I was in Albania in 2002-2007 several times and I was told it is very different today. At that time it was very peaceful and quiet compared to Kosovo (where we

I was in Albania in 2002-2007 several times and I was told it is very different today. At that time it was very peaceful and quiet compared to Kosovo (where we traveled in convoys guarded by armored carriers and helicopter gunships), Sarajevo (when landing on the Sarajevo airport, Apache helicopters were deploying flares to protect the civilian aircraft) or Belgrade (big holes visible in building walls from bombs). The biggest problem 20 years ago was almost nobody was speaking any foreign language in the eastern part of the country and some were understanding Italian on the coast (they watched Italian TV a lot). I was not able to eat anything from Skopje, Macedonia, to the restaurant in Tirana were I went with some Albanian colleagues. I confirm the people were friendly and the country was strangely nice, the eastern part reminded me of Jordan (quite arid) and Tirana was a mess of driving too many cars with very inexperienced drivers on tiny roads and back alleys where you had inches on each side of the car. Their language sounds similar to mine, but it just sounds (not many common words), so the atmosphere in the restaurants was familiar and friendly, I felt like in a smaller city in Romania. At the Macedonian-Albanian border crossing I had a fantastic chance of meeting a guy who was speaking Romanian, we used to be a guard at the Albanian embassy in Bucharest and this is how I was able to cross the border, otherwise I was not able to communicate with anyone else in English, French, Italian or hand gestures.