Sarandë Albania Adventures
- Sheri Johnson, RD
- Apr 15
- 10 min read
We needed to escape the Schengen zone which is a 29 country free travel area in Europe. Your US visa allows you to stay in the zone and freely move between member countries for a maximum of 90 of the previous 180 days. It is constant rolling timer. Fortunately, Sheri is being very good at keeping us from violating any rules. Albania, while part of Europe, is not a Schengen country and thus we hopped across the Adriatic and into Eastern Europe where we will spend the next 3 months so we can reset our Schengen timer completely for upcoming travel in Western Europe.
I will let Coach give you a nice overview of Albania.
Albania, and specifically Sarandë, feels like they are on the cusp of something big. However, I need to check myself. Is it just me imposing my western thinking on what is the "right way"?
We spent six weeks here, and it was the very beginning of the tourist season. It was amazing to watch the city slowly come alive as every day it seemed a new storefront removed its shutters and opened for business in anticipation of the impending crowds.
I was immediately struck by the enormous amount of trash and litter. I would see kids just unwrap their candy and throw the paper on the ground. This feels like such a solvable problem. Vacant lots would be borderline dumping grounds for rubbish. I just wanted to pull out my trash picker and get to work cleaning up.
The government of Albania suffers from a high level of corruption. Which makes city planning and building difficult with all the kickbacks and greasing of palms required. There appears to be little cohesion in building design or city layout. There is very little in the way of parks or trees within the city.
Many of the young people have left Albania for other parts of Europe in search of education and jobs which has created skewed demographics towards an elderly population. It was a common site whether in the city or in the rural areas to see two to four old men sitting around a table smoking and drinking coffee. Since I don't speak their language, I assume they are complaining about the state of the world and how the younger generation doesn't know how lucky they are.
And speaking of smoking. Wow. It felt like everyone smoked in Albania. Coming from Southern California and seeing the change from smoking being a common occurrence to one that is truly looked down upon, to a place where it was common was quite jarring. In theory, smoking is not allowed in restaurants, but it is loosely enforced and on multiple occasions we would see people smoking at tables near us. Sheri finds this particularly annoying, but of course we make no fuss when in another country.
It feels like with just a few tweaks Albania could become an oasis as the people were nothing but kind, it is safe, and the land is absolutely gorgeous.
Getting There, Our Hosts, and Our Place
Getting to Sarandë was a two day, multi-stepped process. Nothing difficult, just a bit time consuming. We took a cab to the Vienna airport where we flew to Athens. After a four hour layover, we flew to Corfu which is also in Greece. We spent the night in a very nice hotel and had a lovely dinner. Next morning, we cabbed it on down to the ferry port where we took a short one hour trip across to Sarandë. There is only one ferry a day to Sarandë, and it was roughly half full. Immigration was a little slow for us. Most of the people on the ferry were either Albanian or were there to work for the upcoming tourist season and clearly had different paperwork that eased them right through. When it was finally our turn they seemed to scrutinize our passports quite a bit, but nothing was said to us and we were in.
When we arrived at our building, we were met by the owner and his wife. Neither of them spoke English (and unsurprisingly neither Sheri or I speak Albanian) but we had the best time talking to each other. We used Google translate which was incredibly helpful and just a lot of pointing and nodding. They were just the kindest people.
Another woman that lived in the building, Sonia, acted as manager and spoke English. She was our contact person throughout the rest of our stay and could translate when necessary. All three of them made us instantly feel welcomed. We were off to a great start.
Our actual apartment was in a great location and on the 7th floor with a balcony overlooking the city and bay. Sheri spent much of her time in the swing just reading and drinking her coffee.
We had a bit of excitement, as there was a fire in the building being constructed next door. The fire department made quick work of it and everything was quickly restored to a peaceful state.
Albania is technically a slightly majority Muslim country with 51% identifying as Muslim. However, this is strictly a cultural distinction as religiously it is nearly a universally secular country (music to my ears!). That being said, there was a mosque near us, and they would do the call to prayer five times a day. The first would be at 4:30 a.m. It rarely woke me up, but on the occasions it did I found it a bit annoying. Interestingly, the whole time we were there I did not see any women wearing hijabs whereas in London and Vienna they were quite prevalent.
Buzz, Trivia, and Tacos
Sheri found a bar that catered to English speaking expats that was a short walk down the promenade from where we were staying. The owner of the bar was Helen from Australia. She was super nice and her place provided a relaxed and easy going environment. As mentioned before, in other settings Sheri and I have become interesting people with our lifestyle. We were definitely not special here. Everyone at this bar was leading a lifestyle that ranged from carefully planned traveling to just seeing where the wind took them.
Every day had a theme. We quickly settled into going to the bar on Tuesdays and Fridays. Tuesdays featured tacos. Coming from Los Angeles I feel like I have a bit of a right to judge tacos. While these were most definitely gringo tacos, they were still excellent. It was so refreshing to get something with actual spices. Tacos aside, Fridays quickly became my favorite day as that was trivia night. Most weeks we had Austin on our team who was a perfect teammate as he filled in Sheri and my weak points, most notably geography. We ended up winning three of the six nights we played. The prize was a 3000 lek (roughly $30) gift card to the bar.
Jimmy was a local cat that had free reign of the bar. He would come in and hang out for a bit but would spend more of his time patrolling outside the bar.
Finally we got to leave our mark at the Buzz bar so that we will always be remembered.
Tour - Highlights of Albania
Peter came to join us for about three days. He is crazy! The amount of effort he put in to getting to Sarandë was incredible. It culminated with him arriving at the bus station at 2 a.m. To be young again and have all the energy in the world!
On one of the full days that Peter was with us, we booked a tour with Ilir. He has a small touring company. He picked us up right outside our building, and we headed off to visit more rural areas of Albania. I was most impressed with his English as he had only begun learning it three years earlier. I can't imagine learning a new language as an adult let alone being proficient in just three years.
This was a beautifully designed tour with frequent stops so we could get out and see the sites. We went to the town of Gjirokaster which is a UNESCO World Heritage site. We had lunch and walked around a bit. The highlight of the town was the large castle on top of the hill. It started to rain pretty good but as they say the show must go on, and in that vain I jumped on the stage and gave an undoubtably great performance.
The Ottoman bridge is a reminder of days long past. We were able to walk out on it and take in the views.
The bunkers. During the cold war the Albanian dictator Enver Hoxha was absolutely convinced that every neighbor wanted to invade his country. He therefore embarked on a project of building bunkers throughout the country. A conservative estimate is that 170,000 bunkers were built in a country of only 2.4 million people! The bunkers are a sad reminder of misplaced resources that could have been used to help the people and is undoubtably one of the reasons that Albania is currently still healing. Albania under communist rule was quite oppressive. Albania became completely isolated under Hoxha with him breaking ties with almost every other nation. Secret police were prevalent and things steadily deteriorated until the fall of communism int 1991 and elections were finally held.
Without a doubt the highlight of the day was spending time at the Blue Eye. This is a natural spring that wells up from the ground in one of the most idyllic surroundings.
The water would bubble up and flow down river where it quickly joined another river. The water was perfectly clear. Since it was still technically the off season we basically had the place to ourselves. It was a wonderful time and the rain cooperated and didn't start up until just as we got back to the van. As always, everything just works out for us.
Tour - Along the river
We had such a good time on the first tour that we hired Ilir again. This time it would just be Sheri and I. We traveled along the Vjosa river and made a few stops along the way. The highlight of this day was the thermal waters at Benjat Permet. We walked across another Ottoman bridge to get to the thermal waters. They were not as warm as I expected, but it was a very pleasant and relaxing way to spend an afternoon,
The rest of the time was stopping at various lookouts and taking in the gorgeous views. We are told the Vjosa river is the only "wild river" that remains in Europe. This means that it has not been altered in any way by man. There are no dams or locks or diversions. The plan is to protect the river and keep it as is.
Food
I must be very careful when discussing a culture's food. I must admit the traditional Albanian food just wasn't to my tastes. The food is mostly bland with not a lot in the way of spices. We found a local woman whose business was making home cooked meals. We ordered a dinner of several dishes. I had high hopes, but again it just wasn't for me. Unfortunately, there was very little in the way of chicken, and the chicken we did find was incredibly gamey. We ended up eating a lot of pasta and sausages. However, being so close to Greece there was tons of good cheese most notably the feta which Sheri ate almost every day at lunch.
So, come for the people, the scenery, and the simple contentment, but the food just wasn't a draw for me.
Cats and Dogs
The number of stray cats and dogs is a bit overwhelming. Again my desire to "fix" the problem was intense. I wanted to spay and neuter every one of them and then of course find homes for each. A few of the dogs had green or yellow tags on their ears which meant they had been fixed and the color indicated if they are certified "good dog" or if you should be cautious. I will say that the animals all looked strong, healthy and in good spirits. It was not as overwhelmingly depressing as I have found in other parts of the world when it comes to strays, but I of course still wanted to improve the situation.
Soccer Game
Without question one of the highlights of our stay was attending a local soccer game. Sheri and I had met one of the players at the Buzz Bar who was from Ghana. The local team's official name is KF Butrinti Sarandë. My brother is a much bigger soccer fan than I and did a bit of research on the league. This is a third tier league within Albania, and by one metric it is the 384th best soccer league in the world. The home team is doing above average and has a chance at promotion this season. They dominated and won 3-0. It felt like the entire game was spent in the opposing team's zone with the opponents hardly ever even getting a shot on goal.
I enjoyed that all the same theatrics of players getting "hurt" or making a big show in an effort to get a call in their favor were present.
I was lucky enough to capture one of the goals, by far the most impressive of the three, on video.
The game was free to attend and there were roughly 200 or more fans in attendance. Sheri and I chose seats in the grandstands, and as it filled up we immediately became surrounded by smokers. They were everywhere. We waited until halftime to move to a less congested part of the stadium to escape the smoke.
Onward
It was time to move on. Next stop is Kotor, Montenegro. Getting there is not a straightforward task. While Kotor does have an airport, flying there from Sarandë proved quite difficult as we would have had to take a ferry back to Corfu then a plane to either Athens or Vienna before finally making it to Kotor with all the associated layovers and cab rides. The option that seemed most obvious to Sheri and I but did not exist was a ferry from Sarandë to Kotor.
We then looked at various bus options but those proved to be quite challenging especially with a border crossing. We finally settled on just hiring a driver to take us door to door. We had two exceptionally nice drivers. One (the owner of the business) took us to the border where we were transferred to another car which took us across the border and into Kotor. Crossing the border turned out to be quite simple as we just drove up to the immigration officer who didn't even look up at us. He simply ran our passports and we were in. It was a long day of sitting in a car of roughly 8 hours. Turned out to be a great decision and worth every penny.
See you in Kotor!
Brad and Sheri
That was super interesting! I knew absolutely nothing about Albania. Sounds kind of badass.