Chaos Theory in Albania

"Albania exudes a feeling of free for all. The moment you cross the border from Montenegro, the roads deteriorate markedly, the garbage increases exponentially, and the driving... well, the driving starts to get fun."

Dear International Living Reader,

I am convinced that driving habits in a country reflect the general state of the economy--and nowhere more so than in Tirana, the capital city of Albania.

Albania is abject. Teetering on the brink of the economic abyss. You can imagine the government sitting around a table, heads in hands, and the Prime Minister kicking off every Monday morning with, "Well, boys, where do we start?"

And, supporting my theory, the roads are pure chaos. In Tirana you'll see drivers throwing their cars into reverse along the country's only stretch of highway…cyclists heading the wrong way through three lanes of oncoming traffic…small children running through the cars…speed traps every 10 miles or so along main roads…

This is not Europe as we know it. The population of Tirana has risen from 200,000 in 1993 to one million today, and you can see the strain as you enter the city outskirts, where dozens of collapsed buildings encroach on a road with no surface and four makeshift lanes of traffic jostle to cross a single-lane bridge (naturally, there are four lanes coming the other way). When I finally reached a road with real lanes and a hard surface, about a half-mile from the center of town, I found two large Mercedes Benz cars with blackened windows stopped while the drivers had a chat, casually blocking the congested highway. Inexplicably, all the other cars got in line and waited patiently.

Except for yours truly, that is. This Brit in a rental car with Croatian plates seized my chance to get out of the mayhem by passing on the inside and detouring madly around a vegetable stall. Chalk it up to survival of the fittest, but the experience of driving in Albania awakens all sorts of latent aggressions harking back to our reptile ancestors.

The next morning the call to prayers from the mosque in the square woke me around 5 a.m., and I left Tirana heading for Sarande, on the south coast. The dust cloud around the city was already impenetrable as I braced myself to navigate the roads once more.

As I sat stuck in traffic mulling over Albanian trends, I wondered whether the fact that I saw women wearing orange leg-warmers for the first time since 1985 bears any correlation to the economic state of this country. Even with my limited awareness of fashion, I'd guess that the Flashdance look is 20 years out of date…but if the number of building sites is anything to go by, the economy is changing much more rapidly than women's clothing styles.

It seems that the whole country is under construction. Sarande in particular is exploding with Albanian developments. But this is still a cash economy, with 80% to 90% of developments paid for in this way--which means that when the cash runs out, the building stops, regardless of whether the project is finished or not.

Sarande's population rises from 30,000 to 100,000 in the summer, and everything is full between May and October. As of yet, only 20,000 day-trippers out of a potential one-million visitors each summer make the 40-minute boat ride from Corfu to Albania...

It's a market waiting to explode, and there could be real potential here. Behind the chaos, there has been consistent economic growth in Albania, and the indicators seem to be pointing north.

But if you ask me, there's still a heckuva long way to go.

Jocelyn Carnegie
For International Living