During his forty-four year communist reign, Enver Hoxha had over 200,000 bunkers built across Albania. His paranoia led him to believe that Albania was under eminent threat of a nuclear attack and instead of feeding his starving people, he sought to protect them from this unlikely event. Today these bunkers are scattered everywhere throughout the terrain of Albania, a haunting reminder of the recent past. Some bunkers have been repurposed - one we saw was painted to look like a ladybug. In Gjirokastër, a beautiful town tucked into the mountains, Hoxha built one of the largest bunkers - designed to hold him and 59 of his closest advisers. Born in Gjirokastër, Hoxha wanted a bunker for himself in case he was visiting his hometown during a nuclear attack. Sam and I visited this bunker, along with his “childhood home” during our three day stay in Gjirokastër. With mugs of Hoxha for sale in shops in town, a communism museum called “Tunnel Nostalgia”, and a museum called the Ethnographic Museum that neglected parts of history that reflected poorly on Hoxha, Gjirokastër seemingly has a different relationship with Hoxha’s legacy than the rest of Albania. Our bunker tour guide confirmed our hypothesis. She told us that some people miss Hoxha and the comforts that came with communism and a protective dictatorship, especially after Albania’s financial crisis in 1997 just years after Communism fell. His alleged childhood home, now the Ethnographic Museum, is actually just a huge house built on the land his childhood home used to be on. The museum itself does not mention the fact that the museum building is not his actual childhood home - boasting that one of the rooms is the room Hoxha was born in.

Gjirokastër itself has much more than just Hoxha nostalgia and historical interest. The food, for one, was some of the best in Albania. And if you’ve read my previous Albania blogs, Albanian food has been Sam and my favorite cuisine from this trip. When we arrived in Gjirokastër from Sarandë on Sunday March 16, we dropped our bags off at our hostel, Friends Hostel, and made our way to the one restaurant recommendation we got for Gjirokastër called Edua. This food did not disappoint. They had all the traditional Albanian food we’ve been loving - musaka, stuffed peppers, stuffed eggplant, tave kosi (yogurt with lamb in it) - plus they had the dessert unique to Gjirokastër, oshaf, which is made of sheep’s milk and figs.

The scenery is another one of the reasons that Gjirokastër quickly became Sam and my second favorite Albanian spot (after Berat). Something about the mountainous beauty and old town streets made us fall in love with Gjirokastër almost immediately. Gjirokastër, like Berat, is a UNESCO site. Whereas Berat is the city of a thousand windows, Gjirokastër is the city of a thousand steps. There aren’t many steps, but the whole old town (which is where we spent all our time) is on a steep mountain, making it so that going anywhere is a workout. The bazaar is the old town center, and is pictured below with all the streamers hung about. Gjirokastër’s bazaar is where you can find all the beautiful artisanal goods (plus the Hoxha mugs) and many yummy restaurants. Right outside the bazaar is the Gjirokastër Castle, which is the biggest castle in Albania. It is also the biggest and most impressive castle I have ever seen. Sam and I ended up spending hours in the castle due to its expansiveness and extensive history. The castle is perched up on a hill, providing a fantastic view of the whole city and surrounding mountains. Unlike most Albanian castles, the Gjirokastër one is not built on the highest point in the city. Even higher up on are homes, farms, and a former aqueduct that forms what is called the Ali Pasha bridge. On our first full day in Gjirokastër Sam and I hiked all the way up to Ali Pasha bridge, which expands across a grassy valley. It’s a little pocket of nature that makes you feel like you’re hours from humanity, rather than just thirty minutes from the town center.  Since part of Gjirokastër’s beauty is the expansive land around the city and the surrounding snowy mountains, Sam and I were set on seeing a sunset from atop a tall hill in the city. Not quite sure where to go, we began to walk up streets until we couldn’t walk uphill anymore. We made it to a very fancy hotel that had a breathtaking view. And this is how we spent our last evening in the spectacular Gjirokastër, watching the snowy mountains turn pink and then fall into darkness.

Of course, another highlight of Gjirokastër: the people. Albanians have truly been the most hospitable and kind people - it was no surprise to learn that Mother Teresa was born here. One of our best interactions with Gjirokastër locals was at a highly rated restaurant called Kardhashi. Kardhashi is run by two sweet older woman who don’t speak any English. As always, we made the inability to communicate with words work - by pointing and smiling and saying the one Albanian word we know over and over (thank you, “faleminderit”). The women were so excited to have us there that they kept bringing us food that we didn’t order. They wanted us to try everything - and finish all the food they gave us. At one point we tried to give them a plate to clear that had nothing on it except probably a total of a tablespoon of tzatziki leftover on it. The woman shook her head and pointed to the smidge of tzatziki, indicating that she wouldn’t clear it until we finished every last bite. Later on, she came over and motioned at the basket of bread, saying with her eyes “why did you not finish this bread?” We laughed and pointed to our plates, which were now wiped clean of any sort of sauce we could dip it in, and our bellies, which were full of food we ordered and free food they pushed upon us. She briskly walked back to the kitchen and came back with yet another plate of tzatziki so that we could finish the bread. After the food was finished to their satisfaction, we asked for the check. It wasn’t until about forty minutes later, after asking for the check five other times, that we finally got to pay and leave Kardhashi. The hilarious woman who refused to give us the check motioned to the restaurant which had filled up since we arrived and said “tourists.” Clearly they wanted us to stay sitting at the table out front of the restaurant to attract other tourists to come eat at Kardhashi. It was quite the scene and unlike anything you would experience in the U.S., which is exactly the reason we left home to travel in the first place. Sam and I were cracking up the whole time, shrugging our shoulders and saying to each other “it’s not like there’s anywhere else we have to be right now.” Another instance of unique Albanian hospitality in Gjirokastër was at a small coffee shop near the bazaar. One morning before we visited the Ethnographic Museum we stopped by a nondescript cafe with no sign filled with older Albanian men smoking cigarettes and drinking espresso. The owner brought us out our two espressos that we ordered along with some waters. Once I finished my espresso, I took a sip of what I thought was water. It was raki, the Albanian liquor that I’ve mentioned in previous posts. I have nothing against raki, but I am not one to drink a shot of alcohol with my espresso at ten in the morning, especially when I didn’t order it. Sam and I poured it into the actual water glass to make it look like we drank it as to not offend the cafe owner and thanked him profusely.

This raki and espresso combination, we learned, is not uncommon. The next morning we took a bus to our next town, Përmet, where we had booked a cheap place to stay so we could visit the hot springs of Albania. We arrived at the doorstep of this sweet older woman who spoke only Albanian and didn’t understand that we were staying in the small apartment connected to hers that is rented out by her grandkids. Although we struggled to understand each other, she brought us out espresso, raki, and apples as we sat on the porch and waited for her grandson to arrive to let us in our rented room. Like everything the Albanians so generously share with us, it was very difficult to get this woman to let us reject the raki. We felt rude doing so, but, again, I’m not one to drink a shot at ten in the morning. Eventually she stopped pushing the raki onto us and let us enjoy our apples and espresso.

Përmet was on our list of places to go to because of its natural hot springs but we didn’t know much about the town itself until we got there. It ended up being lovely. It had yummy restaurants (shout out Te Culi, a great family owned restaurant), a park with a path along the river that was perfect for our morning runs, and a giant rock that you could climb up to the top and see a great view of the town with a backdrop of the mountains. This small town with bright green grass surrounded by huge mountains reminded me of the landscape of Switzerland. Sam and I keep talking about how Albania is going to turn into a huge tourist destination in our lifetime. The natural beauty is just one of the many reasons that we predict Albania will grow in popularity. The hot springs themselves, a twenty minute drive from town, were cool to see. Unfortunately they weren’t super warm and it was a bit crowded, but I am still glad we went. After spending time in the hot springs, we walked around and enjoyed the other natural phenomenons near the baths, such as the caves and the canyon with a stream running through it.

After two nights in Përmet, we made our way to Korçë, what some call the hidden gem of Albania. It must be very hidden because Sam and I did not love Korçë. While the old city was pretty (albeit small) and our host we found on Booking.com was so generous and lovely and sweet, we did not find it to be a very exciting place. It lacked the nature of the other spots we’ve so loved in Albania and lacked the diversity and size of a city like Tirana. In my personal opinion, Korçë was the first disappointment of Albania.

Luckily, the next town we visited and the final one I will talk about in this post, Pogradec, was well worth the visit. Situated on a huge lake with mountains surrounding it, Pogradec is a beautiful spot that reminds me of Switzerland but in a different way than Përmet. On our one full day in Pogradec, Sam and I got up early to walk the six miles into town from our hostel. This walk, entirely along the lake, was lovely. We arrived at our destination, a bike rental spot, and easily picked up bikes to rent for the day (no IDs or prepayments or paperwork that we typically have to deal with when renting bikes - the Albanians are very trusting people). It is from here that we continue along the lake another five or so miles to the border of North Macedonia. For those of you who don’t know, North Macedonia is a country that borders Albania and Greece. Sam and I had decided the day before when we saw North Macedonia across the lake that we wanted to bike across international borders, because, well, why not! It was truly a memorable experience. The border patrol in both Albania and North Macedonia were clearly amused by us rolling up to the booths on our bikes. With this thirty or so minutes spent in North Macedonia, Sam and I have officially visited eight countries so far on our backpacking trip. After our quick border crossing, we headed to lunch back in Albania in a small town called Drillon at yet another delicious restaurant called Taverna KOÇO and then biked to Drillon National Park. Our one full day in Pogradec, while pretty busy, felt like the perfect amount of time to spend in Pogradec during the off-season. If you travel there during the warmer months, I would add an extra day so you can enjoy the beaches all along the lakefront.

This morning, Tuesday March 25, we left Pogradec to head back to Tirana (the capital) around seven in the morning. The owner of our hostel advised us to head out to the main road early and flag down one of the buses driving by. The tale of this morning is a classic Albanian transportation story so I have to share. We waved down what looked like all the other Albanian buses (a white van), whose driver informed us once we got in that he was bringing us to “autobus Tirana.” Since he was speaking in Albanian, we just went along with it, knowing there was nothing we could say or do. About thirty minutes into the drive, the van had emptied out. The driver parked in a small town and motioned for us to grab our stuff and follow him. He proceeded to lead us to a main road and holler across the street to a man sitting in a chair on the sidewalk: “Tirana?” Less than a minute later, seemingly magically, a compact car stopped in front of us and the driver got out: “Tirana?” he asked our first driver. A few words were exchanged between these two and off Sam and I went, into the car of this stranger who we had no idea what he was saying other than the name of the city we wanted to end up in. Squished in the car with two other Albanians who were also getting a ride to Tirana, Sam and I enjoyed the views as we made our way west to the nation’s capital. Part of why we are able to get into the car of a stranger is, yes, because Sam is a male who doesn’t have to worry about the unfortunate yet very real dangers of being a female traveler and I benefit from these privileges while traveling with him. But another part of why we were so willing to get into this car is because we’ve learned a lot about Albanians during our time here through experience and through talking with Albanians and other travelers: Albania is an extremely safe place with a low crime rate. People are very trusting of each other and of strangers for a reason. As anticipated, we made it very safely to Tirana with zero issues and a lot of laughter as we tried to communicate amongst each other using Google translate and hand signals.

We are back in Tirana because Sam and I both have flights to leave Albania very early on Thursday morning. This is because Sam is a groomsman in a wedding of one of his closest friends, Joe, in South Carolina this weekend. With flights being so expensive to fly back to the States, I unfortunately am not joining him in celebrating Joe and Hannah’s nuptials. Instead, I’m flying to Poland to meet my dad and uncle so we can explore the home country of my great grandparents. Next Tuesday, Sam and I will meet back up in Albania and make our way north, so we can cover the last bits of the country that we want to see before heading further north into Montenegro. It’s nice to be back in Tirana at the same hostel we stayed at when arriving in Albania just over three weeks ago. Tomorrow night we’ll head to see a fútbol match in downtown Tirana with some friends we made at our hostel, before heading out early Thursday morning for the Tirana airport.

That’s all for now! Thank you for reading :)