Falaminderit, ALBANIA

Crossing the border by car from Montenegro goes smoothly. A short line of cars, and motorcycles cutting to the front like the line is a suggestion, which presses my chill. I remind myself that chill is a choice and the alternative is self-imposed misery. So I sit there as Robert Harris weaves the tale of Octavian and Agrippa building the foundation to their command of the Roman Empire on Audible, one car length at a time until I touch Albanian soil.

I skirt the northern town of Shkodër until Google Maps decides to send me into the grid. I'm weaving to dodge cyclists and oncoming cars when a guy on the sidewalk flashes me the international symbol for "you're going the wrong way, moron." I’m clearly heading down a one-way the wrong way. My first fuck you of the trip. Fuck you back, Google Maps.

Some context I'd want if I were you. Until 1991, Albanians basically couldn't own a private car. Enver Hoxha ran the place for four decades as the most sealed-off country in Europe, and cars were for the party. So an entire nation learned to drive in about one generation. It shows. Hold that thought.

My Airbnb host hasn't replied to my message about arrival and parking. I try to find the alley and keep circling back to the same one-way street. Finally I slip in, and that's when my host messages: you can't park there, residents only. Good luck finding parking nearby though.

Back down the one-way street the wrong way for the third time. More scowls and gestures. I loop to a parking lot, and as I pull up the attendant closes the gate in my face and wags a finger. No parking for you. For some reason I'm convinced the Soup Nazi was Albanian. Nope. Iranian, born Armenian.

At last I loop back the right way and see a sign I've been seeing everywhere: Lavazh. I look it up. Car wash. Apparently Albania has a staggering number of them, which makes perfect sense once you know that a whole country waited nearly fifty years for a car. You finally get one, you keep it clean. The man waves me in. Parking is €8 a day, a block from my Airbnb. He assures me there are cameras and I can come and go as I please. My savior. I learn my first Albanian word: falaminderit. A mouthful for thank you.

The Airbnb is set back from the alley and it's an oasis. Courtyard, garden, stunning design. From chaos to peace in about four steps. I'm calm again. Welcome to Albania.

By the next day I'm starting to get it. Not fully. But the night before was illuminating. Albanians like to be outdoors, in cafés, in the street, which is the very thing I love about everywhere except America. We build our cities and suburbs to isolate. Everyone else gathers. The Albanians gather. On the surface it looks like Italy or Greece, but different.

Something is holding me back. There's a reserve here, a rigidity, the finger wag at the gate. Nobody performs a smile for you. I can't tell yet whether it's a wall or a door.

So I do what I came to do, which is drive the length of the country and find out. Shkodër to Byliss & Apollonia. Apollonia to Gjirokastër & Butrint. Gjirokastër to Berat. Down to the coast, and finally back up to Tirana. Top to bottom, peeling back layers, looking for the soul of the place and discovering that it's been there all along, doing what it does, with or without me noticing.

And the history explains a lot. Hoxha didn't just ban cars. He split with Yugoslavia, then the Soviets, then the Chinese, until Albania had no friends left at all. He built something like 173,000 concrete bunkers for an invasion that never came. They're still out there, mushrooming out of fields and hillsides, too expensive to remove. Then communism fell, and in 1997 a pyramid scheme ate a huge share of the country's savings and nearly tipped it into civil war. Add being among the poorest countries in Europe to the pile. Half a century of being told everyone outside is the enemy, followed by your own neighbors robbing you blind. You'd wag a finger at a stranger in your parking lot too.

But it's a facade, and it cracks. There's warmth under there. I can genuinely say I enjoyed the people. I didn't form any deep bonds, I'm not going to pretend otherwise, but enough of them let me in to leave a good taste.

The biggest surprise was the outdoors. I came expecting Croatia. Beaches, islands, water so clear it looks photoshopped. I believe it's here. But on my coastal stretch it rained, so I missed that side of things entirely. I’ll need to come back. Probably for the best, because what I found instead was an inland playground nobody told me about. Hiking, kayaking, and for those so inclined, cycling that rivals regions with far bigger reputations. Everywhere I went I was minutes from a trailhead, steep trails winding through gorges and valleys, over peaks and passes. I packed hiking shoes almost as an afterthought. I wore the hell out of them.

Then the Romans, because with me it's always the Romans. Albania has some solid sites, though they've suffered ruin, decay and neglect. There's a charm to that, but it takes imagination and a working knowledge of Roman urban planning to rebuild the glory in your head. Lucky for me, that's my favorite party trick. And Apollonia hit a nerve. In March of 44 BC, an eighteen-year-old Octavian was studying there with his buddy Agrippa when word came that Caesar had been stabbed in Rome. He gathered and army, sailed home, conquered his foes and became Augustus. I happened to be reading exactly that story when I stumbled onto the site. The book tells of Agrippa’s role in all of this. It was eye-opening and very on-message for my passions.

The medieval towns were even better. Berat and Gjirokastër are both UNESCO sites that have been lived in and built on continuously, through Byzantine and Ottoman occupations and everything after. Narrow alleys, steep stone lanes, houses stacked up the hillsides. Traveler nirvana, and somehow without that castle'd-out fatigue. Where the same thing in Croatia or Montenegro gets swarmed by cruise ship crusaders, these still feel under-discovered. Not empty, there are tourists, but a better breed for the moment.

For the moment. Decades of wandering have given me a spidey-sense for this, and it's tingling. Albania is about to get found. I'd come sooner rather than later.

So now we head into our final days in Tirana, a capital I knew nothing about a month ago and am now genuinely excited to poke at. The story goes that when Edi Rama was mayor, before he became prime minister, he had the gray communist blocks painted in loud colors because the city couldn't afford to tear them down. That's a special kind of urbanism. Whatever edge I've been sensing out in the provinces should be out in the open in the big city. Art, music, retail, the street. Then we settle into familiar Bologna for a month, which will feel like a warm bath after this.

The stoics teach us that chill really is a choice (thanks Marcus Aurelius). Albania just makes you wait at the gate a little longer than most places before it lets you in. But I can confidently say it’s worth the effort. Make sure to bring your hiking shoes, Tevas, and sense of adventure. The Albanian I'll remember isn't the guy who wagged his finger. It's the guy at the lavazh who waved me in and welcomed me.

Falaminderit, brother. Falaminderit Albania.