My flight to Tirana in Albania was via Bergamo in Italy – or ‘Milan-Bergamo’ as Ryanair calls it – as if Bergamo is a mere suburb of Milan and not a separate city of 120,000 people, more than fifty kilometres away. Flying over the Alps into Bergamo gave impressive views – not a cloud in the sky with mountains, towns and lakes fully visible from the airplane forty thousand feet in the sky. It was Friday November 8^th, 2024, and for the first time in my life I was visiting the Balkan nation of Albania. Landing at 11.10 in Bergamo I had a four-hour layover until 15.20. My friend G was waiting for me in Tirana – he had arrived from Heathrow a few hours before I landed.

The internet had warned me that public transport from the airport to the city centre was sporadic, so we had booked a transfer to our apartment with our landlord at a decent price. What a very friendly and talkative man. He gave us a running commentary about the buildings we saw on the way to the city centre. He told us that the route to the airport was like a continuous building site as Italian investors were swooping in to erect buildings now that the Albanian government has decided that Albania needs to become Mediterranean tourist hotspot.

Our apartment was located about fifty metres from the city’s main Skandenberg Square. We dined that evening at the restaurant Ceren Ismet Shehu in the grounds of the Toptani Castle just off the Square. This was a traditional Albanian restaurant with a wood fire burning in the middle. A very tasty and very meat heavy dining experience. The Toptani Castle has become a nightlife area so after our meal we enjoyed a few glamourous cocktails for about a quarter of the price you’d pay in Ireland (one hundred Albanian lek is worth about one euro).

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