New beginnings in the Balkans: Little Albania is set to become Europe’s next big thing in travel. Because its landscapes are as beautifully unfiltered as its people are unabashedly welcoming
There used to be a barber at Tirana airport. Not a single traveller sat down in his chair to glam up and get the latest haircut. The barber was, on the contrary, an integral part of the border control. “The People’s Republic of Albania is closed to enemies, spies, hippie tourists and other vagabonds,” decreed Enver Hoxha, the French teacher turned dictator, who in the 20th century oppressed the Albanian people as brutally as he isolated them. Unless you wanted to turn around and fly home right there at the airport, all travellers had to adhere to the communist
one-look-fits-all aesthetic. No lang hair, extravagant sideburns or in any way unevenly shaved beards on men – or the barber stepped in. And absolutely no short skirts on women. Until the nineties that was Albania: a country apart from the world. Keep that in mind.
39 years after Enver Hoxha’s death and roughly 140 kilometres south of Tirana airport a raft drifts along Europe’s last truly wild waterway. The river is called Vjosa and the man at the back of the raft is called Eraldo Sakollari. He is a rafting guide. He shouts “Forwards!” and his team paddles into the rapids. He shouts “Faster!” and it paddles faster through the boiling river. And then he calls out “Stop!” and lets the raft float gently over the calming Vjosa.
Come wintertime, says Sakollar, when the water looks like liquid chocolate, then you have to be careful. The rains carrying the mud from the slopes of the mountain ridge of
Trebeshinë colour the river brown and make it rise more than ten metres, until it is a monster only true professionals can overcome. “Sometimes the boat stands upright in the air. Compared to that, today’s child’s play.” The Vjosa still has a distinctive turquoise hue. “The colours are crazy”, says the guide, referring not only to the river: The trees on its banks gleam bright yellow and orange. The rocky earth below the canopy extends over the river like the layers of a cake.
Peacefully the Vjosa flows along this morning. Its peace is well-deserved. For over a
decade the battle over its future raged: Conservationists fought against the 46 dams scheduled to be built in the Vjosa and its tributaries – and won. In 2023 Prime Minister Edi Rama declared the Albanian part of the river system a national park: “Starting today we will definitively protect
Europe’s last wild river. After Europe tamed all its waterways, it turned to us, so we would not do the same to our Vjosa.” The news travelled across the world.
The exception to the rule. Albania rarely causes international headlines. At the turn of the century the country bordering Montenegro in the north and Greece in the south was still so little-known, its anonymity became its defining characteristic. “What do you know about Albania?” asked Robert De Niro, playing a spin doctor in the dark comedy Wag The Dog, declaring a fictitious war on the country in order to help the US president get reelected.
“Nothing,” replies Dustin Hoffman’s character. “Exactly,” says De Niro. The latest slogan of the national tourism board ironically plays with the stereotype depicted by another Hollywood blockbuster featuring Liam Neeson taking on an entire army of cliché-ridden Albanian criminals: “Be Taken by Albania.”
If you indeed are taken, you might just return home suffering from Stockholm syndrome. Although Albania syndrome would be more apt in this case. The condition is spreading fast – it is shockingly easy to fall in love with this country. After the pandemic no European tourism sector recovered as quickly as Albania’s. Visitor numbers rose by fifty percent to more than ten
million a year – one of the highest growth rates in the world. This spring Albania is the promoted guest country at the world’s biggest tourism fair in Berlin. It will not last long, but for now
Albania is still a well-kept secret. The newcomer among the more established holiday
destinations around the Mediterranean. Because the country is like the Vjosa: still wild. Not inaccessible, but still undeveloped. Not undiscovered, but still unfiltered.
Alma and Zamo Spathara are spearheading Albania’s transformation. The couple founded the Albania Rafting Group which also employs Eraldo Sakollari as a guide. On top of that, they are hoteliers, restaurateurs and conservationists: In the city of Berat, famous for its medieval town centre recognized as a UNESCO world heritage just like that of Gjirokastër in the south, they own the Hotel and Restaurant Castle Park. Their campaigning and educational work was instrumental in the fight to make the Vjosa a national park. For his country, says Zamo Spathara, there is only one way to survive: “Tourism.”
Albania has the world’s third-largest diaspora: More than thirty percent of its population live abroad. Zamo Spathara belonged to the generation wanting to go abroad as quickly as
possible after the fall of the regime in 1990. He worked as a rafting guide in Italy. There is an
Albanian saying, however, he says, and Alma translates it into English: “The heavy stone stays in its place.” Meaning: Nowhere are you more significant than at home. So Zamo Spathara returned to Albania with the dream of exploring all its rivers. If his two children wanted to
emigrate for good today, he would reply they were making the biggest mistake of their lives:
“The only way is up now for Albania.” The former ambassador of the European Union once told him: “Albania is like a Ferrari with the handbrake on.” That handbrake has now finally been released.
Nowhere is the velocity of its change more visible than along the Adriatic Coast. The beach of Durrës near Tirana is considered one of the most overcrowded in the world. But the farther south you drive, in the direction of the villages of Himarë and Sarandë, the prettier it gets. Italy might boast with picturesque Positano on the Amalfi Coast, but Albania has Dhërmi. A sleepy little
village counting not even two thousand souls. It is the kind of place James Bond would retreat to after a successful mission. White houses with red roofs, built so compactly into the slopes of the Ceraunian Mountains that it is wonderfully easy to get lost in the cobbled streets. The clearest
reference point is the blue roof of the Church of Saint Spyridon, one of over forty houses of worship in the village. Along the main road condominiums are being constructed and a billboard promises: “Live The Coastal Dream.” A bar, a supermarket and a drug store currently provide
the remaining scenery of the dream in the upper part of Dhërmi. The place is perfect to, for once, do absolutely nothing.
The highlight of each day’s itinerary is therefore the sunset. It is best enjoyed in the Hotel Zoe Hora, situated high up on the slope and elegantly integrating up to 400 hundred year old and elegantly restored village buildings into its complex. A good idea is to copy 007 himself, order a Martini and enjoy the spectacle from the comfort of your suite’s balcony, watching the sun sink into the sea, disappointingly quickly at first, only to illuminate the few streaks of clouds from behind the horizon until they radiate in every shade from a subtle yellow and jazzy orange to
Barbie pink and blood red. A real coastal dream sequence.
“It feels like way back when I was a little girl visiting my grandmother,” says Marsida Hoxha about village life. “Peaceful.” Dhërmi is not always as quiet as it is now in the off-season. In summer, two world-famous electronic music festivals, Kala und Anjunadeep Explorations, set up stages on and around the beach. “Then this feels like a nightlife district,” says Hoxha, one of the most common Albanian surnames by the way, who manages the boutique hotel La Brisa, which opened its doors on the promenade of the lower part of the village in 2022. The coast is changing in the south as well. Dhërmi was part of the national development project “100 Villages”, aiming to transform Albania’s countryside into tourism destinations. The country’s longest tunnel was just finished at the northern end of the village in July 2024. Now the vertigo-inducing mountain passes are not the only way anymore to reach Dhërmi.
Despite all development plans, some lonely corners along the coast have been preserved. Gjipe Beach lies at the bottom of a canyon. Its name translates to Bay of God. After walking for about twenty minutes on the path into the canyon, you can see parasols flickering in the heat.
Only a few steps more and you find yourself on the small pebble beach, behind you four drowsy food stalls, in front of you waves twinkling like sparkers. There are only a dozen holidaymakers sitting inbetween today. Their loudest outburst of emotion remains the gleeful panting of a mother jumping into the water. Then she resolves to float on her back, hearing the pebbles underwater rock back and forth with each wave so close to her ears, as if they were in her head.
On the way back you spot the shooting slits in the slope. Albania’s paranoid dictator had roughly 170 000 bunkers built everywhere in the country for an invasion that never came. They are the most visible relics of the past, but the regime has left deep traces not only in the landscape, but in the minds of the Albanians as well. “When the era of communism ended, our self-esteem was at a low point,” says Alma Spathara, the co-founder of the Albania Rafting Group. “We thought we had no worth, we are nothing.”
There was, however, one upside from having been isolated for so long: Albania’s wild beauty remained untouched. Visiting the country today, you are not only discovering that, you are watching the Albanians still rediscovering their homeland. The first guests had made them see things in a new light, says Alma Spathara. “They said: Your food is fantastic! And we were like: It is? And you are so welcoming! Really? So we realised that we have value after all.
Tourism breathed new life into us.”
The most distinguishable landmark of Tirana is also an heirloom of Enver Hoxha. It is a pyramid, 21 metres high. From the top you can easily recognise how the mountains surround the city as if it was a fried egg sizzling in the pan. You see the new office skyscrapers and the old apartment blocks marked by pocky air conditioning machines sticking to the walls. See the church towers and the minarets side by side in this country where the two religious communities live peacefully with one another.
Most of all you see cranes: Tirana is one of the fastest-growing cities in Europe. More than half a million people live here – when the Iron Curtain came down there were not even half as many. Blloku neighbourhood, once reserved as a residential area for Hoxha’s party friends,
has become a hotspot thanks to its stylish bars and hotels. The Pyramid itself was once meant to house a museum honouring Enver Hoxha. After remaining unoccupied for years and a recent renovation, it reopened to the public in 2023.
The colossal cement gate of Uka Farm looks like something the ancient Egyptians might also have left on Tirana’s city limit. Behind it lies one of the country’s most innovative projects: a two-hectare farm growing everything the Albanian soil offers from olives and tangerines over
pumpkins and pomegranates to rows of grapes. There is a farm-to-table restaurant nestled into a corner of the grounds. Its seasonal dishes are so fresh, you instantly taste that the ingredients did not have to travel farther than a hundred metres. “This is the farm of Albania”, says Rexhep Uka, sitting at one of the restaurant tables.
The entomologist and university professor served as minister of agriculture in the first government after the regime. When he left politics in 1996, he built this sustainable farm which he now manages with his son Flori. When asked what he grows, the 71-year-old likes to reply: “Inspiration.” The farm is a beacon for Albania’s still substantial agriculture. Uka’s philosophy: He uses no pesticides and stoically accepts that each year a considerable part of his crop is lost. Instead, he relies on the interplay between plants to maximise his harvest: “I am against monoculture. Polyculture means pluralism, diversification, democracy,” he says, as if not only talking about the farm, but the country as a whole.
The professor does not only talk a big game – he puts his ideas into action. He walks out into the garden, points out the tomatoes thriving in the shadow of the cypresses and the comfrey growing at the foot of the pomegranate trees, simultaneously fertilising it. In front of a lemon
tree he stops. He grabs a withering branch and shows the bright traces on the leaves. Dialeurodes citri, the citrus whitefly. Most farmers would kill it with pesticides. To Uka it is most welcome – its honey dew attracts other necessary insects. Everything is connected here.
Rexhep Uka plucks a plump lemon from the tree, crosses his arms in front of his chest as if trying to chase away the devil and joyfully proclaims: “All natural!” He holds the golden fruit up high as if it was not a normal lemon, but as if he had just discovered the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden. You really cannot blame him: This farm is a small paradise, just like this country that hid from the world for so long. But a paradise that is not closed any longer and that welcomes everybody with open arms. Sometimes even with a lemon.
SERVICE: ALBANIAN GRAND TOUR
TIRANA
The capital warrants a day or two in every itinerary. Here’s a small tour for a good first impression: The Pyramid of Tirana lies right next to the city’s main avenue, the Bulevardi Dëshmorët e Kombit. From the top you have a lovely view of the town centre – and the distinctive building happens to be right next to Komiteti (@komitetibar). The fusion of café and museum honoring Albania’s coffee culture is perfect for a short break. Only a ten-minute-walk northwards along the boulevard you come across the home of Bunk’Art 2 (bunkart.al), an
old-fashioned but nevertheless truly moving exhibition about Enver Hoxha’s brutal police regime, situated underground in the bunker once belonging to the former Ministry of Internal Affairs. Tirana’s coolest neighbourhood is simply called Blloku and it is the best place to call home for a few days – check into one of the 14 rooms and suites at the Arté Boutique Hotel (artehotel.al). After sunset Blloku comes alive with nightowls: Radio Bar (radiobar.al), aptly decorated with loads of old radios, is popular among locals as well. To reach Uka Farm (ukafarm.com) at the city limit you have to hail a taxi. After a walk through the wonderfully blooming garden you are appropriately hungry for the irresistible Albanian dishes served at its farm-to-table restaurant.
PËRMET
This small town in the south of Albania lies on the banks of the Vjosa and is the gateway to most rafting tours in the country’s shiny new national park. The oldest and most experienced tour operator is the Albania Rafting Group (albrafting.org) managed by Zamo and Alma Spathara. Together with their guides they offer everything from a two-hour tour to a six-day adventure on the Vjosa. A perfect day trip combines rafting with an E-Bike drive to the neighbouring hot springs. The most comfortable hotel in town is the over a hundred year old and affectionately restored Villa Përmet (villapermet.com).
DHËRMI
The Albanian coastline stretches for 362 kilometres along the Adriatic and Ionian Sea. The farther south you go, the emptier the beaches get in general – but more important than your location just might be the timing of your trip. In the low season it is still pleasantly warm along the coast and significantly more peaceful. Our favourite getaway destination lies half an hour drive north of Himarë. It is the village of Dhërmi, which is separated in an upper and lower part. High up on the mountain lies the majestic hotel complex of Zoe Hora (zoehora.com), down by the beach is the home of the stylish boutique hotel La Brisa (labrisa.al). During the season, both hotels regularly organise boat tours to breathtakingly beautiful beaches, which can only be reached on the water. Gjipe Beach is not one of them, but is still regarded as one of the world’s best – rightly so. It is easily accessible by a short walk from a parking lot south of the village, which all taxi drivers know.
BERAT
This city makes every Albanian must-see-list because of its delightfully picturesque old town, one of four UNESCO world heritage sites in the country. Sure, it is an architectural marvel, but its inhabitants are a class act as well: Alma and Zamo Spathara, who run the award-winning Hotel Castle Park (castle-park.com), are a prime example of Albanian hospitality. Whatever you do, please order the local delicacy simply translated as “Berati Beef” in the hotel restaurant.
Alma also offers cooking classes to guests as well as tours into the surrounding mountains including a delicious picnic. Or a trip into the Osum Canyon which – like the Vjosa – was once threatened by dam construction until its natural beauty was recognized as untouchable.
The article has been published before at the magazine cntraveller.de
