Albania Quick Facts
Population: 3.6 million
Languages: Albanian, Greek, Vlach, Romani, and Slavic dialects.
Religions: Muslim 70%, Albanian Orthodox 20%, Roman Catholic 10%.
Currency: Albania Leke (I USD = 95.6 ALL)
Capital: Tirana
Size: 28,748 sq km, slightly smaller than Maryland or slightly smaller than Belgium.
Location: Southeastern Europe.
Neighbors : Greece, Macedonia, Montenegro and Kosovo.
Climate: Mild temperate; cool, cloudy, wet winters; hot, clear, dry summers; interior is cooler and wetter.

Albania is today celebrating Independence Day. It became independent from the Ottoman Empire on November 28, 1912.

A long Mediterranean coastline at the Adriatic Sea and a mountainous countryside make this country strikingly beautiful.

Despite its location in the middle of the established Mediterranean hot spots, Albania has been a remote and hard to access destination due to its political isolation that lasted until the early 1990s. Things have changed quickly since then, but Albania still has a distinctly different feel from that its neighbors and it has vast areas of undeveloped land.

The perhaps most well known Albanian person internationally is the Nobel Prize winner Mother Theresa who became famous for her work among the poor in Calcutta, India.

Also check out our past articles about Albania:
• WEIRD EXPERIENCES IN TIRANA, ALBANIA
• EUROPE’S LAST SECRET PLACE: ALBANIA

Click on the YouTube movie below to watch a video Discover Albania.

The frugal traveler Matt Gross is on his way around the world while writing about his experiences for The New York Times. After traveling via Portugal, Spain, Italy, Croatia, and Montenegro, he reaches Albania (see our previous article: Bargains found in Zadar, Croatia). His article is well written and especially interesting since there is not yet that much written about Albania as a destination.

Albania has gone through a long era of isolation during its past communist dictator Hoxha. During those days Albania was about as cheerful a place as North Korea is still today. But Albania has been slower than its neighbors to adjust to an open society and economy. In stark contrast to nearby Croatia, Albania has so far failed to attract any significant amounts of tourists. This lead the frugal traveler to hope that his money perhaps would allow him more luxurious accommodations in Tirana than in his previous destinations. But that was not the case. The lack of hotels was keeping the prices high. But everything else was cheap. And he found Tirana to feel much safer than the turmoil of corruption and crime that he had been warned about. People were open and friendly, but he encountered surreal street scenes and found Albania to be a country of contradictions to the extent that he calls it a deeply weird place.

From Tirana he takes a bus to the southern town of Gjirokastra which has an enormous 19th century castle. Here he finally finds a great hotel deal. Again he also finds good cheap food and warm people that he befriends.

Click here to read our previous article about Albania, Europes Last Secret Place: Albania.

The New York Times

The Times calls Albania the most mysterious country in Europe. The country has gone through a long isolation. First during the communist era, and later because of the Balkan wars. Albania is situated only a mile and a quarter away from the Greek island of Corfu. But access via Corfu was cut off during the Balkan war (although Albania was not directly involved in the war) and remained so for many years after. Nowadays you can again move freely, so Mike Gerrard of The Times makes a daytrip from Cofu to Albania:

“We spend a few hours in Butrint, one of the Med’s most important archaeological sites and now a national park. There is evidence of occupation by Neolithic tribes, Macedonians, Romans, Ottomans and Venetians, among others, all quite unspoilt and much less crowded than similar places in Greece.

The old town of Gjirokaster, with its cobbled streets, is a Unesco World Heritage Site, and here we visit the castle and the grand mansion where the dictator Enver Hoxha was born, now an Ethnographic Museum. Except that he wasn’t born there as the house burnt down and has been rebuilt since, but our museum guide points out the room that he was — and yet wasn’t — born in.”

Albania has been changing quickly since the communist era, but there are still oddities visible, like the bunkers on the beaches (see picture above provided by the Albanian Ministry of Tourism).

The Times Online