It will have taken a mere three decades for an encore to “Albania 1994,” with the long-awaited 2025 freshening-up orientation about to get underway in Tirana. Judging from the surface appearances to be gleaned from videos at YouTube, the country has changed considerably during my lengthy time away.
Of course Thomas Jefferson surely would counsel caution; prudence, indeed, will dictate that surface appearances via variable influencers at YouTube should not be trusted as they pertain to genuine, grassroots societal change.
But I’m an eternal optimist amid coups, pandemics and LA Dodger player acquisitions. This post is being written prior to my departure, so I’ll begin by looking back half a lifetime ago.
40 Years in Beer (Book II) Part 54: New Albanians on beer holiday in Old Albania (1994) (at RogerBaylor.com)
Albania in 1994 was nine hot, gritty days spent in a pockmarked Fiat crisscrossing the central and southern Albanian landscape in the company of two successive guides (Genci and Agim) and a deft, talented driver (Nico) whose skill at dodging pedestrians, cyclists, horse-drawn carts, herds of sheep and sagging shoulders put us at “ease” to focus on splendid mountains, peeling buildings, demolished Communist monuments, ubiquitous concrete pillboxes – and most importantly – the hardy, resilient, long-suffering Albanian people.
I can recall our drive of three hours on the “highway” from the coastal city of Vlore, where broad, shabby, tree-lined avenues led down to the port, a short boat ride from the place the Soviets used as a submarine base in the 1950s, then we were ascending the forested mountains, pausing just before the crest to dine on freshly grilled lamb, black olives and tangy feta cheese, washed down with cold Italian lager, before going over the top for the hours-long descent through a vertical-tumbling-tumbleweeds sort of landscape, eventually giving way to sheer ocean cliffs that somehow had been made to cradle a tortuous and crumbling switchback asphalt ribbon absent guardrails that demanded patience and concentration of all drivers, with the necessity of honking at every blind curve to clear the path ahead as the blue ocean incessantly meets the rocks, so far below.
For me, Albania became an object of fascination during a entry-level European history course in university, when it dawned on me that as modern nations go, it appeared on the map very late in the game, in 1912.
When my first glimpse of Albania came in 1985, I was lounging on the deck of the ship sailing from Greece to Italy, eating gloriously oily tuna straight from the tin with a camp fork and washing it down with a can of Dutch Oranjeboom beer.
The hazy shoreline of Albania became visible to the east. After confirming our whereabouts on a nearby map — the Greek island of Corfu could be seen to the west — I gripped the railing and investigated shadowy headlands in the distance. It didn’t look like very much was there, only barren mountains sloping down to the sea and an occasional village.
Not one of the thousands of bizarre concrete pillboxes erected by the paranoic longtime dictator Enver Hoxha, supposedly for use as defense emplacements, was visible from the ship. I already knew that Albania was inaccessible to Americans; nonetheless, an existential question suddenly arose, one that was completely unanswerable at the time.
Was there beer in Albania? In 1994 the answer was revealed: yes, Albanians brew beer, and it tastes great with tasty, interesting Albanian food.
Discovering Albania: Albanian Food (The Ohio State University)
Albanian food is typical of the cuisine of Southeast European countries. It is also an example of what is referred to as the Mediterranean diet because of the importance of olive oil, fruits, vegetables and fish. Cooking traditions in Albania are diverse due to various environmental factors that make the cultivation of nearly every kind of herb, vegetable and fruit possible. Olive oil is the most commonly used oil in Albanian cooking, and has been produced all throughout Albania since antiquity.
The journey to Albania in 1994 ended in Tirana at the home of our guide Agim’s parents. His father was a retired policeman (the municipal variety, not the more vilified secret ones) who according to his son’s humorous testimony had not so much as even known where the household dishes were kept prior to becoming crazed with boredom, deciding it was about time he learned to cook — even though Albanian menfolk traditionally weren’t to be caught dead with a spatula in hand.
Boy, did he learn. We arrived to find an enormous spread of stuffed vegetables, savory phyllo-layered pies, sheep and goat cheeses, and salad. Agim’s parents had somewhat improbably (for Albania) shifted toward a largely vegetarian diet, but his dad dutifully grilled lamb for my benefit as a presumably carnivorous American.
This feast handily exceeded the quality of any restaurant meal we’d eaten, with the possible exception of those mountaintop chops or the Adriatic fish freshly caught and grilled at the shack by the beach south of Tirana.
Ironically, as of 2025 I’m the one who has generally skews vegetarian, historically a challenge in the meat-loving Balkans. Given that travel is a suspension of daily norms, it’s not an big issue for me to consume flesh while away, and I’ll surely do so while we’re on the ground in Albania.
I wouldn’t want to miss a single specialty of the house, after all.
Photo credit: Albania National Tourism Agency.
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“Edibles & Potables” is Food & Dining Magazine’s Sunday slot for news and views that range beyond our customary metropolitan Louisville coverage area, as intended to be food (and drink) for thought.
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