welcome to Albania
now you might have heard some negative things about this country
but i'm here to change your mind about visiting this gorgeous gorgeous gorgeous country honestly
it is actually one of my favorite countries and this is my second time visiting which is not
very common so let me tell you a little bit about this tiny country with only three million people
so it is located in the balkans area just above Greece and it has two seas that sort of you know
are next to it on the upper part is the adriatic sea and the lower part is the ionian sea and it's
super close to Greece i mean i'm sitting in Ksamil and you can actually see Corfu from here you can
see the house is in Corfu from here so Albania used to be a communist country i'll tell you a
bit more about that in in a minute but for now let's go see some more stuff about albania and
what usual questions people ask and then we'll get back and see what we can do in albania
albania has a very liberal visa policy i mean most of the countries in europe just don't need
a visa and if you do it's fairly easy to get it so i will put the link in description you can
check it if you need a visa and how to apply it but it shouldn't be a big problem to come here
so which sim card do you need to buy for albania i actually didn't buy one because my roaming from uk
works here without any extra charges so i took advantage of that but i've been using vodafone
service and i've been quite impressed it works throughout the country and it works really well
so if you're getting a sim card i would recommend vodafone definitely for albania
i mean it was pretty good even when it was in the mountains so yeah Vodafone
public transport in albania is not the best i would definitely recommend getting your
own car to move around the road conditions in albania are a little bit of a mixed bag
so on the coastal area especially the roads are really good but if you want to go inland some of
the roads could be quite difficult and rough so you have to drive with caution in Albania
on to a topic that's not a very polite one but one we can't do without and that is money
so these rather dull looking currency notes are Lek which is the official currency of albania
while it's official currency a lot of people also accept euros in Albania card payments are
not very common and sometimes you will get charged three to six percent for a transaction
i honestly recommend you keep cash with you at all times whether it's euros
whether it is Albanian Lek when it comes to withdrawing currency i only found one bank
called alpha bank that didn't charge me any transaction fees Credins bank also doesn't charge
any transaction fees and for value of money albania is it is amazing honestly you'd spend
one third one-fourth one-fifth of the amount that you would spend on a greek island and have
an amazing amazing amazing experience food is cheap accommodation is cheap
and public transport is ridiculously cheap getting a car is really cheap getting a car with a driver
equally cheap so there's literally nothing to hate here except for not taking cards
tons and tons and tons of these beautiful beaches could be all yours but if you come at the right
time if you want to party you need to come in the right season which is high season july and
august but if you just want nature and beautiful beaches to yourself you need to come mid-may
to mid-june and then september-ish that's the best time to have all of this just yourself
so how much time should you spend in albania now despite looking like a teeny tiny country on the
map there's quite a lot to do here you can see the adriatic sea in the north you need a couple of
days first go there for Tirana a day or two then for the riviera i would highly recommend at least
two to three days and Ksamil at least a couple of days so don't come to Albania for less than a week
honestly there's so much to see here and you don't want to miss all of this just because you're in a
rush so this is not a country that you just want to pass by seriously i honestly believe that
albania has a very tricky past if i tell you that it was a country that was like the North
Korea of europe you probably wouldn't believe me but who would so for 40 years there was a
crazy dictator by the name of Enver Hoxa who ruled the country with iron fist it was so bad
that people were killed for just listening to foreign radio stations they were shot at the
border for leaving the country and there was i mean it went so bad that he actually labeled
the chinese and soviet version of communism as too relaxed so how did he kept his power for
so long by whipping up this mass hysteria that the americans want to come and destroy Albania
and there's a nuclear war about to happen and in that in that crazy paranoia he built more than 173000
nuclear bunkers around the country i mean the country was completely cut off from the world
it is a legacy that is very controversial people still haven't made up their mind yet about
how they want to categorize it how they want to see this as their history because there are still
some people who sort of like that time period i will let the Albanians make their mind up for me
this is crazy and the transition this has happened even crazier
you're going to albania oh my god is it safe i mean should you be really going to albania these
are the reactions when i told my friends last time and i know there are bad stereotypes out there but
the mafia and the gangs and blah blah blah but albania is perfectly safe if you're a tourist
if you keep to yourself it is a really nice safe country you know petty crime is everywhere and
it's the same here but if you're coming for a nice holiday i don't think you will be facing any big
issues don't don't just go with the stereotypes honestly book your holiday and you won't be
disappointed i've also been walking around in the night on my own you know i travel alone i didn't
feel threatened at any point so please don't pay attention to this whole mafia business it's just
you just don't get involved with it when you're a tourist
people of albania average albanians are really nice they're very chilled super tolerant so
you don't get any issues with the you know the religion the culture blah blah so despite being
a muslim country it's actually very very much open last time i came it was ramadan
the bars are open 24 hour clubs are open all restaurants were open
they don't really care that much about religion here people are really sweet they're definitely
not racist they're super friendly so whatever stereotypes you've heard of them please leave
them outside the border they just don't apply in the country language barrier is real in albania
most of the people speak albanian some of them also speak a little bit of italian some greek but
english is not very common it's mostly the younger generation who speaks it and that becomes a bit
of a problem so you will need a translation app especially if you're trying to go on your own and
there's a lot of places where the signs are also in albanian there's just no english translation
anywhere so be careful get a translation app and find someone local and young and learn a few words
especially for thank you i hope i'm saying this right because i always mix it faleminderit
is actually the right pronunciation and that is thank you in Albanian
food in albania i didn't know it was this great so my first idea when i came was it's gonna be a
very meat heavy boring diet but it's anything like that so for example this is a beautiful lamb with
potatoes these are grilled vegetables these are rice meatball rice balls sorry and this is pasta
with meat so it's a very diverse cuisine that has a lot of different things and
obviously when you go towards the seaside you will get a lot of the seafood as well
so please don't eat you know junk food when you come here don't go for souvlaki especially
eat Albanian food it's really delicious and the more you stay in the mountains inland for example
i'm in Gjirokaster right now and Berat all these places they have amazing food i really really
love the vegetables they do here so please try more than that that is all from food for Albania
fun fact about um something interesting that i learned last time when i was here there's a sect
called Bekteshi these are muslims but they follow the sufi schools so according to my guide last
time the only rule they follow is they don't eat rabbit everything else is fair game i think i want
to join them although i did some more research and it's a bit more than that so yeah quite funny
they use the EU plugs and it runs on 230 volts
so what did i not like in Albania you ask i generally couldn't find many things people
are nice food is good it's amazing scenery around it's a lot of nature yes some roads
are bad but it's not that much of an issue the biggest problem i found is overbuilding they're
building and building and building and in that process they're destroying all the nature around
i mean i was here two years ago and it was still fairly you know laid back but there's
so many buildings hotels every direction it's i think in a few years if they keep going at this
rate there will be nothing left but buildings in the entire country and sadly it's also not
the good kind of building so i really hope they stop for the sake of their own country
one other thing that i didn't like about albania that despite having so much fresh water around
you can't drink tap water not good Albania not good your neighbours in North Macedonia
are really doing this well so please please please take a lesson from them
there are a lot of stray dogs everywhere in Albania and you have to be careful most
of them are pretty okay i don't think they're vaccinated i've not seen any you know marking
on the ears but most of them are docile and they would just run away but some of them can be pretty
aggressive especially if you are in a car they try to chase and then if you get out of the car
they will try to attack you so be very very careful this is really important
the million dollar question what can you do in Albania what can you see in Albania
despite being quite a tiny country on the map there's tons and tons and tons of places here
so i would start from the north where i went last time there's a beautiful lake which is like
half in a Montenegro half in Albania there's a city with a beautiful castle absolutely gorgeous
i mean i loved it because you can see the two rivers meeting there Tirana i wasn't such a big
fan of but it's it's good to learn a few things especially about the history especially with an
interesting history like the albanians have then inland you have two amazing unesco world heritage
sites one is Gjirokaster which you can check the video here and the other one is berat where i
visited last time so you can check the video here but it's a bit old and both are really
really stunning but more than just being gorgeous cities it gives you a chance to go and land these
beautiful landscapes i mean honestly really loved it the biggest and the most important thing that
you should never skip in Albania is the riviera you can check the video here if you haven't
it is really stunning you're just going through you know winding road up and down mountains with
gorgeous beaches wild beaches established ones i mean there's tons and tons and tons to see here
and at the end you end up in Ksamil where i'm sitting right now so this place is really
beautiful there are beautiful gorgeous beaches um the three main islands of albania are also
here so check all of this out there's tons to see into here this is brown boy travels
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