We could easily spend our entire 7-week Albanian stay in the capital Tirana. Comfortable, friendly, safe – it lets us settle into Living instead of Travelling. But what a shame it would be to not take advantage of easy access to gorgeous Albanian countryside and fascinating smaller towns. We recollect how glad we were to…

Much has been written about how Trump (and his Maple-MAGA admirer Poilievre in Canada, if he gets the chance) is following Hitler’s playbook to destroy democracy, but Albania offers a much more recent example. Learning the horrors of Enver Hoxha’s 41-year authoritarian reign has been emotionally draining as I see the parallels to current affairs…

Everything I wrote in my “Extreme Makeover Tirana” post was true – for me. The murals and painted buildings make every walk an adventure, and the brave new architecture is literally fantastic. But fading rainbows and optimistic green arrows can’t mask the continued hard times for the average Albanian. The young woman in the photo…

Grey – I couldn’t imagine any colour but grey. We have come to Albania because the only image I could conjure was rows of bleak featureless communist-era cement buildings. Populated by grey, emotionally-flattened post-Communist-era people. My Western cold-war propaganda indoctrination sunk in deep. Antiquated propaganda-based assumptions are inevitably wrong, as they thankfully are here. The…