Albania
It’s very hard to pin down Albania. That’s if you make the mistake of trying to pigeon hole a country by analogy to another better known country.
Like Greece, and the former Yugoslavian states, Argentina or Chile, for example.
Albania is well on the way to membership of the EU. And that shows in their level of organisation. And the cosmopolitan society sitting on top of the former whatever it was.
From a tourist POV, it’s still new enough that they’re extremely friendly and helpful to tourists. That’ll fade after 10 years of Germans, Dutch, English and Americans whining about this and that.
You can still see turkeys or geese being herded down the street, just.
Driving is definitely a two speed economy. Most drivers are cautious and slow. Except for the fuckers in late model expensive Mercedes (only Mercs) that do 120 in a 40 zone.
That tells me that the people that get ahead are aggressive and risk takers. But isn’t that always so? They’ll get beaten over the head with European rules and pretend to be otherwise.
Unfortunately they are still into bum guns and that’ll have to go before they are allowed into the union. The EU is very much into toilet paper.
The young lads all have the same haircut to my eye. But to them there’s a hundred shades of bowl zero cuts. Think of a Peruvian Skinhead, and you get the idea.
The girls tend towards SpongeBob geometries. But that’s nothing a little starvation can’t sort out.
Religion-wise you’ll hear the odd call to prayer. But it’s rare and oddly muted. They need to get serious if they’re going to advance the cause in the face of the consumer tsunami that’s coming their way.
Disconcertingly, you can’t buy a used license plate anywhere. Souvenirs you know? This smacks of a bureaucracy with teeth lurking there in the background waiting to pounce.
Tourism-wise they haven’t a lot to offer as yet, so they’ll need to synthesise a bunch of historical must see insta-worthy thingamejigs. I’m sure there’s a factory in China that can knock you up a whole mediaeval village.
But they have a coast line and an oddly mild climate. For Europeans any water and sand, or rocks, will do. The bar isn’t high.
Like the Greeks, they always give receipts and no one knows why.
They are slightly better than the Greeks at providing a second drink. So it is possible to get drunk here and leave your handbag at the restaurant. But it’ll be there the next morning when you go knocking.
Which is to say, the TV stereotype of Albanian gangsters and lawlessness doesn’t match the reality on the ground.
My only true concern is the pavements. They can’t make up their minds as to what the national pavement should be: concrete, stone, marble, bitumen, I’ve seen it all.
The EU will demand they pick one and stick to it. I’m going for concrete that looks like stone. Free advice based on fuck all, that.
