Quiz question: which country has a Riviera in its south, Alps in its north and serves the best pizza outside of Italy? Answer: Albania. This is perhaps the last country in Europe where travelling still equals real adventure and where a small budget poses no problem.
City guide Eri had claimed that three things connect all Albanians. First: shqip, or Albanian, one of the oldest Indo-European languages. Neither understood nor spoken by their Slavic or Greek neighbours and undoubtedly the most difficult language to play Scrabble in – with its long words and profusion of zhs, qs and ës. Number two: Gjergj Kastrioti, alias Skanderbeg, the national hero who united the various Albanian clans against the Ottomans. His bearded effigy adorns every square in the country.
“And finally, Mercedes-Benz”, joked Eri. This love for status symbols should be seen within context: during communism, when Albania was the North Korea of Europe, only 3,000 cars were driving around the country. According to Eri, that is the reason for the questionable driving skills of his compatriots. “After the end of the dictatorship, everyone jumped into a car at the same time. Only afterwards did we realise that driving licences might have been a good idea.”
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With that theory fresh in our minds, we listened to the increasingly ominous noises from the engine of our van. “The driver is an idiot”, whispered a passenger next to us. We were driving up the Llogara Pass, a winding mountain road that rivals Highway One in California and the SS163 along Italy’s Amalfi Coast. A feast for the eyes, were it not for the fact that the van growled louder with every hairpin bend. Moments later, smoke circled from the engine and we stood still. “I told you”, snarled our neighbour. Albania is an adventure.
But later that day, the country threw all its trump cards on the table for the umpteenth time. From the highest point of the pass, we clambered on, following a path among black pines and kermes oaks – a stairway of rocks to heaven. These are the Ceraunian Mountains, where, according to poet Lord Byron, “the wolf roams, the eagle whets his beaks.” Below, the Ionian Sea glistened – panoramas reached as far as Corfu and a child had seemingly marked the coast with a blue fluorescent marker. Albania caters to all tastes – and that’s not just a cliché used by a lazy tourism office. Visitors will find 450 kilometres of coast and craggy, untamed mountains, like the Albanian Alps in the north; historic towns that lend themselves to pleasant strolling and a fresh cuisine that combines Greek, Balkan and Italian influences into something truly unique.
Sleeping at grandma’s
Italy, in particular, makes a solid mark. Albania licks the heel of the Boot, the narrow strait between the two seemingly acting like a mirror. Squares and streets were bathing in an Italian atmosphere, at every corner you could sip espresso. Albanian migrants infiltrated Italian kitchens, learned how to cook spaghetti napoletano and brought those culinary skills home. You won’t find better pizza outside of Italy, but you’ll only pay a fraction of the price in Albania. A coffee rarely cost more than half a euro, for double that you got a glass of wine and from about three euros you were eating. For small budgets, Albania is the best destination on the European side of the Mediterranean.
And definitely one of the most jovial – with hospitable people, proud of their country and happy that we were there to discover their little secret. Their sense of community and joie de vivre were infectious, so we set our clocks to Albanian time and got to know the people. During the xhiro, for example – pronounced like the Italian giro. As soon as the sun went down, Albanians started walking, endlessly back and forth on boulevards and embankments. A legacy of the communist era, when there was little else to do. Now, we were happy to take a break with ice cream and coffee. The terraces were bursting at the seams, costumed men played chess on benches. Sweet.
The small scale charmed us. We stayed with families who rented out their extra room(s) and who were only too happy to share a Turkish coffee, a bottle of homemade wine or a jar of jam made from cherries from the garden. It’s the kind of holiday country where the grandma of the family brought us boiled eggs and a big jug of mountain tea in the morning. Where a flat bike tyre mobilised an entire village. Where we couldn’t take five steps without being offered a shot of raki – the local brandy that serves as a pick-me-up with a morning coffee or a way to end the day.
Elvis is alive in Saranda
After arriving in Albania, we rested for a fortnight in Saranda – the Benidorm of Albania, where Elvis is alive (he runs a great café at the end of the beach promenade). Saranda turned out to be an excellent base for exploring the south of the country. Between olive groves, we rode a bus towards Butrint, an archaeological town with several thousand years of Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Venetian and Ottoman history. And as we dried up after a refreshing dip in the Blue Eye, a photogenic freshwater spring that rises from the karst, hordes of bright blue damselflies flew by in synchrony. A snake fled towards the depths. When divers once tried to gauge the depth of this turquoise natural wonder, they got no further than 50 metres. No one truly knows how deep the Blue Eye is. The miracle of karst.
It’s a damn pretty spot. Beautiful places sometimes have side effects: we couldn’t escape the buzzing of drones, the shouts of diving show-offs. The Albanian Riviera, stretching north of Saranda, felt far from undiscovered. It took a magnifying glass to find a patch of beach without deck chairs and umbrellas. We would later find an alternative on the shores of Lake Shkodra, in northern Albania. Only pygmy cormorants kept us company in the bays there.
Not for drunks
Time for a few statistics. Three-quarters of Albania is mountainous and the country boasts at least 150 castles. No wonder the lion’s share of those were built on top of mountain peaks, for example in the historic towns of Berat and Gjirokastër. In Berat, Ottoman houses, all pale white facades and chestnut-coloured roofs, flowed like waterfalls down steep slopes on either side of a river. No prizes for those who can guess where the nickname ‘city of a thousand windows’ originated.
If you’re looking to explore Berat, it’s a good idea to loosen up those calves. The cobbled lanes twisted sharply uphill – if this were Flanders, we’d send a peloton racing through. On a lovely patio, in the shade of vines, we took a moment to catch our breath. The reason for the multitude of windows became clear, the view was magnificent! The cook brought ice-cold beers and rustic earthenware dishes of fërgesë, a freshly prepared stew of roasted green and red peppers, tomatoes, onions and white cheese. A little further on, a red-rumped swallow hopped on a power line. How wonderfully simple could life be?!
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Gjirokastër was even steeper, a city with roofs full of slates like the scales of a fish, where “the top of one house might graze the foundation of another”, author Ismail Kadare wrote. His Chronicle in Stone gives a fascinating insight into daily in Gjirokastër at the time of World War II. “It was surely the only place in the world where if you slipped and fell in the street, you might well land on the roof of a house — a peculiarity known most intimately to drunks.” It was a strange city, he felt, “like some prehistoric creature that was now clawing its way up the mountainside.”
We slept in an old Ottoman house with antique furniture. In the courtyard, turtles crawled around. Mind you, like Berat, Gjirokastër didn’t feel like an open-air museum where only tourists came. People lived there, that much was clear. The mother of the house was busy in the kitchen early each morning, the son was doing his homework at the kitchen table. In the streets, little boys ran after footballs – defying the gradient of the slopes. A man walked a goat on a leash at night and behind a thousand windows, a thousand warm lights flicked on.
Yet the heartbeat of Albanian life beat the loudest in the rural villages. From Gjirokastër, we followed goat trails to the Ali Pasha bridge, a remnant of an ancient aqueduct in a valley just outside the city. Don’t expect silence. Shepherds with hooks in their clothes brought their flocks safely home, their instructions echoing off mountainsides. Above that landscape, an Egyptian vulture soared elegantly on the thermals.
Smoking in the church
Përmet, known for its roses and a massive monolith in the middle of town, claims to have everything but the sea. Big words, but our trip there did treat us to a nice dose of Albania – a recipe with equal doses of helpfulness, chaos and adventure. We were eager to get to Benja, where half a dozen medicinal baths flank a tributary of Europe’s last wild stream. However, there was no bus that day. A retired couple ordered macchiatos for us; the man gestured that he would take us there.
After negotiating several sheep traffic jams, we arrived in yet another glorious setting. Against a backdrop of snow-capped peaks, we climbed over a crumbling Ottoman bridge. We followed a deep gorge and bathed in the hypnotic colours of the pools. “Good for skin, kidneys and heart”, the retired woman listed the medical effects. It didn’t even matter that the water felt lukewarm.
Returning to Përmet, we hiked three centuries back in time, to Leusë. That mountain village of small-hold farmers could only be reached on foot or by jeep, so crooked little men stumbled down a wide gravel path to sell five bottles of milk and back up again with their purchases tied together in a knapsack. To see the interior of the village church, we knocked on the door of a resident. He brought out a huge key, so oversized that we imagined ourselves in a comic book. A door to a treasure chest full of frescoes and icons clicked open. The man lit a cigarette in the church. Did we mention that Albania is an adventure?
Albania: practical info
Best travel time
In the blazing heat of the summer, domestic tourists flee en masse to the coasts, pushing up accommodation prices there. Spring and autumn are more pleasant seasons to explore Albania. In June and September, temperatures are nice and beaches largely empty, except on weekends. From May, snow melts on the highest mountain passes and hiking in the highlands becomes an option. Winters are mild in the lowlands, but many houses are poorly insulated.
Where to stay on a budget in Albania?
- Saranda: Villa Marina, a delightful family business where three generations welcomed us. Comfortable room with a good-sized balcony for breakfasts, a kitchenette, and a washing machine just outside of the door. In spite of the daytime heat, we never even considered turning on the air conditioning – the room’s orientation is perfect (May 2022).
A version of this post first appeared in Dutch in De Morgen.
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