BRAINSTORMING: THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT ALBANIA

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Visiting Albania means visiting the other Europe, the one that does not appear in the travel catalogs with perfect snapshots of the Eiffeil Tower and a coffee with croissant in the foreground or in the windows of the travel agencies. The other Europe is going to slap you in the face as soon as you cross its borders, although after the slap he goes to his roll and leaves you alone: if you get used to your new reality well, if not ... your problem.

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The good thing about all this is that nobody is going to judge you for being disheveled or for two days in a row wearing the same clothes: in the other Europe the concept of 'live and let live', followed closely by the 'here everything can happen'. And so, during the first half hour you are in the country, this teaches you, as if nothing:

A farmer who sells turkeys in the middle of the street.
A man who gets on the bus putting half a cooked cob in his pocket.
Cement bunkeres shaped mushrooms spread over there and there.
Garbage on the side of the road. A lot.
Flags that dominate almost every house. Here nationalism is palpable!
Rare writings of those who understand few words (and the only ones you understand seem Italian).
It is full of Mercedes. Old, new, handsome, horrible. But sooo many Mercedes.
Old ladies dressed entirely in black except for a white headscarf accompanied by men dressed in suits and hats.
People everywhere, cows that cross the road, sheep that graze, wild donkeys that roam freely, chickens that fight among themselves and to finish off your bus overtakes a horse car that takes a smiling family on an excursion.

YOU'RE CRAZY, AND YOU KNOW

No. Definitely this is not the Europe you know ... and that it is not you love it! Again you are in your sauce, again the logic loses to the absurd reality of things, again at every step you will encounter rare situations and cultural clashes. You smile but after a while you remember that Albania is going to be your home only for a few days. Your smile is erased and you start to work out alternative solutions: outside Macedonia and Bulgaria, we stay here. Mmm, but then how do we get to Budapest? No. The trip must go on but you know that an idea has already gotten into your head: here we will return and you decide in the first hour of stay. You are crazy, and you know it. And you don't care.

THINGS YOU HAVE TO KNOW ABOUT ALBANIA

Albanians call their landShqiperia
The majority of the population (60%) It is Muslim, Catholics are only 10% and the rest are Orthodox Christians.
It is the only European country with a Muslim majority.
Of course, considering that the communist regime reigned in Albania until the 1990s the majority of the population is not very practicalLet it be said (by the way, curiosity about Albania: it was the first country in the world to declare itself an atheist there in 1967.
There are some 3 million Albanians in Albania, although it is estimated that there are another million and a half distributed between Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia and Greece. For Albanians, what counts is not nationality but race: that is why, although she was born in Skopje (Macedonia), Maria Teresa de Calcula is considered Albanian, because she is part of an ethnic Albanian minority in Macedonian territory.
This same 'race' concept It was also the cause of the conflict in Kosovo: in this (former) region of Serbia the population of Albanian origin (90% of the total) began a separatist movement to which the Serbs responded with ethnic cleansing plans ... what does this sound like to me? ? NATO entered and at the end of 1999 the situation calmed down, although today, more than 10 years later, the future remains uncertain for Kosovo. (Sorry for the suuuper summary summary, if you want to know more about the Kosovo war take a look here
In Albania there is a code of laws called 'Kanun' which establishes, since the fifteenth century, how to behave (hospitality and honor are two fundamental pillars), although not all are beautiful things in this set of 'rules': family revenge is still a problem in Albania
Many people chatter Italian. The reason? During the communist regime one of the few TV channels that could be seen was RAI (Italian public television).
The national hero is Skenderbeg, which managed to stop the Ottoman invasion on 13 occasions. Two years after his death, the Turks invaded Albania and did not 'leave' until 1912, the date of the country's independence.
Although independence did not last long since Albania was under one of the toughest communist regimes in the world: the dictator Enver Hoxha He ruled the country until his death in 1985. During the regime years, Albania was one of the most isolated countries in history (Hoxha wanted to decouple even from the Soviet Union and from China as he deemed them too permissive ... touch the h ... oxha!)
Another of the curiosities about Albania comes from one of Hoxha's greatest follies was to build in all the territory of Albania more than 750,000 reinforced cement bunkers to protect the country from an immediate war ... that was never reality.
Not even after the fall of communism could the country rest: in 1997 the economy sank into misery due to the collapse of savings plans. The country went to the badge and it was when groups of organized mafias emerged that began to engage in the trade of stolen cars, marijuana (Albania is currently the first exporter in Europe) and illegal traffic.
Nowadays Albania is the second poorest country in Europe. (Moldova is the first).
Although the panorama that we have described so far is not very encouraging, the country is very safe: as we have said, hospitality is one of the basic pillars of Albanian culture and tourism is welcome, besides that the attractions in Albania are many (from cities like Berat and Gjirokastra, Unesco heritage, Tirana, its curious capital, to the coast full of beautiful beaches and crystal clear waters, Lake Ohrid and national parks ...).

Come on, that 'the other Europe' will not make you fall in love with its cool neighborhoods or with incredibly beautiful monuments. The other Europe is going to hook you with its authenticity ... and there is no Eiffel tower or croissant to compete with this!