A day trip to Tirana, the worst capital city in the Balkans.

This time around in the Balkans, I visited Croatia, Montenegro, Kosovo, Albania, North Macedonia, Greece, and Türkiye. We traveled all the way south from Montenegro and took a bus to Tirana, the capital of Albania. The original plan was to drive for 5 hours, but due to traffic jams and border checks, it took a full 7 hours. Usually bus stations are in the city center, but the bus station in Tirana is very far away. It takes half an hour to take the bus to the city center, which is really inconvenient. This forced us to take the bus and exchange currency first. The Albanian currency, Lek, has an exchange rate of 10:1 with the Euro. It costs 40Lek to take the bus. You don't need to buy tickets in advance. There are special ticket sellers walking around in the car and buying tickets from everyone. However, a bad thing happened on the bus, which made me lose all my good impression of this country... Tirana is the largest city in Albania, but it is more like a small county town in China. Some buildings left over from the communist era can be seen on the streets. There is a white staircase-shaped building in the city center, which is actually called the Pyramid. What’s interesting is that there are yellow taxis here that are exactly the same as those in Chongqing, which instantly made me feel like I had traveled back home, hahaha. But to be honest, Tirana itself doesn’t have many attractions worth seeing, and there’s nothing special about the city. Many people recommended another seaside city, Saranda, but we didn’t go there because it was too far away. However, we had a feast in Tirana, as cherries were only 10 yuan per pound! Cherry freedom finally achieved! ! We also had an authentic Albanian meal and ordered a lot of dishes for 23 euros. The prices are much lower outside the Schengen area! There’s truffle chicken risotto, Albanian beef stew with bread, chargrilled pork neck, Kosovan sausage and homemade meatloaf. The restaurant is called Zgara e Tironës 2 and it’s super delicious! The meal was really satisfying! Later we went to Skopje, the capital of North Macedonia. Compared to Tirana, this place looks more modern. There are many statues and monuments here, especially the stone bridges and ancient city walls, which give the city a strong historical and cultural atmosphere and make it very comfortable to stroll around the ancient city. We also spent a day wandering around Pristina, the capital of Kosovo. Although Pristina is not large in scale, it has a more modern atmosphere than Tirana. I was impressed by the youthful atmosphere here, full of cafes and art venues, and you can feel the vitality of the city.