Albania is a country I’ve been lucky enough to visit. Joe and I visited in Summer 2019 as part of a two-week journey through Malta and Southern Italy. We arrived on the overnight ferry from Bari to the port of Durrës. That ferry journey is enough on its own for a blog post.

Of all the European countries I’ve visited, Albania feels like it’s changing more rapidly than any other. Our first experience in the capital Tirana was finding a taxi at a huge roundabout which also functioned as a power tool rental market. Everywhere you looked there were pneumatic drills and angle grinders alongside their owners eager to rent them out.

If you visit Tirana I recommend:

Visiting the Albanian National History Museum
Taking a ride on the bizarre Dajti Ekspres cable car to the top of Dajti Mountain
Clambering up the Pyramid of Tirana before it is renovated

The Pyramid of Tirana wasn’t the only dubious pyramid in Communist Albania. It turns out that Albania has a long history of pyramid schemes. In 1977 there were widespread riots following the collapse of a pyramid scheme that two-thirds of the population had invested in. Sadly this wasn’t a one-off. In 1997 the collapse of further pyramid schemes in part led to the Albanian Civil War. Luckily since the end of the Civil War, Albania has been on a brighter path. If you visit, look out for all of the colourful buildings which I vividly remember seeing in Michael Palin’s New Europe.

We may have only spent a few days in Albania, but it’s one place I really want to return to.