Spyless in Tirana: Lessons from Albania

In the spring of 2019 I spent a month in the Albanian capital of Tirana as part of research for a book about European cities. I was halfway through writing the first draft when life was overtaken by Lockdown Britain and my move to Portugal. As time went on, and it became clear that Western society had changed irrevocably, the book I’d planned receded into a lost world. I reconciled myself to shelving the project indefinitely.

But fast forward to 2023 and, instead of fading, the memory of my time in Tirana became more vivid. Albania is a crazy place, hilarious and tragic by turns, its way of life almost that of another planet and yet eminently human. I decided I had to tell my little bit of its story.

The kind of travel writing I do combines narrative and reportage, aiming to get under the skin of a place from an unashamedly Western perspective. Thanks to the willingness of many people in Tirana to share their time and insights with me, I was able to get an amazingly good picture of life in post-dictatorship Albania in a short time. A stint volunteering at the capital’s first hostel gave me a sense of what Albanians were thinking, how they felt about their past and what they hoped for in future. People in think tanks, independent media and charities told me about the conditions which create trafficking, how politicians control the press and life for…