A wiry old man latched onto me as I pulled my rucksack from the bus in Sarandë. “Hotel?” he asked. “No,” I said and shook my head. Ten steps down the road he was hot on my tail, “Hotel?” “No!” I said again and shook my head with more vigour. Still he followed.For my whole life I’ve been conditioned to nod my head for yes and shake it for no. Unfortunately a shake of the head in Albania is a confirmation and the poor Albanian whose only English word was ‘hotel’ was clearly confused. I walked quicker and he dropped back, no doubt reassured that all foreigners were stupid.
Albania is barely a mile from Corfu at its narrowest and was once part of the same landmass. However, isolationist politics and economic madness have pushed it down an alternative path and looking across the narrow stretch of Ionian Sea, it even looks different; the bald hills devoid of the cypress trees that shade Corfu in green.
There’s an undercurrent of Italian culture in Sarandë but it’s tempered with a third world feel. There are pizzas, gelataries and a passeggiata but there are holes in the roads and cows in the plaza. Our hotel was even named after Mussolini’s daughter, Eda, a throwback to an era when the whole town bore her name. The town also suffers from a cruise ship trade which passes through to the ruined city of Butrint but rarely sticks around in Sarandë.
Butrint is a fascinating place, a vast collection of ruins featuring all the notable European empires. Roman, Greek, Byzantine and Venetian all had a build here and the city is now protected by UNESCO in case anyone else should fancy a go. Even in Summer it was empty of people but full of white butterflies. I think we timed it well; in the distance the ominous orange of the EasyCruise boat was slipping into port at Sarandë.
