“Beware the Albanian Mafia!” She Said.
I’d been warned.
A former girlfriend, a Romanian woman, told me that I should not visit Albania when I noted my desire to do so several years ago. And if I did choose to ignore her caution, well, then, “beware of the Albanian mafia!”
Now, just so you know, a Romanian warning you about crime syndicates is really saying something. It’s like a great white shark warning you to beware of orca whales.
I never made that trip for reasons I can’t remember now.
But I did eventually go to Albania.
Just recently.
In fact, I’m writing this dispatch on the veranda of a hotel in Corfu, Greece, having just returned from Albania the day before by ferry.
And here’s what I can report: Never listen to a Romanian woman bearing ill tidings of Albania.
The place is stunning.
The food is fantabulastic.
The scenery is epic and majestic in a Swiss Alpine way.
The coastal waters are Greek in their hues of indigo, turquoise, and aquamarine.
The beachfront resort hotels are relaxing.
The country is well along the “Path of Progress” that my colleague Ronan McMahon regularly talks about over at Real Estate Trend Alert.
The prices are ridiculously affordable ($17 for a plate piled high with enough lamb lollipops for two people, potatoes, a beer, and dessert of super-thick yogurt covered in local honey).
And the people are supremely kind, chatty, and relaxed.
In short, I’m aiming to go back to Albania this summer with my wife… though I probably won’t bring up the Romanian girlfriend thing.
I’ve long been telling International Living editors about my desire to write about Albania as a potential destination for Americans who want a base from which they can hop into and out of Europe for weeks or months at a time. I think the editors just got tired of hearing the word “Albania” in all of our planning meetings, so they just told me to go and get it out of my system.
When they read the cover story I’m writing, they’re going to be very pleased that I nagged them so frequently.
I talk to a lot of Americans and Canadians at the various International Living conferences at which I speak. Most of them are looking for an easy way into Europe—a visa, or a passport based on family heritage, or a Monopoly Community Chest card that will allow them to live, work, or retire on the continent.
I understand that desire.
I grew up wanting to live in Europe because of all the travel I’d done through Europe with my mom, who worked for the airline industry in the ’70s, which meant free travel wherever my mom decided she wanted to go.
It took me 50-plus years to reach the goal, but I’ve been living in Europe now since 2018. And I can report that it is everything you think it is… only better.
Still, there’s that niggling challenge: How to live in Europe beyond the limits of a 90-day tourist visa?
Enter… Albania.
Now I won’t dive too much into this here, because while my managing editor will be quite pleased that this dispatch provides useful information to Field Notes readers, the poohbahs who run International Living magazine, and who sent me galivanting through Albania for a week, will be none too pleased if all the actionable advice spills out here instead of the upcoming magazine spread.
What I will say is that Albania offers a lot of benefits for Americans who want to live in Europe temporarily, or who want a base from which they can bebop around Europe while they look for a country they really want to call home.
In Albania, you’re not limited to a 90-day stay.
As an American, you have a full year’s temporary residency on just your American passport. (Canadian, you’re not so lucky. You can only stay 90 days.)
Now, I already sense the trepidation many people reflexively feel for Albania. And I get it. A former communist state. Reclusive in its existence. Once ruled by an excessively paranoid dictator who built upwards of 750,000 bunkers across the country—pretty much one for every family to help protect the motherland against enemies that didn’t exist.
It’s a weird place, at least in terms of the traditional European destinations that IL regularly writes about.
But many of those traditional destinations are changing.
Golden Visa rules are changing or those visas are fading away entirely. Tax rules are changing. Living costs are going up markedly in certain popular places, like where I live in Lisbon.
Which means these alternative destinations—up-and-coming places—such as Albania, Montenegro, Croatia, the Czech Republic, and Poland represent a new range of opportunities for living, working, and/or retiring in Europe.
Each has its pluses and minuses, of course. And not all of those countries are right for everyone.
But each is right for a different person seeking something specific in their hunt for a new life in Europe.
Albania, I’m certain, is right for a lot people—particularly those who might just want to live abroad for a year just to experience their own European adventure.
From the Albanian Riviera, where I spent my week, you can drive into Greece in under an hour. The Greek island of Corfu is 30 minutes away by high-speed ferry, and Corfu’s international airport will get you to London, Paris, Berlin, Amsterdam, and elsewhere in a few hours. Athens airport opens up all of Europe, the Middle East, North Africa, and Central Asia (as well as direct flights to the US).
That’s all I can say for now.
You’ll need to await June’s issue of International Living for the full story. But if I were you, I’d put Albania on my travel to-do list. Even if you’re not looking to live in Europe, Albania is a unique holiday destination.
And despite the ill tidings of Romanian girlfriends, don’t worry about the Albanian mafia.