Albania 🤟

What have you heard before about Albania? I have heard it be referred to as „an absolute shithole“ where they burn plastic trash, I had been warned a few days back by greece motorcyclists at the Montenegro border customs to „be weary of albanians“, and I heard it to be poor. But then I also heard that they are super friendly people who are very proud of their country. Basically, I had no idea what to expect: in any case I had planned my route to only go across Albania briefly, and quickly head to Kosovo (fewer meters in elevation: my goal is to get to turkey, and climbing is a bitch with all that luggage).

So, after having been there, my experiences:
- warmest welcome in a country ever: “welcome to Albania, stay as long as you want, we hope you like it here!” At the border office.
- I got greeted by random drivers (who give you plenty of space), kid on a bike (“where are you from? Im from Albania!”) and an old guy transporting a goat up a mountain on a old motorcycle.
- Big houses when you enter, which I thought were for big the big families they have here or something.
- absolutely stunning views with absolutely horrible roads. You cannot believe how bad this road was: constantly checking if all my packs are still on there.

Then again, I was only there for just over 24 hours. This was a shame, but I could not backtrack on my route: I’d have to have ridden that horrible, horrible road back, and that was not to my liking.

It was only afterwards that I learned about the horrible history the country has had, with being occupied by twenty (+-) different powers, having had a very strict communist dictator (who also did good things for the country allegedly) until recently. Still, a lot of corruption in politics makes it very hard for people to get ahead.

But these people clearly love their relatively young country.

I was also approached by an albanian guy when I was cooking some stuff on my stove about where I was from and whether I wanted to buy some weed. Very nice guy; thats what he does.

Also, in the video I was still confidently bombing down the road (and it got way, way worse later on), that changed once I got less confident about my packs.Read more