We left Croatia yesterday for Albania. It took us 22 hours and five borders to reach our destination. We went through Serbia and what is now it's own nation, Montenegro. We went through very early in the morning on the day of thier independence we got to witness much celebrating. We are now in Albania with a couple of days off to recouperate. We will be here for a week of concerts then to Serbia. God gave us favor and we were not stuck at any border more than 2 hours which is amazing, especially with all of our equipment. The [View Full Entry]

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Or so the Albanians call their country themselves... Well I have been here for almost a week now and I kind of like the country... It's a little like Asia within Europe... The traffic is chaotic at best, the roads atrocious and the driving mad, with lots of honking and lots of shouting... You got to love it... Tirana is not as bad as I thought it might be, it has turned into quite a colourful city because the mayor who is a former painter ordered all the concrete soviet blocks to be painted in different colours and motives... I think [View Full Entry]

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Tirana June 11th Tirana is not my favorite city in terms of things to do and places to see for the quick traveler . That being said, it reminds me much of my 'hometown' of Cairo Egypt, with the pseudo-third world feel. This city is not one of outstanding beauty and great historical monuments, although there is much history to the region. We stayed at a little hostel/hotel near the center of the city, and it was by far one of the worst places we've stayed at so far, as well as one of the most expensive at 20€/person per night. [View Full Entry]

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Albania at last! June 10 *Sorry i dont have more photos, i'm kicking myself that i didnt take more, but i just wanst feeling very well (aka very hung-over!) I love this country!! For some reason I've always wanted to come to this place, its one of those places that you hear quite a bit, either in the news or from other people, yet you never hear it as an actual place to go. I also hear it in the context of its people, ethnic Albanians. I guess this probably has much to do with the problems in Kosovo and all. [View Full Entry]

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Well finally the time came and we could not put off leavıng Ohrıd any longer, nice though the lake may be. Before leaving we had purchased a small, very cheap gas stove and a couple of spare cartridges as our trusty MSR had once agaın decıded it needed a rest - the pump has gıven up completely as we knew ıt probably would, we just hoped ıt would last to Istanbul... (it was damaged durıng an attempted mutiny by Erika way back ın Slovakia when she lıt the thıng havıng faıled to notıce a rather large fuel leak.....). We had also [View Full Entry]

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For every reason to steer clear of Tirana, there exist two to go to Berat. An undiscovered jewel three hours south of the capital, Berat welcomes you with both the same Albanian hospitality as before, but in more majestic and sanitary surroundings. Mysteriously, much more trash seems to find its way into bins and dumpsters that appear out of nowhere. While indeed ditches and the riverbank are defiled with non-biodegradable garbage, it is only a fraction of scenes further north. This permits the eyes to concentrate on Berat’s real attraction: the white-faced village communities perched on both mountainsides of the valley [View Full Entry]

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Some European cities beg to be explored. The less quiet, romantic, and dimly lit back streets of Lisbon and Budapest come to mind. Others cities, however, instill a deep desire to remain in your hotel room with the door locked and all windows shut tight. Tirana pertains to the latter. Albania’s capital does very little to diminish the already horrendous first impression the northern city of Shkodër delivered. Hot and layered with a coating of chalky grime, Tirana only confirms that Albania is a third-world country in an otherwise modern Europe. Overcrowded and polluted with an endless blaring of horns from [View Full Entry]

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No buses run to Albania. In fact, when inquiring at the eyesore of a bus station in Pogdirica, Montenegro’s flat and characterless capital, I received the same reaction for going to Albania as I did for Moldova while in Odessa: “Why do you want to go there?” I took a look around and resisted the retort that Pogdirica was no gem, either. If Montenegro is to separate from Serbia (and we have seen how well the Serbs take it when that happens) Pogdirica will need a serious facelift to be taken seriously as a European capital. Unlike the thick line that [View Full Entry]

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Donkey drawn carts make their way along streets with pot-holes the size of Liechtenstein. Half-built, but abandoned houses dot the landscape, which is that shade of green that's almost yellow, and sometimes is. Kids play barefoot in dusty lanes, while the muezzin's call to prayer competes with church bells for the attention of the faithful...... Welcome to Albania, Europe's odd one out! Historically, culturally, and, most obviously to the foreign visitor, economically unique in the region, Albania has much going for it, but with a whole lot more to be done. We experienced its' pros and cons in our four [View Full Entry]

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I'm at the moment in Ioannina, Greece, but before writing about returning to the European Union I wish to write a few thoughts down about Albania. I already told about Shkoder fastly, but now after having completed my Albanian experience for this time, I wish to tell what I discovered about the culture. Since I'm only a backpacker going fastly through I offcourse haven't dicked down into the Albanian lifestyle and do not know much more than others about Albania. But here is what I found out. Firstly I noticed the language and was pretty fast trying to figure out what [View Full Entry]

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