Albania

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Hello again readers, apologies for my laziness. Its been 3 months since my last blog and have been up to a great many adventures and seen a number of countries and cities. I'm now back in San Diego for a couple weeks on a 'holiday from my holiday' to recuperate and catch up with my friends here in Cali before heading back to Europe and then continuing on through Asia. Hopefully I'll be caught up with the blog by the time I leave here. Also, for my Australian friends, I should be back in January sometime. I will be in Perth for a month before moving to Melbourne to do my Masters. Hope life is treating everyone well, enjoy.

One of the days in Montenegro Luke and I decided to take a short trip to Albania. We took a guided tour which was reasonably expensive in comparison to our typical days out in eastern europe, but a place like Albania we were happy to have the safety of a bus and the security that comes with having a knowledgeable tour guide as well as three other staff who didn't appear to do all that much, apart from the one that drove the bus. For the most part the tour was in Russian and Serbian but every once and a while the guide would give the English explanation for one of the sights or points of interest.
We left at 7am and were home by 10pm but I can safely say that i've seen all of Albania that I need to see in that 15 hours. Don't get me wrong, I liked the place and it was very interesting but not very high on my list of places I'd like revisit.
After a few hours on the bus we arrived at a smallish town called Shkodra. They pointed to a big fortress on the top of a hill which seemed pretty interesting but didn't really get close enough to appreciate it. Then they let us off somewhere in town to have a quick walk around. It was a pretty undeveloped place with a lot of street vendors but my impression of the place was that the people there couldn't have been doing to bad for themselves. I say this because, and I shit you not, every second car on the road was a Mercedes Benz. Don't ask me how people that appeared as poor as the Albanians could afford relatively new Mercs but they can. On top of the high proportion of luxury cars, it seemed that every other shop was either a car wash (to clean the Mercedes), a servo (to fill up their Mercedes) or a auto shop (to buy new rims for their pimped out Mercedes). It was a very strange place indeed but our tour guide explained to us that the locals prioritised their 'ride' very highly and whatever money they had left I guess they bought their food with.
After that, we drove for a while longer until we got to some bunkers which were apparently used as shelter during the second world war. Had a poke around through the bunkers for a while and was time to move on again.
From there we headed to the capital of Albania which was a place called Tirana and around the same population as Perth. For the most part, it seemed like a sprawling mass of unfinished and unsturdy buildings. There were a few nice buildings in the city centre, including a 17 story building where me and Luke had a beer in a revolving restaurant at the top. Was good to look out at the whole city over a beer. We had a laugh because Fosters seemed quite popular there so we had one while listening to some Aussie tunes randomly playing over the speakers in the restaurant. We thought it a bit odd, two Aussies sitting in one of the more random places in the world, drinknig Aussie beer and listening to Aussie music.

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Photos

View overlooking Tirana
In an attempt by the Mayor of Tirana to make the place look less like a hole, heaps of buildings have been painted bright colours. It's still a hole.

A river
The countryside was pretty barren apart from a few mountains and a few rivers

Local entrepreneurs
There were guys by the side of the road selling carp off the sidewalk

One of the nicer parts of town
Had lots of sculptures and monuments of soldiers, I guess because these Albanians have been though a lot of wars, most recently the Kosovo conflict

A Bunker
These bunkers were scattered all over the country. Evidently Albania's past hasn't been all smooth sailing.

Mo T
More commonly known as Mother Theresa was Albanian born. Who knew?

The Town Centre
All the statues in Albania are of guys that look like Medieval knights

Cesars Casino
Not quite as glamorous as the Vegas version of this popular Casino/Hotel. So random.

Mercedes
Most of the cars were Mercedes and most of them were as good as this one. No joke!

Car wash
A typical car wash in a typical area.

Cows
Yes, people just herd the cows down the street. The bus had to stop several times for them to get out of the way

Comments

[AC]

Hi. Read your Tirana piece with interest. I spent some time there a couple of years ago. Afew things: teh car washes are probably mostly gone now; a lot of businessmen fell into fracnchise scams (very, very unsophisticated at business, if you remember in the early 90s the entire economy was a pyramid scheme. that collapsed) The mercs are all stolen elsewhere in Europe and Russia. They're cheap, but the downside is you can't drive them outside of Albania!