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Albania has it all...

2022-08-07 18:01:28Aktualitet SHKRUAR NGA JAMIE FULLERTON
Albania has it all...
Photo by Theth National Park

"It used to be rare for journalists to come here," says Elton Chaushi, head of a tourist agency, whom I meet in the capital, Tirana. When they came, they wanted to talk only about bloodshed and sworn virgins.

The traditions that once dominated religious behavior in the mountains of Albania are interesting, but I am here to investigate a more recent view of the Southeast European country. Thanks to its beaches, cities included in the UNESCO-protected list and mountain and sokaque paths, once-communist Albania is being praised as a "hot new" European travel destination beyond dark tourism.

For decades, Albania had a reputation as a dangerous and forbidden country, mainly thanks to its political isolation under dictator Enver Hoxha. After the riots in 1997 and the end of the Kosovo war in 1999, more visitors gradually began to come to Albania, attracted in part by lower prices than in Greece and Italy.

In 2009, 1.9 million tourists travelled to Albania; In 2019, the last full year before Covid, the figure was 6.4 million. Food here may be a factor in this change.

I'm with Chaush in a not-so-well-known restaurant on The Biba White Road, a street near the city centre.

"Tourists haven't found this place - mainly it's the drivers who eat here," he says. I took a plentiful bowl, a delicious mix of beef, garlic, onions and tomato sauce, before Chaush took me to eat dessert at 9am in a Parisian-style pasticher. We paid 390 bucks for coffee and baklava with ice cream.

After breakfast I leave for Dhermi, a village that has seen a host of hotels built along its coast line in recent years. I arrive at the beginning of the Castle, one of many small music festivals that were born along the Riviera, with dance tracks in the sand.

Dhermi's main beach is clean, covered with shezlongs and surrounded by restaurants. Small beaches such as crystal lined and calm waters run into each other along the Albanian Riviera.

Later, on a walk on the beach near the Gulf – with sand, beautiful, isolated and untouched by construction, I distinguish a concrete bunker, a giant gray concrete massif as a sign of cold war paranoia on an idyllical coast.

Then I see another bunker. Then another, in the hills when I drive back to Dhermi. I start counting them, but I soon realize that bunkers are as common here as people sunbathing. About 173,371 were reportedly built in Albania between 1975 and 1983 by Enver Hoxha's paranoia for a possible attack.

Chaushi warned me that the tourist cities of Durres and Saranda were already attracting enough restoratives to fill them with people. Instead I stop in Kukes and Berat: two smaller cities with well-known beauty and both on the UNESCO list.

I read "Chronicles in Stone", the 1971 novel by Ismail Abbess – well-known Albanian author and gjirokastrit. In the book the romance of the steep, bumpy paths of Kumanovo, the winding around buildings like the House of Skedul and the House of Zekates – owned by elite families and now museums – shines through its history of 1940s bombings.

Its description covers the city - my hotel is on Ismail Abbess Street. However, Gjirokastra was once as famous for cannabis as The Oblast, according to Blero Toculli, who works in the castle of Kumanovo. "This was considered one of the most dangerous points in Europe - we had a village producing tons of cannabis," he says. "When I was a kid in the 2000s, seeing a tourist was like seeing an alien."

We meet at the castle overlooking the village of Lazarat, which was filled with illegal drug production until a police crackdown in 2014. Thanks to its historical architecture, Gjirokastra became a UNESCO site in 2005, but Tobulli says tourists did not arrive in significant numbers until cannabis gangsters left. We walk the shopping streets, renovated five years ago.

It takes me to see the sunset, passing the palaces described by Edward Lear in the mid-19th century.

"Listen: the wind in the tree sounds like sea," Topolli says. He's right: it falls on my ears as the castle lights go on, a calming sensation behind the beach in Dhermi.

Further north in Berat, also a Unesco-listed city, I go all the way to the castle. Berat has a historical wealth similar to Kumanovo – and similar steep climbs – but more broken.

The lack of a breeze of health and safety concerns in Berat makes it even more pleasant. In the ruins of the Red Mosque, I run inside the scary, black-colored thin tower, throwing my head up so that the daisy can overcome my growing claustrophobia.

"I came to Albania because in a week you can beach, visit cities and walk in the mountains," an American tourist tells me. Indeed, after a two-hour trip to Tirana, it is a bus ride to The Saranda for two hours, the gateway to the Albanian Alps.

I take a classic trip: the 17km itinerary between Valbona and Theth in the Valbona Valley national park. To be in the mood, I read Edith Durham's "High Albania", the British writer's document for the region's tribes, based on her 1908 travels. The strength of the climb, with horse-spotted forests leaving the country half a steep path, threatens to outweigh the wild beauty of the area. But three hours later I reach the top and the views from the forest make their magic: it's amazing at the Swiss level.

Në Thethin e mbushur me male, mëngjesi me petulla përcillet nga zhurma e tensionuar “klik-klik-klik” i gërmuesve. Rruga gjarpëruese për në Shkodër është shtruar me asfalt për herë të parë vitin e kaluar.

Çaushi thotë se disa kanë frikë se autostrada e re e Thethit mund të çojë në mbiturizëm. “Por unë jam i lumtur për miqtë e mi atje: 15 vjet më parë do të shihje një lopë, një pulë, një fushë misri. Tani ata mund të shkojnë në shkollë më shpejt, në spital… është mirë për vendasit.”

Mirë edhe për mua, mendoj, ndërsa autobusi im për në Shkodër rrëshqet mbi asfalt.

Përfundoj përsëri në Tiranë, duke qëndruar në qendër të qytetit. Duke qenë kryeqyteti i një vendi me një regjim antikapitalist deri në vitin 1992, Tirana nuk kishte bare deri në vitet 1990. Pas një bumi ndërtimi në vitet 2000, qyteti tani ka një popullsi prej thuajse një milionë banorësh. Ish-rezidenca e pasur e Hoxhës ka një kafene moderne pikërisht përballë saj.

Vizitoj Bunkart 1, kompleksin nëntokësor të Hoxhës, i cili tani është një hapësirë muze dhe arti. Ekspozitat përshkruajnë dekada të diktaturës, të ndërthurura me instalacione arti. E balancuar gabimisht, përzierja e historisë së errët dhe video-artit mund të duket si hipster në mënyrë të neveritshme, por është magjepsëse.

Një tjetër kujtesë se sa shpejt një vend mund të ndryshojë.

Përkthyer nga The Guardian. Autori Jamie Fullerton është gazetar që trajton tematika udhëtimesh, kulturore, historike e arkeologjike

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