’s greatest treasure, however, is Butrint, a 2,500-year-old city that was inhabited by successive generations of Illyrians, Greeks, Epireans, Romans, Byzantines and Venetians, before dwindling to a tiny fishing village in the late 19th century. It’s the kind of place where history is still waiting to be discovered.

Situated on a hilly, forest-shrouded promontory south of Sarande, near the Greek border, Butrint (a Unesco World Heritage Site) was first excavated by Italians in the 1920s, who unearthed an amphitheater and Greek-built walls. Archaeologists later discovered early Christian basilicas, a baptistery and as many as eight bathhouses.

When I was growing up, Albania was completely closed off. Nobody knew what the hell was in there, despite it being a hop, skip and a jump from Italy. I love that there's a hidden gem still to be discovered in Europe. :wriggle:

[ChuckF]

...no.

My aunt & uncle are currently on a state department mission to Albania. It is not "ripe for tourists." Maybe it would be if one could go out after dark. I probably wouldn't go, and I'm into the region.

[livius drusus]

Party pooper. What happens after dark?

[ChuckF]

People with guns take your things.

[livius drusus]

Sounds like Washington DC.

[ChuckF]

Minus infrastructure and basic law and order institutions.

[livius drusus]

Damn. Who did your aunt and uncle piss off anyway?

[Watser?]

We have all kinds of Romanian, Bulgarian, Serbian, Russian, Ukranian etc. mafia here. But no Albanian. You know what that means?

They keep them all at home! :scared:

[Ymir's blood]

Party pooper. What happens after dark?
Blood sucking ghouls?

[Ensign Steve]

You wish!

[fragment]

Which part of Albania was that, Chuck? I was there just a few months back and no-one with guns took anything of mine. The guide book said that the north could be pretty dodgy, but the south was fine.

I was travelling overland from Croatia to Greece. After a quick stop in Montenegro I hopped across the border and spent a couple of days in Tirana, then went down to Gjirokastra followed by Saranda and around. It's still a fairly run-down country in most parts, but pretty damn interesting.

[livius drusus]

Ha! So there, Harshin McBuzzkill. :nyahnyah:

[ChuckF]

In the northeast.

Articles like this on Eastern Europe piss me off for no good reason. Shortly before the last time I went to Bulgaria, either the NYT or the Washington Post published an article about the new skiing industry there. It made the whole country sound like the goddamn Ritz Carlton. It seems bizarre and perverse to gloss over continuing strife and hardship, and in some cases actual danger. Of course, there are a load of other articles telling everyone to never leave their home country because every other place on earth is crime-riddled to balance those out.

[fragment]

Yeah, the guide book I had (lonely planet) says to stay out of the northeast, pretty much. While I agree that completely ignoring problems in a country is likely to help ignorance persist and even get unwitting tourists in some serious danger, I really don't think you should write off the whole country as a travel destination on the basis of some areas. Especially if you're interested in the region - it feels like one of the last of the old communist states to come in from the cold, and makes for an interesting comparison to those which are further down the process.

And of course there's a long and unique history stretching back thousands of years. The national museum in Tirana has some pretty cool stuff - from Roman mosaics through to WWII resistance stuff. Unfortunately for me there's only the occasional caption in English so I didn't always know what I was looking at!

Here's (http://www.fragment-ed.com/blog/2006/08/02/albania/) a brief thing I wrote in my blog just after I left. I'm trying to get some photos up right now, but dial-up is my enemy.

[ChuckF]

I really don't think you should write off the whole country as a travel destination on the basis of some areas.
That is not the exclusive basis on which I discount Albania as a tourist destination. Failing or non-existent infrastructure, uncertain political stability, high crime rates, rampant corruption, and poor sanitation are among the reasons that I discount Albania as a tourist destination. I would only go there for research.

I'm glad you enjoyed Albania, and I wish everyone a pleasant time in Tirana or wherever they choose to go on their next trip to Albania. I didn't mean to bring down the thread.

[livius drusus]

You didn't bring down the thread, Chuckles. You and fragment actually made it substantive. :goldcup:

[fragment]

Failing or non-existent infrastructure, uncertain political stability, high crime rates, rampant corruption, and poor sanitation are among the reasons that I discount Albania as a tourist destination. I would only go there for research.Again, these depend on where you go, and also what kind of travel you like to do. I'm a backpacker, and a certain amount of the above are par for the course in many countries that many people do travel to. Being informed, taking a few precautions and using general common sense you can minimise the hassle.

Even for people who prefer a bit more ease and comfort, Saranda is a short ferry trip from Corfu and is pretty similar to other Mediterranean coastal resorts - to a degree that is not far off tarnishing some of the charm of the place.

Got a few pics up (http://www.fragment-ed.com/blog/gallery/?lzkfile=Albania%2F), not patient enough to do any more right now. The first 4 are Tirana, the last is Gjirokastra.

[livius drusus]

Great pics, fragment. I love the nationalist propaganda mosaic.

[fragment]

It's pretty cool. That's the frontage to the museum.

I should point out that those are nicest parts of Tirana in those pics... I should've taken a few of the run-down bits for comparison, but didn't think of them as making good snaps at the time.

[fragment]

More snaps (http://www.fragment-ed.com/blog/gallery/?lzkfile=Albania%2F), including Gjirokastra castle, archaeology at Butrint, Saranda and around.

[livius drusus]

What's the church with the cows grazing in the front yard? :grin:

[fragment]

That's an Orthodox monastery on a hilltop next to the sea between Saranda and Butrint. I don't thimk I ever found out the name of the place. The monasteries didn't fare well under Hoxha, apparently, and nor did the Mosques. That one's being restored - hence the planks in the foreground of the shot.

When we went inside, we surprised a donkey sheltering in the anteroom. There are some nice frescoes inside the chapel.

[livius drusus]

Donkeys and frescoes. What a great pairing. :aww: Not as cute but just as remarkable a counterpoint is the fighter plane/ancient ruins scene. It's like a modelling set or something.