Albania - What an interesting place -Day 390 (27,974 miles)

After reading the Lonely Planet blurb on Albania we were intrigued to see it for ourselves. It's a small country with a population of around 3.2 million and was ruled by a Communist regime until 1990.


Very ostentatious fuel station canopy, it looked more like the entrance to a Vegas hotel.

The countryside from the border to Tirane was littered with these concrete bunkers, apparently there were about 700,000 built to defend the country during the 41 year Communist leadership of Enver Hoxha (who sounded like a completely paranoid nutter!)

Whatever day of the week it was we came across many convoys of wedding parties, we were transported back to India by the level of horn honking used to mark the celebrations. In fact the noise was not the only way we were reminded of India.........
During Communist rule there were only 1,000 cars in Albania and the majority of these were assigned to Party officials. So, an awful lot of people have learnt to drive and taken to the roads in the last 11 years and we are convinced they flew in a posse of Indian driving instructors to teach them! Yes, Albania is definitely the European version of India as far as driving standards go. They are pretty bloody awful and as most are driving big German cars pretty fast it feels even more dangerous.

We expected Tirane to be pretty cheap but unbeknown to us it is Lonely Planet's no. 1 city to visit in 2011 so understandably prices are on the rise. However, there are some really good standard hostels and we found one with good parking, a helpful owner and like alot of hostels now it was actually a double room with en-suite rather than a dorm.

Many of the buildings that date back to the Communist period have been painted in a variety of colours to give the city a more cheerful appearance. Not sure that this makes much difference to those that lived through years of an oppressive regime and worked as forced labour on farms or in factories.
Among the grand buildings there are still signs of poverty, beggars, street kids selling cheap pens and others selling small amounts of home grown vegetables or second hand clothes. We didn't find out whether there is any kind of state support for those without work but like many poor places, probably not.



After Enver Hoxha died this pyramid was built as a mausoleum and museum in his honour. Since the fall of Communism the country is split on what should be done with the building, it is now in quite a state, closed to the public and may be pulled down to make way for a new parliament building. It's a shame it can't be renovated and put to good use but I suppose that's easy to say for us as tourists, we didn't suffer under their regime.


We stood in the middle of the road, in the middle of the day and took the photo's above and below, considering how few cars were in Tirane until 1991 the size of the roads is somewhat disproportional, even today it's not busy. Presumably the space was required for processions of Communist strength.







We found the National Art Gallery really interesting it contained work from many different periods including lots of Communist propaganda stuff. Not surprisingly all the subjects looked fit, healthy and well looked after (yeah right).





Still life?

Not sure why a street in Tirana was named after him, perhaps he seemed a slightly nicer bloke than Enver Hoxha.

We took a bus trip out to the small town of Kruje, a quaint little place in the hills that is mainly famous for a castle and museum detailing Albania's ancient history. In particular the 15th century hero Skanderbeg who fought off the Ottomans and joined forces with the Venetians.

To be honest I wish we had stayed in Tirane for another day but the bus ride to Kruje was quite entertaining. We needed to find a Furgon which is basically a badly maintained mini bus in which as many people as possible are crammed (including one on an unsecured plastic stool), we were helped to find the right bus and more importantly told the locals fare to pay by a couple of young lads. They were off to a market to sell a selection of fags, and cheap plastics goods from a small box and once the bus got going one of them started to practise his sales technique on John. They had been helpful and fun so John bought a incredibly cheap and tacky Albanian passport cover (always handy!) Negotiations started at 300 Lek and he ended up paying 70 Lek (about 50p), after a few minutes the young lad obviously felt he had done pretty well as he threw in an equally tacky card holder and a couple of packs of plasters!

Sales transactions completed the same young lad then engaged John in a discussion on the physical attributes of each young lady that got onto the bus (lots of gesturing as he spoke no English and John no Albanian!)

Wish we'd had time to see more.