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Plan for Albania

We had 2 weeks in Albania and planned an itinerary that had a taste of various locations: from Unesco World Heritage sites, sea-side resorts, and smaller towns. It came together very well and we enjoyed the trip very much.

Albania seems to be the place to be in 2024. It was mentioned in the media often and random people we met, either knew some who had just been or was planning to go. I think we were lucky to visit before the inevitable affects of tourism are felt. For now, the people are very helpful, the infrastructure is there and not over-stretched, prices are very cheap, and it amazing how much English is spoken

We had a lot of questions from people when we said we going to Albania and below are some pieces of information we gathered along the way – these are bound to be not 100% correct but partly correct, enough to give a flavour of the country which had been very isolated until the 1980s. Sometimes it is referred to as the North-Korea of Europe, but in fact it is a fantastic country to visit.

  • Until the early 1900s it was part of the Ottoman Empire and became independent until the 1st World War. First Greece, then Italy invaded and took power. Between the wars there was lots of upheaval with an independent state being re-established and a short-lived monarchy (King Zog). Italy invaded the country again in 1939, and followed by the Germans after the fall of Mussolini.
  • In 1944 the communist partisans took control of the country bring Enver Hoxha to the forefront. For 40 years, until 1985 when he died, Hoxha ruled the country. Religious practices were outlawed and everyone was heavily monitored by the state. He eventually turned away from all allies and other communist countries and Albania became a totally isolated state.
  • After the death of the dictator there were were elections and Albania started to emerge as a democratic state. In 1985, there were 5 -7000 cars in the country (and a population of about 3 million) because only the officials could have cars.
  • In 1997 Albania was hit by an economic crisis when the banking system was nearly wiped out by pyramid schemes, estimated at 50% of the Albanian GDP and it affected 2/3rds of the population – who had put money into these high interest schemes.
  • About 25% of households receive remittances from Albanians working overseas. 42% of the Albanian population live outside Albania. But Albania’s transition from a socialist planned economy to a capitalist mixed economy has been largely successful, or shows goods signs of success.
  • The “informal” economy is reducing (undeclared income from legal and illegal sources), but remains a high proportion of the GDP estimated to be just under 30%. This is a huge improvement from just a few years ago when the informal part of the ecomany was estimated to be double or triple that value.
  • Bunkers are an unusual feature of the landscape. 750,000 of them were built on the orders of Hoxha to ‘protect’ the Albanian citizens from external attacks. None were ever used. They were part of the mental games to frighten the people and diverted millions of dollars that could have been put into health care or other social spending. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bunkers_in_Albania
  • And one of the reasons we went to Albania was because I read the book Free, by Lea Ypi which was a fascinating memoir of life amid the collapse of communism – highly recommended https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/oct/28/free-by-lea-ypi-review-a-memoir-of-life-amid-the-collapse-of-communism

Visited on our trip

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