It seems appropriate to use the title of a western movie to sum up Albania. Compared to the rest of Europe it feels untamed, and, in parts, still pretty wild. It’s not always the most pretty (although it has plenty of beautiful landscapes, and well-preserved historical monuments), but it’s always interesting and the people are overwhelmingly lovely.

The good

The food is surprisingly good. In fact, we thought it was some of the best and more inventive food that can be had on a budget in Europe. We had delicious egg and lemon soup in Schodër, inventive takes on traditional favourites in Tirana, incredible fresh battered fish with rice balls in Gjirokaster, and melt in your mouth slow cooked lamb in the mountains. There are fresh food markets everywhere, and most of the produce is organic and produced locally.

The people are welcoming, and were without fail really lovely to us. We were never ripped off, even when we probably should have been (in markets where we couldn’t speak the language we were never charged any more than the locals). Even in big cities, people would stop to help if they thought we were lost or that they could help in any way. People would always want to stop and talk (even if they couldn’t speak English) and would often offer small gifts – on one memorable moment we had a guy run down a mountainside to flag us down just so that he could give us two walnuts and wish us luck.

Much of Albania is wild and mountainous. Although there are people everywhere, the landscape is often really beautiful and in many places there are no shortage of places to wild camp.

Albania is full of interesting history. There are castles and other historical sites littered all over the place, and they can pretty much be explored to your hearts desire. There are also numerous monuments from the former communist regime including statues, public artworks and old military installations (often being put to good use by the local farmers).

The cycling is never dull. We passed horse drawn carts and homemade vehicles of all kinds and found that people will stop and chat at any opportunity. The lives of everyday Albanians will often be played out in full view of the road, and so we got plenty of opportunities for cultural insights from the comfort of our saddle. The quality of the roads also change from one moment to the next, so we found that there’s not much chance of being lulled to sleep by the steady grind of our pedal strokes.

The bad

The roads are often terrible. One minute you can be travelling over lovely asphalt, the next it’s an almost unrideable, muddy (often mixed with animal poo), rutted mess. This was true even for what appeared to be fairly major roads, and we often found it difficult to use our OsMand maps to navigate. I’ve read that the roads have improved over the past ten years – I can only imagine what they must have been like.

It’s hard to escape people. Albania still has a large rural population, and it’s very hard to find somewhere to rest without seeing other people. While we had no bad experiences, for introverts like us, it was hard to find space when we didn’t feel like talking to anyone.

The ugly

There are dogs everywhere. We found ourselves surrounded by barking snarling dogs on many occasions. We mostly found that dogs were more bark than bite though, and we were able to ward them off easily by stopping and pretending to throw a stone. Coming into winter we saw a lot of starving dogs, and this was quite heartbreaking at times. It’s also common to see dogs killed on the side of the road.

Albania doesn’t have a functioning system for getting rid of rubbish. While this is a problem across much of the Balkans, it’s much worse in Albania and it was a little distressing to see the amount of rubbish strewn around the place, particularly in the waterways where plastic bags decorate the bushes and trees like perverted Christmas decorations.

The weird

The really obvious thing about Albania is that they haven’t really got the hang of a free market yet. It seems like whenever someone gets an idea, three of four people copy it. This means that on the road to Tirana, there is a petrol station approximately every 200 metres. Each has a cafe, and an attendant to pump petrol. On each street corner in towns there are three small stores, each selling identical products. Mostly the people sit around doing not much, waiting for a customer to show up. We couldn’t help but think that people should get together and agree to close down two out of three of each store or petrol station. They could all work less hours and make the same money (and save on running costs), and perhaps even do something more productive with their spare time!

It also means you see some pretty unusual business ideas. Our favourite was the giant cafe/restaurant/hotel built in the shape of a ship right in the middle of the most godawful flat and muddy farmland, surrounded by oilfields which made it difficult to breathe for the smell of benzine.

The other really weird thing for us was the way that Albanians build their houses. All across the country you see half finished houses. Usually they are three stories high, but with only one of the stories built in. The people we talked to told us that it was normal for people to spend their life savings on building the biggest structure they could afford, and then worry about filling in the walls later. The end result is that it seems like there is hardly a finished building in the entire country! It’s not unusual to see three houses in a row, each with a different single story completed for living in, and the rest open space with rio bar, washing, drying produce and an assortment of other odds and ends.