20 December 2007 Albania was bathed in mist and rain as my high-speed catamaran sped over the narrow straits dividing Albania and the port of Corfu. Was I making a terrible mistake in coming?
Minutes after arrival, I decided I hadn’t. As the boat pulled into Saranda harbour, the mist lifted dramatically and the sky turned from slate-grey to a cheering cobalt blue.
Even better, for less than the price of my small room in Corfu - where the view overlooked the hotel rubbish bins - I quickly secured a double bedroom in a hotel with a balcony overlooking the sea. And what a view it was. Saranda lies on one of the great natural bays of the Mediterranean, sweeping round in a natural protective arc.
The collapse of Albania’s heavy industry since the end of Communism has brought the infant tourist trade here one great benefit – the waters in which I dipped my toes shortly after booking into my hotel were as blue and clear as the sky above.
Saranda, as I discovered on my first walk-about, mirrors many of the changes transforming this once backward and isolated state.
This is an old town, as the ruins of an ancient synagogue, dating back to the Roman Empire, suggest. But until recently it was a small place.
A decade or two ago, Saranda consisted only of a few streets of two-storey buildings; a quite bolt-hole for communist apparatchiks to come and relax over their books on Marx.
Today it is a boomtown and the older low-rise streets are in danger of getting lost amidst the cranes and bulldozers flinging up one tower block after another.
The town has already stretched its legs right round the bay and beyond – a new Nice or Malaga by night, when the twinkling lights give out the illusion of wealth and prosperity.
By day it’s a different story, as Saranda reveals itself in all its rawness and tawdry imperfection – full of half-built hotels, broken pavements and potholed roads.
The infrastructure is visibly straining to cope with the giddying pace of expansion. At the same time, one wonders how the town can possibly fill the dozens of huge new concrete hotels crowding the skyline.
The investors - and money-launderers - behind the building boom doubtless have their eye fixed on the long term, hoping Saranda will follow in the footsteps of the resorts of neighbouring Montenegro, which have become the playgrounds of Europe’s fast set in the space of a few years.
While Saranda has any number of beer bars and restaurants on the sea front in which one can happily linger for an evening or two, the town’s attractions will not detain most visitors for long.
Like most visitors who haven’t just come ashore for a few hours from a cruise liner, I took a taxi to the most famous nearby attraction, the ancient ruined city of Butrint.
Lying half an hour’s drive to the south near the Greek border and within a national park, this is very different landscape of untouched grassland, marshes, mountains and lapping water.
A handful of villages dot the horizon, reflecting the different faiths and civilizations that overlap in this borderland. An Orthodox village lies on the top of one hill, a Catholic on another and a Muslim village
on a third.
Butrint itself is one of the wonders of Mediterranean Europe; a sprawling city that fell victim to the Slav invasions of the Balkans back in the 6th century.
Lying far from other urban settlements, its stones were not hauled away after the city was deserted, which is why so much of it remains intact – a stage from which the actors have silently and mysteriously departed.
I spent hours wandering around the leafy and overgrown Roman and Byzantine columns, arches, wells and walkways, spooked by the eerie silence of a place that centuries ago had been a bustling, lively port.
Butrint is impressive example of fruitful collaboration between foreign and local expertise and money; the site is managed by the Albanian authorities with the assistance of the London-based Butrint Foundation. I could not help comparing its pristine state with the dismal-looking Roman sites I had seen in other parts of the Balkans, where governments and local authorities have all but given up any serious pretence at managing the sites and have virtually abandoned them to treasure-hunters.
But touring the ruins - and looking for the otters that apparently frolic in the waters flowing round Butrint (I didn’t see any) – was thirsty work. So I was glad that as I left site I was able to refresh myself in the Livia restaurant, by the gate, downing a cool beer and a plate of chicken grilled in lemon and butter.
The world has yet to discover Saranda, Butrint and the rolling hills of southern Albania, though its only a few minutes – and a handful of euros - from the packed tourist resort of Corfu, from where there are daily
flights in summer to dozens of European cities.
Soon, no doubt, the crowds will come. Go now and taste the air of mystery that hasn’t quite lifted from Albania - much like the mist I saw enveloping Saranda as my catamaran sped in from Greece, that first
day I arrived.
Info Box
Marcus Tanner went to Butrint on Petrakis Lines ferries. Price about 15 euros each way. Two sailings each way daily. Buy tickets directly at Corfu port for cheapest prices.
Butrint foundation: www.brutintfound.dial.pipex.com
Marcus stayed at Hotel Porto Eda www.portoeda.com rooms from 33 euros a night in low season to 50 euros in summer.
(BIRN)
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