Saturday, April 12, 2008

Albania ~ A New Mediterranean LOVE!

Yippeeeeeee! Finally Albania is advertising itself on CNN as a Mediterranean Tourist Spot! I couldn't agree more. Yes there are hurdles to overcome (difficult roads, unappetizing breakfasts etc), but for an adventurous traveller it is an awesome place to visit. Don't expect it to be Croatia, or Crete. It is was it is at this moment. Raw, open, curious, and truly magnificent!

Here are the three (too short) commercials:







Could an Albanian translate what they are singing at the end for us please?

9 comments:

Andrea said...

My husband says it's:

Sot u beme me fat, which he translates as "today, we got lucky" or maybe "today, we are lucky".

Alison said...

Wow! They worked for me :) I'd go in a heartbeat!

olli said...

Hi Kim. Like the new look of the site. Thanks for finding these - they look good. I see they cleaned up before filming.

Loved the Berisha interview. Never heard him speaking in English before. Liked his namedropping of President Bush. Also noticed that the longer the interview went on the more the old communist hand chopping appeared.

Still, good for him for doing it and good on the BBC for asking him.

We leave here in five days for Munich. As soon as we are online I'll be back with a new blog.

Simon Varwell said...

Wow. What a beautiful place. As far as I know a lot of the "old stuff" (Roman etc) is in the south of the country and I've never been down there.

I am finding it very difficult not booking my tickets every time I read your blog!

Miss Kim said...

Simon we have an extra room for you if you ever want to come for a visit!

Judith in Umbria said...

Ok, I was inspired by you, I can't see videos here in modern Italy-- so I searched on tourism Albania.
Good looking site but needs help.

Click on accommodations and you get a list of cities of which you have heard of ONE. OK, click on Tirana and a list of hotels comes up all described by how many minutes they are from the airport. I am a tourist. I do not want to see the airport.

By going to my favorite spot to visit in Italy I can jump a boat to Albania, but I still can't figure out what I should see or where I should stay! Maybe they need to show some itineraries?

Anyway, I recognized that Albania is the coastline that was important to the escape of one of my heroes of the ancient world.
Judith in Umbria

james said...

Yay. Good lookin tourism promotion. Avash avash they say. I particularly like the spots featuring Berat but I may be partial :)

I recently got to see some nice brochures of suggested itineraries for the Albanian coast. They can be found here http://www.mtkrs.gov.al/
under this link
"11 Itineraret e Rivieres Shqiptare"

liburne said...

At the end of the song they say:
"sot u beme me fat". The word-per-word translation is "today we became with destiny/luck". It means "today our destiny was fulfilled. sth important happened to us today. we got married(it sounds like wedding music),or we traveled or we discovered something"
The first spot is aimed at young buddies travelling together on cars or bikes looking for adventures.
The second one is aimed at couples.
The third at culture lovers, upper generations and families.

Unappetazing breakfasts? What do you mean? I'm really sorry if you had bad experiences. It is true you will not get brioches for breakfast, but you will get either
-jam, butter, bread, milk, tea
or-eggs, feta cheese, bread, milk tea
What were your experiences? Do you have suggestions?

liburne said...

There are Roman, Illyrian, GReek, and prehistoric ruins everywhere in Albania. The south was lucky to be founded by the Rothchilds. A couple a months ago Roman times castle/fortess walls were discovered near Millenium cinema during road contructions. I grew up 10 meters from an early Christian Roman church. My room's window had a view of the mosaic floor, wich they keep covered with sand.
There are so many archeological sites throught Albania. What are needed are more funds and personnel. In Greece they are founded by EU and mostly US for excavations. I'm not directly comparing Albania to GReece, but there are a lot more hidden treasures in Albania and the rest of the Balkans.
Traveller One, why don't you volunteer with the archeological teams for a while and see if you like it?
The teams are made of Albanians and lots of foreigners. Maybe you'll enjoy it!!!