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So me and my wife have just come back from a 5 night trip in Albania, Berat and Tirana. And whilst I didn’t have super high expectations, as I know there isn’t LOADS to do in those cities, everything I had heard about Albania was positive. Especially the friendliness and how welcoming locals are…
Now reflecting on our trip, we both noted the same thing , how UN friendly so many people were to us. Especially in Berat, it came across as if we was bothering every shop keeper or street food vendor. Ask somebody “what filling is in this burek” or ask what price x y item is, and the faces and tone of voice was if we’d just insulted their mother.
In an antique shop I was flicking through a collection of old banknotes (i collect them) for like 1 and a half minutes, and had the owner angrily come up to me “ARE YOU FINISHED!?!”. So i Politely asked him how much he was selling them for, and he replies “10,20,30 Euros, everyone different! Its collectables not a toy!!” When I have literally bought the same old crappy 1000 italian millie and 10000 turkish lira notes for 3 for €1 in other places. The same owner was also rude to another client who asked if he could take a camera out its case.
This was pretty much repeated throughout the trip. And I’l say now, the locals we stopped and asked for directions etc were overwhelming kind and helpful. But god damn, show owners, food sellers and bus ticket collectors were so miserable and rude.
Now after the trip I went to to ask a W related to something we noticed in the trip, (the total lack of couples / hand holding or even guys and girls sitting together in restaurants), which me and my wife couldn’t make sense of. And was bombarded with angry responses of how I am stuck in a Western European bubble blah blah.
But no, my wife is a Palestinian Gazan, and I am a European. Muslim revert, so no I can assure everybody I am not coming from this at a “western bunble” perspective. Infarct have travelled in Jordan, Eastern Kurdish areas Turkey, Cairo and similar places with zero issues with rudeness etc. infact I’ve been to 25 countries, the only place I experienced ruder locals was Belgrade…
So the responses unfortunately seemed to support what we felt on the trip , that generally locals seemed to have a very low anger threshold, and the inconvenience of a tourist entering their shop would cause them to be very rude.
Following me explaining this, one of the commentators commented it was probably our “Muslim ego”. So without much else evidence, the fact that everybody else seems to have had a great time in Albania with friendly locals being a top point, maybe it was the fact my wife was Arab that people didn’t like?
Did anybody else return from Albania feeling like this?
![r/analog - Accursed Mountains, Albania. [Xpan 45mm, exp. Kodak Provia 100F]](http://web.archive.org./web/20240924045756im_/https://i.redd.it/uxec9o208hfb1.jpg)
