Two Lands, One Lens

Today’s focus is on photos captured in Albania and Kosovo. I took a day trip from Tirana to Kosovo (to its two largest cities of Prizren and Pristina), Europe’s youngest country, but one currently recognized by only about half of the United Nations members. Many nations such as Russia and Spain can’t stomach acknowledging a breakaway republic. Kosovo has an ethnically Albanian majority, but Serbia would prefer that Kosovo be brought back under its control. This is yet another former Yugoslav land which experienced terrible conflict. I recall in 1999 taking a flight from Stockholm to Athens, and we had to avoid the Kosovo airspace. The US-led NATO coalition eventually bombed numerous locations in Serbia to bring the conflict to a close. Albanians and non-Serb Kosovars were extremely thankful, and to this day one can find US flags, Clinton and Bush statues, and streets named after US presidents. Never have I traveled to foreign countries which seemed so welcoming to, and so appreciative of, Americans! Kosovo was in much better shape than I had expected, and Prizren in particular is a nice city. There are still peacekeepers visible, along with large military bases, but daily life goes on.

Then I stayed several nights in southern Albania, in Sarande, a coastal city across from the Greek island of Corfu. I used Sarande as a base for additional day trips in the region.

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Albanian tidbits:

– During the group tours I took, I found myself most connected with the visitors from Great Britain. We’d chat during the tour, have coffee and/or lunch together, and often go out to dinner after the tour. Nice folks!! Americans were in short supply around Albania. I did run into a bus full of Czechs at one point though!

– I asked one tour guide if he had a good feel of what guests from different countries would stereotypically be like on the tours. He said that in his experience east Asians were quiet and didn’t give him feedback on whether they were even interested or not. He likes having Americans and Brits on tours because they tend to talk more and ask many questions, and they like to have fun. Surprisingly he said that Israelis tend to be very demanding, and that they complain a lot and even usually try to get a discount off the price due to some perceived problem during the tour. But most remarkable was his indication that Hungarians can be such a pain that his tour company now refuses to host groups of Hungarians. I’ve met two Hungarians in Prague, and they are both low-key pleasant gents who are nice to be around, so it’s difficult to imagine them being problematic as described.

– One tour guide I had didn’t have as strong of a grasp on English as the others, and he had cool confused made-up words like the verb “conquister” (instead of “conquer”). No one corrected him, and I wasn’t about to because I liked it. Many guides would occasionally ask me the correct way to say something in English, but if I understood what they meant, I didn’t care if they said it “correctly” or not.

– I saw multiple cars with US license plates while in Tirana. I learned that it only costs $800 to bring a car over from the US. Many Albanians live in the US or spend some time there, and it’s apparently not uncommon to bring a car back over. Albania gives owners a long grace period before requiring replacement of the foreign license with an Albanian one. It was funny to see cars with Georgia and Florida plates driving around Tirana.

– The Albanian versions of Sheetz, with petrol, a convenience store, and restrooms, are large complexes with huge sparkling restrooms and table service restaurants. And of course they do a brisk business of selling espresso drinks. These would kick butt in the US. I’d go there.

– There seems to be a limited set of songs that are played in Albania. For example, I’ve heard “Titanium” too many times to count. My two favorite breakfast places in two different cities had the same song playlist. I was happy to not visit the first anymore because I was tired of the music, but then I got it again at the next restaurant!

– I had Ukrainians on multiple tours. Once we had a couple who left Ukraine for Germany in the early 1990s, but the other time there was a young guy who had escaped Ukraine soon after the 2022 Russian invasion. He lives in the UK now. He is a fun, cheerful fellow, but he said he can’t go back to Ukraine unless he’s ready to go into combat service to fight the Russians. No one on the tour could fault him for wanting to live and enjoy life, though I can also understand that some people would criticize him for not fighting for the defense of his country. I imagine having strongly conflicting feelings if I were in his position. But who knows how one would feel or what one would do unless forced into such a situation?

– Stray dogs are a common sight across Albania and Kosovo. But I learned that these dogs are tagged, vaccinated, and sometimes even tracked. Aggressive dogs are culled. There once was a government directive to cull all the feral dogs, but most people don’t seem to actually want that, so there was resistance to this initiative. Thus this control program instead. None of the dozens of dogs I encountered seemed even slightly aggressive, and many were even friendly. Some were skittish, and many appeared to be well-fed. The young Ukrainian guy said that where he grew up in Ukraine there were also many feral dogs, but that these were actually often quite aggressive and even dangerous, to the point that his mother was afraid to walk far from their house.

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Today’s DadGPT joke:

I’m reading a book on anti-gravity.
It’s impossible to put down.

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Today’s video:

Albania in the EU?

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Today’s Epictetus:

He who laughs at himself never runs out of things to laugh at.