First impressions of Albania

I didn’t know what to expect when I landed in Albania in May 2009. But the first impressions were amazingly good.

A Mercedes picked  me up at a very modern and impressive airport, sped past plush car dealerships to a restaurant where I had an excellent meal of lamb, salad and chips.

It was hard to believe I was in Albania, Europe’s second poorest nations, which had opened up its borders to visitors only in 1990 after being a Communist dictatorship isolated from the rest of the world for nearly 50 years.

Since then this small country north west of Greece on the Adriatic has undergone an amazing political U-turn from an extremely left wing Socialist state to a democracy about to join the European Union and a member of NATO sending soldiers to Iraq and Afghanistan.

But it’s not just a political revolution but a spiritual one that has occurred in the Eastern Mediterranean since dictator Enver Hoxha had declared his country the world’s first atheistic state.

From 1990, Christians have poured into the country to bring the Gospel to Albania and now there are more than 170 churches in the country, every town has at least one evangelical church and Albania has already sent 50 missionaries overseas.

I had joined five other supporters of the European Christian Mission to see at first hand their work in Lushnje, about an hour and a half’s drive from the capital, Tirana.

My companions were Jan King, a retired teacher from Melton Mowbray and ECM trustee; Alan Moir a retired businessman and his wife Helen from Dunfermline, Scotland; Tanya Frolova, a teaching lecturer from Riga, Latvia, and Peter Russell, ECM communications manager in Northampton.

Once we left the airport and bypassed the capital the roads and the driving standards did deteriorate but the countryside looked very lush and every hundred yards there were market stalls by the side of the road selling very tempting fruit and vegetables.

After an uneventful journey we arrived in Lushnje to meet our hosts, Berti and Tatjana Dosti who have a very pleasant apartment (pictured below) overlooking the town park. Jan and Tanya stayed in their flat while the rest of us were put up in the only hotel in the centre of Lushnje.

The difference between the UK and Albania was brought home to me by the basic hotel room with a bed which was a mattress on a concrete slab and the bathroom where I switched on the shower and water sprayed out from holes in the pipes in three different places.

If Albania does join the European Union many millions will be needed to be spent on the country’s infrastructure to attract business and tourists.

Still I slept all right and ate well thanks to Tatjana’s excellent cooking.

It was at those meals that I heard Berti’s amazing story which I will tell more about in another blog.