‘So you’re going to Albania. Why?’

View of the Albanian capital Tirana from high over the city. Photo: Rashmee Roshan Lall

Having just returned from Albania, I can attest there are many reasons to visit, but it’s fair to say most interlocutors were either dreadfully puzzled or genuinely curious to hear the Balkan nation was our choice of holiday destination.

A single word — why — was the usual response to our revelation we were headed for Albania.

To which we offered a smorgasbord of answers:

• Albania is said to have great natural beauty
• It has an interesting history
• It’s made great strides since it went from Communist dictatorship in 1991 to an open society
• Its model of communal harmony is quite remarkable with many Albanian families peacefully composed of Christians, Muslims, Sufis and atheists
• With a roughly 50% Muslim population — 45% are Sunni and 5% Bektashi Sufi -Albania is the only European country to be a member of the 57-member Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC)

Now that I’ve been to Albania, I would add five other reasons to visit (particularly, over the Christmas-New Year period):

• Its OIC membership makes it enormously interesting for any scholar of how Islam fits with and around European culture
• They do festive lights better than almost any other country and I’ve been to a fair few
• The baklava is superb
• It’s fantastic to visit places in the Albanian capital Tirana that one of its greatest writers Ismail Kadare wrote about in his many novels
• It’s very reasonably priced

I’ll be expanding on some of these themes over the next few days.

Originally published at https://www.rashmee.com