"..." suela's Profile

It was great. A trip through 5 countries in 12 days by car - not really looking for statistics but more for discovering new places, people and minds - was all worth it despite of the police who didnt let me go to Macedonia without visa - although i had been before there without visa..
I have started to make some comments on this and you can see my pages on Sofia and Romania. The rest will come soon..

Tirana's new terminal - 2007

We have a brand new Airport in Tirana - so I felt i had to update the paragraph below where i mentioned about the 'unshaved policeman etc.... This new Airport is a real event in Albania since it is the first big reconstruction from 1955. The existing airport was very small but it was ok for the 1 or 2 flights per day which came to Albania during the communist times. With the new Airport and the opening of the country since 1991 the flights have of course increased but it is still rather expensive compared to other european countries. However this is, as our Prime Minister said, a beautiful image for our country.
The photos are taken from the Airport's website:

Hello everybody,
Im coming back to this page after almost 1 year. Due to my very good organisational skills I lost the VT password and also the password of the email linked to this, so I was not able to log-in for a long time. I tried asking the VT staff to send me back my old pass but no success.

You can find my old page in the name of Skinz under Albania pages, in the following link: My former page

But here is a short summary of my travels (linked to some history from Albania as well). As few of you might probably know, Albania was an isolated communist country until 1991. People were not allowed to travel outside the country unless they were on short business/professional trips and even so they were not allowed to comment about their trips afterwards. Albania was supposed to be the most beautiful country with the happiest people in the world, therefore comments about other places where people might have been somewhat happier, would damage this image, created very carefully by the one and only Labors' Party.

However, with the new era in the Eastern European countries, after the 90s, Albania changed as well. We are now under an emerging democracy strugling to catch up with other Western European countries as regards politics, economy, living standards, mentality, etc. In between these changes a newcomer in albania will get very opposite impressions. You may get mad upon arrival at the small airport of Tirana - with the crowdy queues and the noisy people fighting to be the first at the check-in desk, the unshaved policeman who is eating an apple, smoking a cigarette or chatting loudly to his friends, the road to the city that is under permanent construction/destruction and of course the heavy traffic where not many people respect the rules.

BUT,

Albania is beautiful! I know it sounds naiive to come up with this statement after making this very negative description, but actually it is. If I were to define the word BEAUTY linked to Albania I would say:
BLUE/TURQUESE WATERS in the south
AMAZING MOUNTAINS, GREEN VALLIES AND RIVERS in the north
BIG HEARTED PEOPLE, who dont always smile but treat their guests as kings, you can find them everywhere, especially in the poorest areas.

Coming back to my trips' history. In 1999 I made my first escape outside Albania, well, not really an escape, of course I left with a regular passport and visa to work in Brussels for two years. It seemed like being dropped in Mars, I was astonished even by the noises of the cars in streets. From that period on I visited the following countries:
GERMANY, FRANCE, ITALY, LUXEMBOURG, NETHERLANDS, DENMARK, ENGLAND, GREECE, SPAIN, AUSTRIA, ROMANIA, BULGARIA, SERBIA, MONTENEGRO, MACEDONIA. So I still need to visit Russia and Switzerland ;)
Then I made a holiday visit to SOUTH AMERICA, PERU last year where i spend my time travelling to Lima, Cusco Machu Pichu, Nasca, unique place, quite different from what I had seen in Western Europe.

Ok. I will start making separate pages with photos and tips from each of these countries but that will take some time. Meantime thanks for visiting and hope to hear from you soon!
Suela