Travel Tips
I found this the most interesting area I've travelled through. Where a nod means "no" and a shake of the head means "yes", where travellers often seem to pay less than locals, if they are allowed to pay at all, and where I found the people to be surprisingly warm and generous. Yet weapons are so commonplace that a popular joke tells of a local offering to pay for dinner with a Kalishnikov, receiving a pistol for change and leaving a few bullets as a tip.
The countryside is like a potential film set for the second half of "Atlas Shrugged". Beautiful landscapes awash in letter, families driving horse drawn carts along pot holed roads lined with abandoned cars, and in the most isolated and unexpected locations, huge rusted and long silenced chemical plants, steel works and manufacturing facilities representing the results of an aggressive but ultimately unsuccessful decentralisation program.
Scott Eden (June 98)
For more news, views and the odd bit of gibberish, drop in on the soc.culture.albanian and rec.travel.europe newsgroups.
For detailed up-to-date travel information check out Lonely Planet's Destination Albania.
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