The Albania Affair

to the old communist order. Watched over but unhindered by Mikhail

Gorbachev, the godfather of glasnost, Albania's East Bloc neighbours

have fallen one by one like dominoes.

In Czechoslovakia, the Prague spring so barbarously crushed by Russian

tanks looks set to blossom into democratic summer. In East Germany and

Bulgaria the former leaders of the old guard, Erich Honecker and Todor

Zhikov, face show trials after being steamrollered by the unstoppable

demand for reform. And in Romania the wheel of revolution turned fully

on the Ceausescus who were put up against a wall and shot. The country

then went one step further and outlawed the Communist Party.

But this path is not one that Tirana will follow, acording to recent

speeches by the Albanian leader Ramiz Alia. His country did not need

such ''Western'' reforms and would have no truck with them. (Albania in

fact broke with the Soviet Union in 1961 and China in 1977 and sees

herself as the only true communist State.)

As a steely symbol of this intransigence, a statue of Stalin stands

guard in the centre of Tirana, the capital, over an otherwise

discredited ideology. Yet in some small respects the country is opening

up: tourism, for so long shunned like a cancer, has been allowed to

quadruple over the past few years till Albania now lets in 20,000 a year

to see its social experiment. CAMERON SIMPSON travelled with the first

chartered package tour from Scotland. Here is his diary of a week spent

in the land that time forgot.

SUNDAY

THE McDonnell Douglas hovers at 31,000ft, ready to swoop down on the

Republika Popullore Socialiste e Shqiperise, the land of the eagles,

with its mini Scots invasion on the inaugural flight from Edinburgh. The

big bird dips its beak and we are soon bumping along the runway (a

ploughed field would be a better description, says the captain) of the

military airport half-an-hour's hair-raising drive from Tirana.

We are shepherded along by dark-skinned men in olive green uniforms,

machine guns slung casually, designer style, from the shoulder, and yes,

incredibly, a real shepherd who is trying manfully to keep a rather

large flock of frisky sheep from straying under the plane's wheels.

Animals, as we are to discover, play a large part in Albanian life.

We disembark and march towards a dilapidated building that passes for

the terminal where we are taken five at a time to have our luggage

searched for bibles and other such seditious literature before passing

through to our buses and into the hands of our respective guides. So

begins the Albanian Affair.

Our two guides, both English teachers with an impeccable grasp of the

language, are Astrit and Lida. Astrit, we are to deduce later, is the

card-carrying member of the duo, the political commissar. I sit next to

him as we head off for Tirana in the growing dusk. ''What do you do?''

he asks. ''I'm a designer,'' I reply somewhat uneasily. I have been

economical with the truth on the visa form because, from all that you

are told, journalists are not welcome in Albania.

''What do you design?''

''Magazines and newspapers,'' I mumble. Astrit immediately launches

into a blistering dialogue with the other courier. God, I think, in this

atheist country, I've been rumbled already.

But no more is said and we settle into a pregnant silence that

threatens to give birth to all sorts of terrors. Four days later, tired

and emotional having accidentally swallowed two bottles of Albanian red

and some Raki (tractor fuel) I confess. ''Astrit, I'm a journalist.''

''But, my friend, I suspected as much. But it is OK. We here in Albania

welcome journalists.'' Visions of prison begin to fade.

''No foreigner has ever been put in an Albanian jail,'' says Astrit.

My fears are stillborn. I refrain, however, from mentioning the case of

John Biffen who was thrown into a police cell in the bad old days for

wearing shorts in Tirana.

MONDAY

TIRANA, 8am: the scene from the eleventh-floor hotel window as we look

down on the main square is like a Lowry painting. Matchstick figures,

hundreds of them, scurry hither and thither to work. No cars and only

the occasional bus are to be seen. It is the AA man's waking nightmare

-- private cars are banned under the constitution; there are few taxis

and only a few cars which businesses and public ministeries are allowed

to use. This means that every conceivable form of transport is pressed

into action on the battlefield (that is what the roads are like) --

lorries, bikes, donkeys, horses, horse and carts, bullock carts, and

shank's pony.

Our trip to Tirana the previous night had been like riding the ghost

train. You are driving along in the pitch black when suddenly two

cyclists, no lights, appear practically under the wheels of the bus. The

driver swerves violently, but seems unconcerned. The cyclists are small

beer compared with an ox cart packed with Sunday night revellers. We

manage to shave the cart at the very last second. The pattern repeats

itself all the way to Tirana.

TUESDAY

BERAT -- Gjirokaster. We have what is the trip's most bizarre

breakfast -- two fried eggs and goat's cheese (fetta), ersatz coffee

(left over from the war and not reheated), and bread with more than a

hint of sawdust. Fetta is everywhere. A salty cheese it pervades the

country, following you around like the Sigurimi, the secret police,

although somewhat more deadly. Like most thing the food gets better the

further south you travel, i.e. nearer the Greek influence.

While food in the north tends to be cold canteen stodge, we are to

dine like kings on fish soup, fresh sea trout and salad, and fresh

fruit, in an orange grove in Ksamil, within sight of Corfu. Ksamil is

the only place in the country without a graveyard; it was founded 20

years ago by young pioneers and still has to suffer its first death.

Breakfast gets better, too, with cold spicy sausage, cheesy omelettes,

and golden honey and delicious bread. But you would be well advised to

pop a few tea bags into the luggage because home-grown Albanian tea

bears little resemblance to Brooke Bond, although it does taste as if it

has been made by a bunch of chimps.

WEDNESDAY

SERANDER. Another success, another single room. Do not be put off by

the guide books which say they are not available. Sometimes, however,

you may have to share with someone in your party (party travel is as yet

the only way to visit the country; only businessmen are allowed

independent travel). Although the number of tourists has gone up to

20,000 in recent years this is likely to increase to only 23,000 where

it is intended that it will peak.

While the curtain is going up and the lights coming on all over

Eastern Europe, Albania foresees no real change in its unaligned,

isolationist policy. So there will be no high rise hotels, fish and

chips, and Watney's Red Barrel that have seen the haemorrhaging of so

many other European cultures.

Like everything else, hotel standards vary immensely too. In Berat the

plaster was hanging off the walls, it was damp, the light was all of 10

watts, there was no plug in the basin, and the toilets were dirty and

terribly smelly. On the other side of the coin you can strike it lucky

-- in Serander rooms had balconies and sea views, radios, showers,

running hot water, and were spotless.

THURSDAY

EVERY morning we get a talk on the bus -- agriculture, industry,

education, 20 things you wanted to know about a tractor factory but were

too scared to ask. But it is hard not to feel a welling sense of

admiration for Albania's achievements. The beggar of Europe after the

Second World War, it has undergone a radical transformation from a

country that was plagued by malaria, had an average life expectancy of

32, and was 90% illiterate. Today, illiteracy has been eradicated, as

has malaria, and life expectancy has rocketed to 72.

The country has no foreign debt and produces all its own food to feed

the population and its xenophobic paranoia. The average salary is #80 a

month with the highest earners taking home #140. (The highest earners,

by the way, are face-working miners, who retire at 40 on 80% pension.)

Women retire at 55 and men at 60.

FRIDAY

WE are bowling along the road, knocking stray Albanians for six, to

visit some more ruins (the trip is called Classical Albania, but our cup

runneth over by this time) when a fellow passenger becomes ill. The

couriers confer and decide to take no chances. We are off to hospital.

Jaffa our driver, so called one presumes because he is small, fat, and

round like an orange, turns the bus round with an evil glint in his eye

and heads back to town at 60mph on a road built for a sedate cart. They

are still scraping them off the road and digging them out of the

ditches. It strikes me that we may have a sick passenger but the way we

are belting along this densely packed road will leave a casualty ward

full for a month.

Jaffa bounces up and down in his seat -- ''no problem,'' he says. It

is his two words of English. Somehow you feel he has not quite grasped

their true meaning.

Fortunately we have a retired surgeon on board who accompanies the

patient to hospital. She makes a spirited recovery after seeing the

facilities on offer -- medieval, says the surgeon.

It is now time for our Albanian joke. A driver and priest die and go

to heaven. The driver is the first to get an audience with God. This

infuriates the priest and he later vents his anger on the Almighty. But

the driver is far more important in God's eyes. While you went about

your work in church, God tells the priest, everyone nodded off to sleep.

But while the driver got behind his wheel, everyone sent up a prayer to

heaven.

SATURDAY

WE are back in Tirana and it is time to go shopping for presents.

Tirana is every husband's dream -- a place where you can give the wife

the cheque book with equanimity in the knowledge that she will return

frustrated five hours later having been unable to purchase virtually

anything. Even the hard currency shops in the hotels have little you

would wish to take home. I did notice one snip though, a blank video

cassette at #24, yes #24! Perhaps this gives you an idea of what else

was on offer.

SUNDAY

IT is time to leave -- time to go back to the future, from this

intensively agricultural past. (Every scrap of land is under

cultivation, giving the country the air of Aberdeenshire in the 1920s).

We have made many friends and have been treated with courtesy and good

mannered curiosity. We may not have diplomatic relations with Tirana but

we feel we have gone a long way to cementing more important ties.

Diplomacy has its place but real friendship is what counts.

What we might find if we were to return this time next week or next

year is anyone's guess. According to King Leka, the exiled pretender to

the throne of Albania, the situation in his country is similar to that

of Romania ''only there is a much higher level of bitterness and fear.''

It is hard of course to make any kind of realistic or objective

judgment about a country as mysterious as Albania. But the abiding

impression left is that it may take years before the children of the

poor man of Europe reach any semblance of political or economic

awareness that might lead to an outcry for reform. Albania really is in

many respects the land that time forgot and until time catches up with

it it is hard to see it going the way of its neighbours.

South-African based King Leka says his Government-in-exile plans to

start radio broadcasts to the tiny Balkan State to prepare for an

uprising against the Government. ''I don't expect an immediate response

from the people. I'm more interested in preparing the ground for the

next three years or so,'' he said recently. Only time will tell.

Farewell Astrit and Lida -- till we meet again, in whatever

circumstances.