"Like nowhere else..." a Albania Travel Page by mikey_e

Ok, it is rather trite to claim that a place "is like nowhere else" since, after all, there's always something unique or different about every location. In truth, however, Albania defies comparison, at least to any other country in Europe. The closest comparison I could make was with Cuba, except that politics in the two countries are not at all alike and Albania is so characteristically Balkan that to try to compare its culture to Cuban culture would be a disaster from the start. Nevertheless, you cannot understand Albania without understanding a little about its history and its forty years of increasing isolation from the rest of the world. We're not just talking about an Iron Curtain that cut off Eastern Europe from Western Europe. Rather, Enver Hoxha (the leader from 1945 until his death in 1980 or thereabouts) isolated Albania from the Warsaw Pact, completely breaking from the Soviet system and siding with Beijing in 1972. Soon relations between Albania and the PRC deteriorated and, for a while, Yugoslavia was the only country to have something like normal relations with Albania. Hoxha was obsessed with the idea of attack from outside (no wonder) and, as a result, Albania is now dotted with its most memorable sight: pillboxes or small bunkers designed to allow the Albanians to defend their nation from the imminent foreign attack.

Albanian's linguistic cousins in Kosovo are probably more familiar to most people in the West than Albanians proper, mainly because of the NATO bombardment in 1999 and the continual "final status" talks about Kosovo's future. The attention on Kosovo has led to rather widespread belief that Albanians are all Muslims which, while largely true in Albanian lands outside of Albania proper, is a gross simplification of the reality in Albania itself. Prior to the creation of the Communist government in the post-War period, 70% of Albanians were Muslim, 20% Catholic and 10% Greek Orthodox. Under the Communists, however, all Albanians were supposed to be atheists and the three preceding groups were labelled Turks, Italians and Greeks respectively (implying you had to be an atheist to be a good Albanian). The constant reinforcement of government propaganda largely removed religion from public consciousness and, today, religion is visible, but many Albanians seem to be getting by without the religious tags common in neighbouring countries. Crosses are plentiful in the south, but that doesn't seem to fill churches or stop people from acting like Sunday is any other day of the week.

Politics and religion aside, Albanians are an incredibly friendly people. Sometimes their concept of friendship can be so strong as to be scary, but its scary in a good way. The inability to speak Albanian doesn't seem to matter much when it comes to conversation and even a few words of their language spoken by a foreigner can send Albanians into rapturous praise of your interest in their country and culture. Everything is on a very informal basis and even the client-customer relationship to which we are so accustomed in other countries break down after a few minutes. My taxi driver (whose back is pictured) became more of a travel partner than anything else after a few minutes and was anxious to introduce me to as much of Albanian culture as possible - from blaring Albanian music in the car to taking me to small restaurants with authentic food and talking incessantly about the changes in country. In Albania, loneliness is an impossible emotion.