David Paul Appell
Well, well, Shqipëria is back in the news these days - and not just because it´s become somewhat fashionable as a destination in recent years. I´d been intrigued by this very singular country for many years, since a freelance editing gig for a major U.S. travel guidebook publisher, which in 1993 handed me an assignment to work on its next Eastern Europe edition – with a very small section on this quirky little land of 2.75 million in the Balkans on the Adriatic Sea north of Greece as well as bordering Kosovo (which is also ethnic Albanian), Montenegro, and North Macedonia. And a mighty short section it was, with almost no detail beyond a general physical and historical description. The reason for that, of course, was that it had spent 41 years of the 20th century locked grimly away under the brutal and totalitarian Commuinst dictatorship of Enver Hoxha, which started out in 1944 as Stalinist, then by the 1960s had evolved into something akin to Maoist thanks to the influence of its only remaining world ally, China.
How times have changed since Hoxha´s successor Ramiz Alia left office in 1992 and the first democratic elections were held. These days Albania is "having a moment," as media wags like to say, as more and more travelers in Europe and beyond are discovering its picture-postcard historic cities and towns, pristine nature, and especially luminous beaches - and all at bargain rates.
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