Italian media write why Albania should be visited

Albania's Prime Minister Edi Rama has continued with tourism promotion, publishing an article published in Italian media, for reasons Albania should be visited and visited.

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It is less than an hour from Italy that welcomes us as God, and it costs very little. And it unites culture, history and beaches that are still breathless and still intact. However, we ignore him for an old prejudice that this long coverage tries to dismantle, giving evidence that our <x0 individual “have found a pattern of religious coexistence from which to learn.

I'm in love with Albania. And if I feel the urgency to write is because I think something important is going on, something that affects us all, and that might be the concrete answer to one of the great dilemmas of our time. But this is just a hope. And hope should be treated carefully, so we'll talk later. Finally.

But the security I have, which I believe I have, after spending an intensive week there, driving and walking, walking like a madman, as if I would eat every look, every appearance, amazing wonders, I said to myself that tourism in Albania is a rare jewel, really rare for a fundamental reason: it is still intact.

Despite an unequivocal beauty, Albania has been miraculously out of mass tourism, and especially from ourselves, that we also have direct daily flights of three airlines from a dozen cities that take us there in less than an hour and since Puglia and Marche have low-cost ships to get there very comfortable with the car.

However, I said, if you go to a travel agency and ask about Albania, they look at you surprised, what happened to this? They ask you whether you should go there for work or for divine punishment, who knows what he did wrong? You read it in their eyes when they say no, they don't even have a brochure, a package, a sweeping one. Better! That means it's the perfect time to get there, because, believe me, after five years they'll all want to go there.

Those who go to Fortesare, you will meet in Leorme and Porto Palermo, where they do not yet know what it is, but sunsets over the green sea, are perfect and touching; the evening of August will be synonymous with Valona, known here as Vlora and Saranda, the most brilliant pearl of their long-growth revival; the tourists welcome these days walk in the valley of the Agrigento temples, or in Pompeii, will discover just as Ciro, but the most beautiful of it is, but Apollo also has the finest charm of its long restoration; the tourists who study there before Augusto and the golden capitals of the black capitals, while there are no longer brown clocks in the sky, there are no more browns and there are no brown trees and there's no green trees, there's where there's always are no brown trees and there, there's no brown trees and there's there's no green trees and there's no green trees and there've been any green trees in there. Richie and Power, Reno Gaetano, Lucian Dalla.

And so after a while that you hear certain songs, you find yourself thinking stupid phrases like: will it be because I love you that the sky is always blue? And to make a sudden consideration, nowhere in the world, I'm ready to bet, we Italians don't welcome with so much consideration, admiration, love sometimes, as if Albanians were our <x0).... ..we're going to be able to make a bet... ..not the band of music that would be the time to come back from time to time..... ..to break down that invisible and sincerely unjust...... ..that's a lot of us.... Well, they're not even Western, if it ever meant anything, it's over. The sooner we understand it is better.

What follows is a kind of coverage, very personal, a little sentimental, enlightened by the emotion of an discovery made by chance. A trip reserved unexpectedly, as if it were an escape, in fact it was an escape, maybe all the trips are in some kind of sense, right? Some online clicks two days before you leave, just to book the flight, the car at the airport, and the first night in Tirana, incredible, cost only 30 euros per two nights? Hope so. Come on, let's go. Let's go.

Day one, Tirana night.

Tirana looks like the set of films from the years 50. With electric wires running from one floor to another and then from one building to another and from one street to another and sometimes they go into holes in the walls, others cross into the air, as if to change their clothes. I'm not saying it's all like this, there are pretty elegant residential areas, it's a valuable historical centre, but Tirana is also that way. There's an energy in the air that tastes like future, reconstruction. Work in progress. The amount of buildings here and throughout Albania shows that everything will soon be different.

And you think, It's better to take a picture, because next time, you won't find this image. Is it gonna end up all buried in cement? I don't believe, the city's regulatory plan, Tirana 2030, has mastered a great Italian architect, Stefano Boer, that of Milan's <x0-pypyl vertical view”, two skyscrapers filled with trees and plants, and it shouldn't be a coincidence if the Albanian plan predicts, except for the afternoon schools that will become neighborhoods, what wonderful, but to us why not?

Two million trees in a large city the size of some Roman neighborhoods. Today all of this has no trace of course, the plan has just been launched, but basically Tirana is a capital “designed in Italy” because in the years of ius30 it was other Italian architects who designed roads and many buildings in the centre.

We arrived in town later than the program, shortly after sundown. The delay of the plane was added to the rented car company, a low - cost company that had already given up our car. Boys at the agency have apologized in thousands of ways, speaking naturally in Italian. I'll find out later why people under the age of thirty speak well Italian and there's a reason and it's not trivial.

A university student in Gjirokastra showed me, on the last part of the trip, but it's good to say right away, because it makes us understand how things are changing quickly: thirty years ago, to save the regime, Albanians only had Italian TV and TV, were above all Mediaset programs, which made them imagine a rich and happy country filled with beautiful women. For this reason, when the regime fell in 1991, between April and August, two merchant ships left Durres with about thirty thousand people on board dreaming about Italy, as if Lamercka were, written just so in Gianni Amelio's film. Today there are internet and young people no longer watching TV, they watch Netflix on mobile phone: “We watch English-language movies and TV series”, the girl from Gjirokastra, who speaks a little Italian. But why should we teach Italian n if we're the first to underestimate them?

The town is twenty minutes from the airport, a modern complex dating back to the years of '50s, but was renovated recently and acquired 100% from a Hong Kong-based Chinese financial fund: it's no coincidence, the “Silk Street” of China's Xi Jinping passes through the purchase of European strategic infrastructure from which it will pass <x2Made in China and our homes.

It is this millennium's trade policy, and Albania is obviously a fundamental intersection. Don't get me wrong: the airport is still small to be the airport of a European capital, but statistics say it has tripled passengers in ten years and airlines consider it the best in the Balkan region. So when you decide, this is a good business card. Since 2002, she was named “Mother Teresa” of Calcutta, which was not really from Calcutta, but from an Albanian family and was born and raised in a city that is now part of newly founded Kosovo after a brief and last war with Serbia, an autonomous state, though not recognised by all.

Mother Teresa remains a national Albanian pride, preaching unconditional love for others. A woman who said: “The day is too short to be selfish”

Less than seven kilometers and you reach Tirana. At the hotel. Despite the price, thirty euros a night, remember? At dinner we ended up in a absurd place where the waiter never came in, and when he came he told us there was nothing, there was no menu and that if we really wanted to, they could make a ripe fish. Okay, thanks, it'll be for another life. Then we went to a Mexican restaurant, with Christmas lights on the ceiling, a copy of Andy Warhol's portrait on top of the counter, and a frame with the Albanian national shirt filled with autographs, which was placed on our table.

A fashionable place. I had not been to a Mexican restaurant for 30 years, doing so in Tirana, restored my appearance since university. I enjoyed everything not only nachos: faces, voices, accents, winds, as well as the data I had read on the guide I bought a few hours ago regarding their history, culture, traditions. First feeling, clear: Albanians are very good and speak Italian better than usual we speak English.

Then a need: to immediately discover the Block, which was the residential neighborhood of the hierarchy during the long communist dictatorship, at the time on the city maps was neither marked, was forbidden to enter, so it was useless to know what it was like, then the wall fell in Berlin and a few years later the regime in Tirana and the bloc was released and conquered and became the common centre of clubs, shops and bars. It is on all maps now, a forced stop. You deserve it? Yes, it is true what they say, but, frankly, nothing special, perhaps because, it's August and the best locals have moved to the coast.

Day two, from bunkers in Durres

We arrived in Durres shortly after five o'clock, with the sun still high and a poor sleep. Just an hour's drive from Tirana, but it's a small port city from which ships, for example, head to Italy. The fatigue we had felt was justified by the violent pace with which we had visited Tirana in the morning.

Now at 7 o'clock in Central Park, I'm sorry, but I can't call Central Park like New York's: a slow but long run, for an hour, started with the first light of dawn to illuminate buildings, finally look at colors, bright drawings that suddenly appear in certain gray buildings that mean? It was early, but the town was up, the coffee tables of the park filled everywhere, even though Sunday, what is everybody doing at the bar at this hour?

Some seemed to have left the house with pajamas. But the real crowd wasn't sitting to talk, it was there, like me, the park streets, especially the elderly, pensioners, clothes of every color possible, as if they had just left an outlet, were there running.

In short, the park will not be Central Park, but it is truly beautiful and treated, the roads have the lane to walk, one for bicycles; trees and plants are new, obviously they are recently there, but they will grow up and become beautiful. That's why it was hard to stop running, because you wouldn't want to stop the discovery, even if you did everything to get around the central lake, it's about ten miles.

We returned to the hotel with the intention of seeing the rest of Tirana, challenging 35 degrees and severe moisture, so the sky in Tirana is almost always cloudy. The classic tour at the bottom is closed to several hundred yards and is exciting: The historic museum ranging from Neolit to 900 going to Skenderbeu, the national hero who was actually called Gjergj Kastriot, the boulevard made by the architects of Mussolini when we thought Albania was our thing; and then the great mosque and the Orthodox Church next to each other, a non-racial signal; and the pyramid built by the daughter of their terrible dictator, Enver Hoxha, where young people play and slide. But most of what really impressed me is the bunker mega, bunker number two.

There are more than 170,000 anti-atomic bunkers in Albania, which, being slightly more than three million in total, suggest the paranoid in which they lived up to twenty years ago.

The bunker 1, not far from the centre, aimed at sheltering President Hoxha and his leadership in 124 rooms. Basically a hotel. The bunker 2 is built to accommodate the interior minister and his staff, consisting of 24 cells connected by narrow tunnels, never used as bunkers, and today it is a museum showing the horror of the Albanian police state with spies everywhere and torture of various types.

From there we went to the New Bazaar, which is nothing special, but is the ideal place to see the lives of others and to feel no tourists, but a stranger, stranger, and no concern. We got drunk by the hard smell of tobacco sold, such as those of us who sold the salad, tasted the Albanian almonds, who served us on the journey, and ate fish in a small restaurant. They brought us squids and locusts for 45 euros, including Italian wine, salad and coffee ( Italian coffee can be found anywhere in Albania and also known brands).

At four o'clock, we finally headed to Durres. It's the second stage of a completely improvised journey where the rule is to book you every day and always travel. How? Usually using a combination of Tripadvisor and Booking, but in Durres I was fortunate: at Fiumicino I had remembered that the company that had done housework two years ago was all made up of Albanians. I remember that when I met them before I gave them my keys to the house, I had a wrong opinion, which I immediately regretted: Let us hope so.

And when they left, a month later, I had another: how beautiful and good people they were. In short, from Fiumicino, I called their boss, Jimmy, and I told him that I'm going, and he said, "You can't go to Durres, my husband has the best hotel in town.

It's called Dolce Vita and it's great as many people like, with the swimming pool across from the sea, all of you can eat” and the discotheque that causes Albanian children on holiday with their parents to dance at the sound of music. The sea looks like that of Fregene, or Ostia, clean and green. But the beach is great and west on the right side. And so when the sun paints an orange tape it's hard to resist the call to swim and stop just to express a secret desire.

Day three, Vlora and Apollonia

If Durres is Ostia, Vlora is Kana. A little overblown, but such a large and treated coastline reminds me of only the French Renaissance. A series of parallel and concentrated roads along the coast of Vlora and an endless collection of beaches in the southern part, the point where the Adriatic becomes Jon. Otrato is less than two hours of motorboats, in a few days the Puglia can be viewed with a naked eye.

In the late 1990s, the hands of cigarette smugglers started from here. Maybe Western was him. Everything has changed in the meantime. Vlora is a very elegant tourist destination.

Ten years ago at least Vlora must have been a Vlora shipyard compared to Tirana, and there is a substantial change: there are far more foreign tourists. If there were almost all Albanians on vacation in Durres, it wasn't. Most come from Eastern Europe: Poland, Ukraine, Czech Republic, Slovakia; and this year they also came from Sweden, Finland and Norway.

We arrived in Vlora before sundown, which is amazing in this season because the sun goes gently to rest between two hills on a small island of the Gulf, Saban. It took two hours from Durres, but it took us more, because at one point we deviated to discover one of the wonders of the country - the ancient city of Apollonia. It stood on a hill overlooking the sea from which a fresh, dry wind rises that makes it almost 40 degrees [40 ° C] patient.

Apollonia soon became a major intersection of the Egnatia Way that linked the East with Puglia, and a prestigious academy was established where young Ottaviano studied when he reached the news of Julius Caesar's death.

Apollonia is also beautiful to those who see Roman ruins daily. It was discovered in the years of the '20s by a French archaeologist whose residence is now a restaurant with a wonderful performer where tourists take refuge in reading and meditation (to eat a rich salad, better at the entrance). And when you're done visiting ancient ruins, partially rebuilt, you find that the best is still coming.

Near the exit is a magnificent 13th-century monastery with a small orthodox church in the center with an impressive beauty, in particular the altar with walls consisting of images of saints as the face of a football photo album.

The monastery is a museum that represents the significant amount of treasures found in Apollo. Some things impressed me. A Macedonian helmet, a bronze shield that reminded me of the war of Troy and a most pleasant marble statue of a lawmaker standing with his feet crucified that I have not seen in any statue. It's like it means, let's see what story you're going to tell this time.

And then the vases. Hundreds of decorated vases. The most beautiful part had been rebuilt. I counted at least 50 fragments. I imagined that the archaeologist has patiently collected one by one and the search for each of them with endless love.

Day 4 south of Saranda

After leaving Vlora, you are situated on the highway where restaurants, bars, and pizzas promise you every meter of unforgettable diving, after Orikum, which was a marine base valued by the Ottomans to the Soviets who have forgotten a submarine here from the Cold War, after Orikum begins to rise and change everything.

Pass through dense, fresh forests on dry turns that force you to use low gears and make a big noise in that unforgettable silence. This is probably Albania's largest park, reaching over 1,000 metres, and there is no curve without a bar, where villagers sell jars of rhino honey, tea, etc. This place is called “Qafa of Llogara”.

After we leave behind, Llogara, the road goes down and seems to fly as a series of beautiful beaches, green, blue, dark, and clear blue, transparent even from a distance.

However, in these Martian landscapes, there are authentic jewelry, such as The Giver, where there are two hotels on the beach, a club called Yacht Club and then the most beautiful beaches of your life. Here you can eat fish, while deeyay takes you back in time with a dance collection of the '80s. Last night a Deey saved my life.

Saranda is a step away from there. It is considered the pearl of Albania, standing before the Greek island of Corfu, from which swift ships continue to try to experience the emotions of washing in “Mysterious Albania”

Day Five, Return of Butrint and Gjirokastra

When you think that Albania has given you everything for beauty and warmth, you get to Butrint and you realize you don't understand anything. You didn't come here for the history of Tirana or the Sea of Saranda, you came to sink into this ancient Greek city, then Byzantine Roman, Venetian, and finally Ottoman, and then was buried and re-discovered by an Italian architect, Luigi Ugolin in the years of '30. Butrint, the wealth of humanity, is a jewel that takes away your breath, even those who have had the good fortune to be born in the middle of history. Lose yourself at the theater and mosaics of the 6th century AD. You lose yourself and you won't want to come back.

Actually, we had to go back. On the road to Gjirokastra, which is another place of U n NESCO, we stopped admiring one of the most popular tourist attractions, the Eye of the Blue. The bravest people dive into it. There were some Italians, especially young people. “We wanted to feel the feeling of being out of the country with two pre-”, said a Roman who had come with the Pandina ferry from Durres and aimed at returning to Patras, Greece.

At eight o'clock in the evening, right after sundown, we were already in Gjirokastra. We slept in an old Ottoman house, ate barbecued meat on a porch and drank red wine “made in the village” and then tasted that unique landscape.