Anxiety about Albania

Sunday 15 September 2024

We arrived at a seemingly deserted Greek border post at Melissopetra. Getting out of the van clutching our passports I walked along the booth windows and peered through the office doors. I turned back to Dave and shrugged, such a different experience from the chaotically busy crossings between Serbia, Bulgaria and Turkey with their huge queues of cars and TIR lorries. 

Eventually a cheery laid back passport control guy appeared, quickly stamped our passports and shouted loudly “EXODUS”. Another young chap, presumably customs, appeared from nowhere, gave our van a cursory glance, asked us where we’d been in Greece and joked with Dave about the steering wheel being on the wrong side. He opened the barrier and waved us on our way. In the 10 minutes we were there no other vehicles arrived. 

We anxiously drove through the ‘no man’s land’ between the border posts. A slightly bigger set up and a queue of 3 cars greeted us on the Albanian side. It didn’t take long before I was out of the van with our passports again, explaining we needed to buy insurance. Whilst UK motor insurance covers drivers for the minimum cover level required in the majority of European countries it does not generally cover Turkey or Albania. In Turkey the convoluted process to buy the insurance from one booth, then go back to the vehicle registration booth, then return to the customs check took ages with plenty of shouting, queue jumping and head scratching. Here a polite young man took our V5 vehicle registration document, made a phone call and within minutes WhatsApp’d me the insurance document pdf. Stunned at the speed and efficiency of it all we paid our €49 for 15 days, thanked him and got on our way. I’m not sure what we were expecting, but it wasn’t that!

Until 1992 the country was a communist dictatorship isolated from the rest of Europe. Enver Hoxha was paranoid about invasions and had over 700,000 concrete bunkers built, he banned religion and private car ownership was forbidden. Like many people we’ve never been to Albania before, we’d looked across at it from holidays in Corfu - so now is our chance to find out about the country.

Initial impressions from the route we entered was a sparsely populated mountainous region. We drove through one small village noticing one of the concrete bunkers on the hillside. 

Cash is king here which, for us at the moment, is a bit of a problem. The Albanian LEK is a closed currency meaning you cannot buy it abroad. So we’ve entered the country with no local currency, just €’s and my bank card. It’s a weekend - there’s not an ATM in sight and cards are not routinely accepted. Knowing the campsite we’re heading for prices the pitches in €’s I’m expecting they’ll happily take them and hopefully we’ll find an ATM in the next big town of Gjirokastër. 

Everyone we’ve come across so far has been very friendly, from the border officials to the campsite staff as well as the young man in the thermal baths and, to our embarrassment and gratitude, they speak excellent English. We’ll give speaking the language a go but the pronunciations seem a little difficult - so here goes “Mirë se vini në Shqipëri” / Welcome to Albania!