Tour of Albania

I arrived in Albania with a humanitarian mission in my Fiat Tipo, crossing the Adriatic from Brindisi to Durrës. In the port city we limited ourselves to visiting a hospital where food and medicines were being delivered, but above all where we came into contact with the absolute poverty of a country brought to its knees by decades of communist dictatorship and hermetic isolation from the world. Crossing the countryside we reached Tirana, a city which, although it is the capital, does not offer the visitor much. A large square is dominated by the government building, over which stands a mosaic celebrating the social victories of a nation in reality brought to its knees by hunger. It is almost Christmas, but in this country with a strong Islamic presence, where state atheism was preached for years, there is no trace of the feast.

Many young people have gone away, packed like sardines into ramshackle boats, having recently crossed the Strait of Otranto to try their luck in Italy. The few who remain invade the great mosaic building on Sunday afternoons, turning it into a mega disco. The less fortunate, those who live on the margins, live on alms and small trades such as shoe-shining, present on every street corner. To see something of tourist interest you have to push on to Krujë, a town where the memory of the historic Albanian leader Skanderbeg is kept alive, commemorated by a well-kept but very kitsch mausoleum. To discover the real Albania we push north along the roads leading inland into the mountains.

Between Pukë and Fushe Arrez, where only I and a friend go, leaving the rest of the convoy behind, we are ambushed; with some stones placed in the middle of the road near a hairpin bend they try to block us while armed shepherds aim rifles at us from the hill above. We manage to escape, but what a fright. In Fushe Arrez we are completely surrounded by a cloud of people with unsavoury faces; we panic, but luckily a young man who declares himself a policeman pushes through, shows us an ID card and asks us to get in. He speaks a little Italian like all Albanians, who know it both from the fascist occupation of the 1930s and because Italian TV reaches here, watched clandestinely even when it was absolutely forbidden under communism.

We don't know whether to trust him but it is the only alternative, and we do well because he takes us to Puka, inside a military barracks where we sleep while our car is watched over by guards armed with submachine guns. The next morning we set off again for the coast, which despite the poverty shows a semblance of civilisation, though very far from our standards. In Shkodër we visit the exterior of the castle overlooking the lake of the same name and meet up with the rest of the humanitarian convoy, which has come this far to deliver food to a convent of nuns. We then continue further north through the countryside of Koplik, where we unload more humanitarian aid at the house of the local MP. Every time we stop our vehicles people surround us hoping to receive something, but it is hard to please everyone.

In the afternoon a heavy downpour comes; at home we would get by switching on the windscreen wipers, but here the roads are in terrible condition, full of potholes, lacking even basic signage and drainage, so they soon flood, making the return to Tirana very difficult. In an underpass the water is so high that it soaks the spark plugs and the engine, and the car stops. Luckily the humanitarian mission has more powerful vehicles and I am towed for miles and miles all the way to the capital. We stay a few days in Tirana, where I also get to know the director of the state TV, who takes me to see the studios. Again on our own, my friend and I set off for the south. The scarce signs disorient us and we often take the wrong road; we still manage to reach Dhërmi, a tourist spot overlooking a small beach with a rather modern, Western-style hotel where we spend the night.

The beach is small but pretty, and we stroll in the evening as its only users. The next day we continue south, stopping briefly at both Saranda and Vlorë, seaside towns that do not excite us much. Our goal is Butrint, on the border with Greece, where there are the excavations of an ancient Hellenic city. Immediately after the archaeological area the road breaks off abruptly in front of a small lake, and to continue it would be necessary to load the car onto a raft, pulled by ropes, for a short crossing to the other side; we give up. On the way back we stop at the picturesque Gjirokastër with its typical stone houses that dominate the valley from the top of a hill.

From here we return to Tirana, joining the rest of the humanitarian expedition again, and here we stay a few days, meeting among others the MP from Koplik who, accompanied by his escort, comes to dinner with us in a restaurant in the capital together with the television director, who I discover is, among other things, the son of the culture minister. After a few days the group returns to Italy and I stay on; I will leave a couple of days later, not before having seen the historic centre of Durrës, which has remains of Roman rule, and its surroundings with a pretty little beach bordered by umbrella pines. Setting off alone is quite frightening and reaching the port is an undertaking; it is not signposted anywhere. I manage to board all the same and return to Italy, to Ancona to be precise. I returned to Albania many years later on a flight from Rome to Tirana, returning via Pisa.

A three-day stop in Tirana, decidedly changed compared to the previous visit. The capital now appears tidy, with modern buildings set into a new, rational town planning. I opened an exhibition at the National History Museum and met again after many years an old friend I had met during the first trip.