HOW BLASÉ we’ve become. Only 20 years ago, Eastern Europe wasn’t just exotic: it was all but off-limits. Now, with flights cheaper than a Polish plumber’s call-out charge, we think nothing of jetting from Nottingham to Wroclaw, Liverpool to Riga or Glasgow to Gdansk. The Iron Curtain has swung back to reveal Tesco in Hungary and Romanian MTV. Nowadays anywhere east of the Elbe is about as mysterious as a chip butty. Well, almost.
“We are the last secret in Europe,” says Gazi Haxhia to me as we sip strong espressos at a Tirana pavement café under the warm sun of a late March morning. All around us trendy young locals in faded jeans, slogan-heavy T-shirts and sunglasses sit fiddling with mobile phones, a recently introduced and seemingly addictive pastime.
Haxhia is general manager of the Tirana edition of the excellent In Your Pocket guidebook series, and the secret he is talking about is Albania, a country that since the end of March has been linked from London by new British Airways flights. “We’re unspoilt, have great food, very friendly people, history, ruins and museums,” he continues, doing a one-man PR job on his homeland as a scruffy ten-year-old tries to sell us cigarettes.
Tirana is a city with both charm and plenty of rough edges, much of the former coming from its people, who seem genuinely excited to welcome tourists. If my experience is anything to go by, standing out like a sore thumb is an advantage. Far from being a rip-off target, you’re more likely to be smothered with kindness as people make sure you’re going the right way, ask (frequently) what you think about Albania and, more likely than not, tell you about a family member who is working in the UK.
Many communist-era buildings and apartment blocks have been tarted up in vibrant colours over the past few years by order of the mayor, an Austrian-designed gondola system was built last year to whisk people up Mount Dajti (1,230m/4,035ft) overlooking the city, and downtown “the Bllok” is an area packed with an ever-expanding array of new bars, cafés, restaurants and nightclubs that was, in the reign of despotic former leader Enver Hoxha, a neighbourhood for party officials and their families only. Hoi polloi were kept out by gun-toting guards.
But now honking Mercedes crowd the pitifully maintained roads (although until the collapse of communism in 1991 there were just 600 cars in the whole country), holes in the pavements lie in wait for unwary pedestrians, power cuts are a fact of life and, away from the centre, a fine layer of dust settles on everything.
Tirana’s main sites can be ticked off in one leisurely day. My first stop was the National History Museum on Skanderbeg Square with its garish communist mural of workers, peasants and partisans marching boldly towards socialist Utopia, and exhibitions ranging from Roman artefacts to Hoxha’s atrocities, while just round the corner is the Tanners’ Bridge, a restored Ottoman stone footbridge.
The 18th-century Et’hem Bey Mosque is at one corner of the Skanderbeg Square, where the friendly imam, Naser Mezini, showed me around. I took a taxi to the Datji cable car, for the half-hour ride to the top of the mountain for a view over the city, followed by a walk past just a few of the 700,000 bunkers that litter Albania (built after 1967, they were to ward off the threat of invasion that existed largely in Hoxha’s mind) and on to the Panorama Hotel for a cheap lunch of meatballs and chips on its terrace. Albanian cuisine is a mix of Italian meets Turkish; unexpectedly tasty and cheap. Just as unexpected is its climate, which is more Majorca than Moscow. In July and August daytime temperatures average 31C (88F).
Later I headed to the Bllok, which on a warm evening was packed with people dining and café-hopping. After dinner at Era on Rroga Ismail Qemali, which serves Albanian and Italian food to locals and tourists, I drank beer and the local firewater, raki, at Rovena just round the corner. Owned by a famous Albanian singer, its outdoor terrace and fountains occupy part of the garden of Hoxha’s former 19-bedroom villa.
Next morning I set out with my guide, Ervin, for Durres, 39km (24 miles) away on the coast. It’s Albania’s Miami Beach, only with more concrete, fewer in-line skaters and, apparently for those brave enough to take a dip in the polluted water, more skin rashes, too.
Many Kosovans cross the border to come here for their holidays, and all along the coast south of town large hotels are popping up to satisfy demand. After a look round the archaeological museum and the Roman amphitheatre, which used to seat 20,000 and was last used in 2004 for a beauty contest, we drove two hours south through rolling countryside, past women working the fields or selling carrots and melons by the roadside, men gossiping in cafés, kids on donkeys, haystacks, bunkers and the defunct Mao Zedong textile factory to the old town of Berat.
In the 3rd century BC (or “before our era”, as Albanians still say, a legacy of Hoxha days when any phrase to do with religion was banned) an Illyrian fortress was built here and today a well preserved Ottoman citadel still dominates the clifftop, which for 200 lek (£1.20) you can wander round. Old houses cling to the hillside, while in the centre of town a mosque faces an orthodox church, although people seemed much more interested in the cars outside.
After a meal of tave dheu (spicy fried cheese curd with chopped liver), we joined the whole town on their early evening xhiro (promenade) up the main street until, as dusk fell, all the women vanished (“they’re getting their men’s food” said Ervin, bemused that the reason for their disappearance wasn’t obvious to me), leaving just the men to sit and smoke in the cafés, chatting over their espressos and beer.
My last afternoon before flying home was in Kruja, another hill-clinging citadel town 42km (26 miles) from the capital, conveniently close to Mother Teresa international airport. The two are linked by Albania’s worst road. As I lurched between potholes I recalled Haxhia saying: “In five to eight years’ time all the major international chains and hotels will be here. At the moment, foreigners can’t own land, but when that changes there will be big development. We just have to make sure that the environment doesn’t suffer.”
Remembering the bustling Tirana café scenes, it seemed to me that the potential he envisages is contained within the Albanian people — some of the friendliest I have met in Europe — but who are leaving in droves for a better life in the United States, Canada and the EU.
In terms of tourist prospects, Albania could rival Croatia, especially in the south on its own “Riviera” near Saranda. “If you like it here so much,” grinned Haxhia, “you could always apply for asylum.”
Need to know
Will Hide travelled to Albania with Regent Holidays (0117-921 1711, www.regent-holidays.co.uk), which offers three-night breaks in Tirana from £345pp, including BA flights and B&B accommodation.
Three nights visiting Tirana, Berat, Durres and Kruja with B&B, private guide and transfers costs from £599pp.
British Airways (0870 8509850, www.ba.com) has flights from Gatwick to Tirana from £212 return.
Reading: Tirana (In your Pocket, 3 euros locally or download highlights from www.inyourpocket. com); Western Balkans (Lonely Planet, £15.99); Albania (Bradt, £13.95). See also www.albaniantourism.com and www.tirana.gov.al.
Further information: UK passport holders do not require a visa, but 10 euros tax is payable on arrival and departure. For spending money take euros or US dollars rather than pounds to change into lek (£1 = 178 lek) or use your UK bank card locally in an ATM.
