The hotel receptionist was vague about the early bus to Shkodër. That or she just thought I was mad to want to catch a bus at 7.30 in the morning; she thought there was one at about 1pm instead. From past experiences, I’ve learnt to pay attention to this kind of oblique advice so, instead of getting up early and rushing off for a potentially non-existent bus, I had a leisurely breakfast and went for a coffee and final wander along Durrës’ sea front. I needed to get to Shkodër in North Albania to then be able to cross over into Montenegro. What’s more, Shkodër is overlooked by a huge and ancient ruined castle, the Rozafa Fortress, that I wanted to explore. More...

Central Tirana was a building site. The magnificent statue of Skanderberg astride his horse in the main square, Sheshi Skënderbe, was marooned on a small island surrounded by dug-up streets, piles of sand and general roadwork chaos, and that was in addition to the four lanes of traffic.

I had taken the train from Durrës to spend the day in Tirana. The train journey was an experience in itself. I bought a ticket for the one-hour journey for the vast sum of 70 lekë, approximately 50p, and waited to catch the 08.45. The train eventually appeared, a huge rusty old locomotive pulling what were old, probably Italian, carriages. Albanians only take the train when they can’t afford to go by bus for what became obvious reasons. I clambered up from the More...

Albania is not often on anyone's itinerary but it is an intriguing and quite beautiful country to visit. I came across by bus from Orhid, Macedonia, and my destination was Tirana, the capital. Once the border crossing had been negotiated, which involved changing buses, helping a garrulous old woman with too much baggage, and being entertained by some blatant bribing of a customs official by a truck driver in a hurry, the bus was on its way.

The first part of the journey was spectacular. The bus meandered down through the mountains to the green countryside of small fields dotted with farms and buildings. Across the mountainsides and down into the lowlands were umpteen small toadstool-like cement lookouts – Enver Hoxha's infamous bunkers – indestructible evidence of More...