ALBANIA: Landing Might Be An Idea

By Sanjay Suri Reprint | | Print |

Sanjay Suri

TIRANA, Jun 20 2007 (IPS) - ‘What, you haven’t been to Albania?’ Let’s face it, not a question many of us are ever likely to have been asked.

It gets asked about Italy, about Greece, those two tourism magnets to the west and east of Albania. But Albania is a country you’d usually just fly over on the way from somewhere to somewhere else in this part of the world. The red line on the flight map at the back of your front seat will cut through Albania, not wind up in capital Tirana.

In this Albania is hardly alone. It’s another of those countries that’s on the world map but not on the tourism map – you ‘do’ Greece, ‘do’ Italy, but you don’t ‘do’ Albania. Unless of course you’re the sort of traveller who does what is not supposed to be done, and goes where others don’t.

Or, one who likes to go where you don’t quite know what to expect. Albania is Europe and not European. It’s not quite East, and not absolutely West. Not developed, but much of it is a little more than developing. It’s 70 percent Muslim, but not Islamic the way Saudi Arabia and Pakistan can be. It has infrastructure in ways, not in others.

All this can sound good to the offbeat traveller, because infrastructure can be sometimes only a comfortable barrier between the visitor and the place visited. In Albania the visitor is up close with people as they live normally, not just with tourism staff trained to be courteous in the standard way. You’re a lot more likely to get people than just service.

“Personal contact between local people and tourists here is a very special experience,” Armand Ferra, general manager of the travel company Albania Holidays told IPS. “That sort of thing can make or break a holiday. If that interaction is negative, then everything else becomes secondary. And if that interaction is good, you can overlook some of the smaller difficulties.”

He must be right, people are some of the happiest experience of Albania. “Albanians are some of the most hospitable people, this is the reaction we get from the clients we bring,” said Ferra. Sadly, most tourists do not travel out just to meet friendly strangers.

A pity, because Albania is quite blessed with the genius of ignorance just where everyone needs it most. It hasn’t noticed the clash of civilisations. It has a population of Muslims and Christians, but it’s never been a Lebanon. What others clash over, Albania doesn’t notice. At moments you might almost be tempted to visit the country for Albanians, if not for Albania.

Quirky tourists can find this packaging of people warmth in an unknown place appealing – and year by year there are more and more, and not all quirky either. Because it’s well within the normal to find the very limitations of infrastructure attractive. To look out to a different scene from within standardised infrastructure can be like looking out of the window, rather than visiting; only a step or so ahead of looking at a picture.

But it is difficult to romanticise poor infrastructure beyond a point. It isn’t cute to get an upset stomach from drinking water that’s not clean. And all Albania’s rivers and lakes still do not always provide drinking water anyone can trust. Nor does the appeal of the remote work if you can’t actually get anywhere. The country is only just beginning to put up signs to destinations that might interest tourists.

And only better infrastructure can bring numbers, and Albania needs more than the odd adventurer, even if those numbers are growing steadily enough. It needs more than the domestic tourist who travels to friends and family, or even the regional tourist, who doesn’t always spend a lot. It needs to exchange sights and a sense of itself for dollars and euros.

Every blend is not inviting. Like that of underdeveloped infrastructure and poor regulation that has led to chaotic building not backed by services to match. Development in just the way Albania could have done without having messed up the coast at Durres, about an hour’s drive from capital Tirana. Not a pretty sight, because out of the window the visitor can see also the development itself.

But this is only a part of Durres. The country does have attractive sights to offer, by way of culture, history and nature itself. “Think just of the accessibility of the monuments,” says Gent Mati from Outdoor Albania, a company that promotes “adventure and culture”. “Tourists are astonished that it’s so easy to visit mosques, or go to the churches. It’s something people find very interesting, the harmonic leap from west to east, a blend of this and that.”

The country, he says, “has incredible history, we have all ancient cultures mixing with one another – from ancient Greek and Roman sites to the Ottoman invasion and later, everything is here.”

That’s by way of culture. “But we have also astonishing nature, we have beautiful rivers, incredible lakes and a range of mountains which is all quite something to find in a small territory.” Not all easy to access. And not all developed and framed in infrastructure. That, then, is the start of adventure – for some, and up to a point. Add adventure-culture to the undefined blends that Albania offers.

Throw in a touch of Greece and Italy as well. Albanians wouldn’t like that to be the reason for anyone to drop in; it dreams of becoming something more than a half-way place en route that would only remind the visitor of its neighbours. It wants the tourist to come to Albania – whatever, and everything, that might mean.