Dear Cherished Reader,
The more I travel, the more I am convinced that 98% of the people in this crazy old world are good, kind, and honest.
I would say 99%, but Fabi loves watching documentaries about serial killers and other horrible people while I’m sitting nearby (our house is under 500 square feet). Those shows tend to cast a shadow over my sunshine. Boo!
The good news is that mean, nasty people are just a tiny minority of the 8.3 billion of us.
Whoohoo!
Fabi and I just returned from nine days in Albania, and everyone we met there, except one, affirmed my Pollyannish opinion of humanity.
What a lovely country! The Albanian people are so sweet, and the countryside is beautiful and unspoiled. We had a great time and will definitely return.
And the one bad apple in the barrel?
Yeah, I’ll get to him later, but first, I want to share some scenes and stories from awesome Albania.
It’s what I see…
Honestly, before we went there, I don’t think I could have found Albania on a map of the world.
Baltic? No.
Balkan? Yes. I think that’s right.
Former Yugoslavia? Close, but no cigar!
Okay, so here’s the skinny. Albania is just north of Greece, with a coast on the Adriatic and Ionian Seas within the Mediterranean Sea.
One can be forgiven for overlooking little old Albania (yes, it is both little and old), as it was, for more than 40 years until the early 1990’s, locked in the grip of communism and not exactly a tourist destination. It is still shaking off the shackles of totalitarianism.
Every dark cloud has its silver lining, and Albania’s communist decades kept it from becoming overdeveloped, helping explain its old-world feel and largely rural landscape. As one friend put it — “Albania is like Europe was 40 years ago” — an apt description.
Only recently have green-eyed real estate developers begun erecting towering beachfront condominiums and sprawling resorts along the Ionian coast. You may have read that Donald Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, and her husband, Jared Kushner, plan to build a resort on one of Albania’s uninhabited islands, prompting massive protests in the country’s capital.
We generally avoided protests, the capital, and the coast, preferring instead to go deep into the countryside, where authentic Albania still thrives.
That turned out to be a good choice!
For hundreds of years, Albania was part of the Ottoman Empire, so Fabi and I were delighted to discover flavors of our beloved Türkiye, with just a dash of Greek and Italian thrown in for added spice. The food? Delish!
But as any Albanian worth his or her salt will tell you, Albania is 100% Albanian, with a long and storied history.
Albanians have a wonderful country, and we are happy to see them getting discovered.
Our wish for them is a future full of peace and prosperity.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the Bible’s definition of love, as written by the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 13. Here’s what he said:
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
The Apostle Paul
While I generally find his definition wonderful, I’m struggling with the part that says “love keeps no record of wrongs.”
How can that be? If you don’t know what’s wrong with yourself, your car, your oatmeal, or your country, then how can you hope to fix it? Maybe:
My oatmeal just needs a dash of salt.
My car needs a tune-up.
My country needs a tune-up!
I need a fresh point of view.
On the other hand, there’s something beautiful, perhaps even divine, about casting a blind eye toward the “wrongs” of the person or thing you love.
Faults? What faults? My baby is beautiful, and let nobody say otherwise.
But sometimes, they do.
“Your country is shieet! America is shieet,” the convenience store clerk cried when he learned I was from the United States.1
We had only been in Albania for an hour and had stopped to buy water.
“I see. Where in the U.S. have you been?” I asked.
He responded with a blank stare and then changed the subject.
Aha! I thought. Gotcha!
The young man had never set foot in the U.S.; he was just bleating out an opinion colored by second-hand information.
Ugh. How many of us make that mistake? I know I do, but I try to avoid doing so, as I find it leads to bad conclusions.
As a person who lives outside the U.S. and has friendships with many non-Americans, I am accustomed to occasional disparagement of the United States.
I usually accept these criticisms with good humor. Hell, a lot of the critiques are true!
But do I want to be one of those who jump on the “America is fucked” bandwagon, citing a long list of its wrongs as reason to be oikophobic?2
Or do I want to be one who says, “I come from a good country full of good people doing good things, just like you do. Please visit my country one day and decide for yourself.”
I hope you know who I choose to be. As I travel, I consider myself an American “ambassador of goodwill.” It is the most important thing I do as a traveler, and I cannot do it well unless I take it to heart.
You cannot love others until you first love yourself. Jesus said that, and Khalil Gibran understood.
And you cannot love another’s country until you first love your own.
Love grows from the inside out.
Next Saturday marks the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States of America. I am working through my feelings about my country, one I left six years ago, as I usually do, with pen in hand.
If I manage to reach some kind of agreement with myself, I’ll share my thoughts in the newsletter. If not, I’ll post something from the archives.
In the meantime, I’ll leave you with the opportunity to learn more about Albania via my 60-second video “shorts.” Here are a few of my favorites:
Fabi and I had heard about a remote warm spring in Albania’s back country, a stone’s throw from its border with Greece, and which required a good bit of effort to find. Thankfully, we were assisted by some very kind police officers who had an old but sturdy 4x4 vehicle. It was another adventure of a lifetime!
My favorite city in Albania is Gjirokastër, where we most enjoyed getting away from the touristy part and into the quieter parts of the old city. There we saw evidence of vampires!!! Not really, but we had fun with it.
Note that I modified one photo with AI, adding a spooky face to the bottom of a well.
I would have assumed all former communist bloc countries had a fear of the West, and especially the nuclear U.S., but it is not so. Fabi and I saw evidence of Albania’s communist era (60s to the 90s) paranoia and fear of the nuclear Soviet Union. It surprised me.
If you are jonesin’ for more video shorts, you’ll find them here.
That’s it for now. Fabi and I are heading out in a few days on another adventure, this time to the Faroe Islands.
So I’ll see you next time… on the road!
No, I never wimp out and say I’m Canadian when people ask where I’m from. I always proudly say: “I’m from Virginia in the United States, home of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson!”
For you word geeks: “Oikophobia,” from Greek oikos (”home/household”) + phobos (”fear”), is the aversion to or contempt for one’s own home, culture, or country. A more accurate word is “misоpatrism,” from Greek misos “hatred” + patris “fatherland/country.”
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