Dajti Park Hotel Tirana

Kruja was a short day trip out of Tirana. <br><br>There is a well preserved fortress that has now been converted into a museum on Albania history of Skanderberg - a prominent Albania figure in 14th century who lead ...

Hallo zusammen,<br><br>von B**at ging es wied** zurueck in die Hauptstadt (**neut 45in Wartezeit und etwas ueb** 2h Fahrt, wenigstens sind die Strassen in Albanien recht gut). Hatte dann nur ein paar Stunden Tageslicht, ab** das reicht aus, um Tirana zu sehen.<br><br>Das Nationalmuseum ist ganz nett und etwas groes** als das Museum des Kosovo. Die Geschichte Albaniens ho**t mit 1945 auf, man schein noch nicht b**eit zu sein die kommunistische A**a zu bew**ten. Das ...

... it really sucked. I knew what I was letting myself in for really but it just reminded me of some of the people I had to deal with when I was running a volunteer company just naive silly little girls who shouldn't be away from home and are not mature enough. After dinner we headed for a stroll along the beach and grabbed some breakfast for the morning as I would be missing it having to leave at 7am. The driver dropped me down by the port and was telling me some ...

... square. The mounted statue of the great Albanian hero stood on a large patch of grass while the outskirts of the square were official looking buildings (one of whose power seemed to cut out as I approached). Skanderbeg fought a great many battles against the Turks during the middle ages, but once he had died, the Turks annexed Albania anyway- in many ways he just wasted his time, yet he is still revered by Albanians of all faiths as ...

... of weird and bad things. We did not want to stay overnight there, as we truly started to be scared. We decided to use a payable transport, all across the country, just not to spend a night there. We spent like 40 min in Tirana there and afterwards we took another mini bus. We had this weird impression that everyone wanted to use us, or rather our money. You make a deal with a driver and tell him how much you can pay him for a certain distance and ...

... the bar gets a little bit much after awhile. The stairs down to the toilet is never in the same place so it's a little disorientating. It's a bit high up for me to be honest, I was quite uncomfortable and the glass lift that takes you up and down is an unnecessary indulgence and also a bit jerky. The beers are all imported so it's quite expensive and sure you're probably paying for the view on top of that. In the end, I would recommend it for the view but it's not really my cup of tea ...

... in western embassies across Tirana, eventually gaining refugee status in Italy, and as the first free elections approached in 1992, another 20,000 fled the country's crashing economy. Even today, it is estimated that a million Albanians are working abroad, out of a country of 3.5 million. As in many eastern European countries, Albania's road to capitalism was a bumpy one. A huge smuggling racket evolved, bringing stolen Mercedes into the country from western Europe, and even today, I ...

... the capital Tirana, where we had hoped we'd be able to find transportation to get further down the country so that we could enter greece by the morning. The buses in Albania, called furgons, are really like large mininvans. They system is that there is no system. buses don't depart on a schedule. They depart when all seats are full. So when we arrived, our bus was about half full. We had to sit around and wait, luckily only about 45 minutes, before the bus was ...

... Europe playing Rhythms and Blues and adding in a bible message towards the end- and tonight was the night in Tirana! There was a small ampitheatre style clearing in Tirana university, but it was rather messy with litter and overgrown weeds, so along with Stephen (our host), Matt (a guy from the Leeds team currently in Kruja, who was told he couldn't go because he had dreadlocks...!) and some people from a town wide evangelical mission going on at the same time, we donned latex ...

... to be Mercedes. There's quite a lucrative black market in stolen cars here, it seems. Still, I enjoyed the difference here. I've been in Europe for so much longer than anticipated, and things were beginning to get a little bit repetitive. Coming down here has been a bit of a shock to the system in a good way. Also, the one hostel in Tirana was a nice place, oddly set in the middle of the Embassy district. Strange to be sitting on the balcony of an evening and see armed guards walking past.