Why Albania
There are destinations that take you by surprise. Albania is the best example: you thought you were leaving for a country that was still closed in on itself, and you discover an Ionian coast with waters as transparent as Greece next door, Ottoman cities classified by UNESCO that no one is yet shaking around, and wild Alps where eagles soar above the torrents. All this two hours from Paris, and for a price that makes the trip almost indecent.
Albania went through the twentieth century in a bubble. Forty years of autarkic communism under Enver Hoxha, 700,000 concrete bunkers built to resist an invasion that never came, a country cut off from the world and then brutally opened in the 1990s. This past is everywhere, in the bunkarts of Tirana transformed into museums, in the tower houses of Gjirokastër that served as refuges during the vendетtas, in the Roman ruins of Butrint that you visit almost alone. But what is striking is the lightness with which the Albanians carry it all: warm people, sincere hospitality, quiet pride.
The real revelation is the diversity of the territory. In one day's drive, you go from the white pebble beaches of Ksamil, where the water changes color every hour, to the cobbled streets of Gjirokastër where time has stopped. In an extra week, the Albanian Alps offer one of the most beautiful treks in the Balkans, between stone villages and peaks over 2,600 meters. Albania is not a destination. It is several overlapping destinations.
