It is Time to Talk about Albania

Whisper it quietly, but there is a new kid on the block, and there is a lot more buzz and chat about this previously little-discussed country.

I have been waiting for this moment for 20 years. I knew it would come, but I was unsure how long it would take.

Ever since I crossed the border from Prizren in Kosovo to Kukes in northern Albania in 2001, I have been fascinated by this formerly isolated and undiscovered Balkan backwater. Boy, what had I been missing!

A tortuous rough mountain road from Kukes to the capital, Tirana that took over 6 hours was compensated by some of the finest views in Europe, and the buzz of being totally off the beaten path. Tirana in 2001 was SO colourful, with seemingly every building someone's canvass - I had never seen such a mixture of colour in a city. The city was chaotic, of that there was no doubt, and it was certainly not clean, but it was more than made up for by the thing I continue to love most about Albania.

The people.

"What are you doing in Albania?" they wondered. "No Westerner ever comes here. Welcome!" And those questions only intensified as my friend took me to her new home in a stunning and historic town in the south called Gjirokaster

Where unemployment, the locals told me, stood at 92% back in 2001.

I felt that I was entering a totally different universe, the only similarity being living in the Soviet Union before its fall in 1991, and then being the first Westerner to teach English in a school in a remote Bulgarian town on the border with Greece and Turkey the same year.

This was a very equal exchange. If locals were keen to meet a foreigner, I was fascinated to learn more about this small country that had been effectively locked away from the rest of the world for half a century. A land of innocence and curiosity.

And weird contrasts.

Officially 70 % Muslim, Albania is the most areligious state I have ever come across in Europe, very refreshing in this region. With so little access to the outside world, the only icons from the West allowed were those sanctioned by the State. British comedian Norman Wisdom, a champion of the worker, was a national legend, and even had the Freedom of Tirana, and one of the most surreal moments of my life was watching the great man run out onto the pitch when England played Albania in the 2001 World Cup qualifier, fall over in his trademark way (at the age of 80), while the entire stadium roared "Norman, Norman."

A country where imported luxury cars speed down motorways with a shepherd herding a flock of sheep heading in the opposite direction (seen more than twice)

You wouldn't get that in Manchester.

The beaches, especially in the south, were like something I had never seen. Kilometres of virgin sandy beaches, totally untouched. The drive from Vlora to Saranda was arguably one of the most breathtaking in Europe, and then the choices from Saranda were a catamaran to Corfu (a great entry airport to Albania these days FYI, with all the cheap flights) or south to one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen, Ksamil, a stone's thrown from Greece and Albania's UNESCO World Heritage Site of Butrint.

And the food... And even the wine was a surprise. This was a country that completely knocked me sideways given my expectations - never have I been to a country where the perception is so different to the reality.

(I will confess to being a little intimidated at the 2001 Albania v England game. Our tickets were on the black market and so we ended up in the Albanian stand. Questions were asked - are you English? A cap, then a flag, I dressed both, remembering not to cheer when England scored. And then I was offered a cigarette, which I gratefully accepted, so as not to upset anyone. It was one of only two cigarettes in my life).

I started to visit regularly from 2007, and I have been at least 50 times since, and it has been phenomenal to watch the progress. And far from being backward 15 years ago, I used to long to get through the terrible roads of the Croatian coast and that horrid stretch through Montenegro. By comparison, Albanian roads were a dream.

My first sight of Rinas Airport in Tirana in 2007 left me stunned. It was SO advanced and modern compared to the rest of the region. Split, Zagreb, Dubrovnik and Sarajevo had nothing on Tirana Airport back then.

And it seemed that the whole country was building, building, building. Roads, roads, roads. And new developments such as Tirana Lake, one of my favourite places in the city, which has developed into a very cool neighbourhood. The transformation of the traffic system in Tirana, including a brand new ring road, has been magnificent, even if the local driving has not improved.

One of my interesting observations was the difference back then in the restaurant scene in Tirana compared to cities in former Yugoslavia. There were refugees and emigration from all countries, but the Albanians seemed to have integrated more, and when they returned, they opened restaurants with international cuisine - Greek, French, German, Italian, Indian and Japanese to name a few. Split had nothing, Zagreb an Indian and 2 Chinese, and Sarajevo - despite a captive audience of 7,000 international peacekeepers, almost nothing at all. Living fulltime on the island of Hvar in Croatia, it was only Tirana that could satisfy my culinary desires in the region.

Twenty years on, an awful lot has changed, but one thing hasn't - at least in my opinion.

The people. Two of my best friends in the region are Albanian, and it has been a pleasure to watch their careers grow after we originally worked together over a decade ago. Jimmy Lama is a legend, and he now runs the best tour company in Albania, Tours Albania , and he is a regular guest on national television talking about tourism.

And it is always nice when your lawyer becomes your friend. If you do decide to venture into the world of Albania tourism, real estate, property law, or energy projects, Anjola Aliaj is the only name you need.

Tourism has been increasing in Albania in recent years, and now Tirana is being discovered by digital nomads. I met some of the organisers of the Tirana Digital Nomad Conference which will take place next month earlier this year at our Work, Place, Culture conference in Dubrovnik.

I loved the energy and the ambition, and I am VERY impressed with the lineup of speakers they have managed to assemble. And seemingly every nomad I know is Tirana-bound next month.

The international media is starting to give more column inches to Albania these days, too, including this great piece recently in The Guardian .

And that makes me smile. Great country, great people, great future. I just wonder what took everyone so long...

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