Albania: once and future glories

On a promontory high above the Vjose river valley, among olive trees and turban-topped Dervish graves, we came to the ruins of Byllis. We explored the city’s stout Roman walls, its agora, theatre and bathhouse, and pottered about the column-strewn foundations of late-antique basilicas. Glimpses of mosaic – a figure milking a goat, or feeding a hunting dog – hinted at the magnificent pavements beneath the protective covering of sand.

It might have frustrated us that – this being Albania – such mosaics could not be displayed for lack of funds. Even so, lunching at a nearby restaurant on pork chops sprinkled with oregano and washed down with a robust local wine, the overall feeling was exhilaration that we had the place – restaurant, view, archaeological site and even, it sometimes seemed, the entire oddball country – all to ourselves.

Albania’s abundant archaeology has been recognised since the likes of Lord Byron and Edward Lear discovered this atmospheric Balkan backwater in the 19th century. Even in the 1980s, with the country deep in communist isolation, Westerners holidaying on adjacent Greek Corfu returned bright-eyed and tantalised after day visits to the evocative coastal site at Butrint.

Trying to paint over the cracks

'We are a people without hope," said the taxi driver, fixing his eyes on the road that leads from Mother Teresa International Airport. The tarmac ended abruptly, and he buckled his seatbelt. That alone was enough to worry me. My first impressions of Albania were not encouraging.

Silhouetted by the setting sun, half-finished buildings littered the approaches to Tirana. I had time to study them, for we were weaving slowly in and out of a lunar landscape of potholes, tracking what seemed an infinite procession of Mercedes. As we passed through the shanty-like outskirts of the city, the denim-clad men on each corner raised their heads listlessly to scan the windows of the car. I looked away from them. The hotel minibar was stocked with strong cigarettes. I wasn't surprised.

By daylight, Tirana looked much less menacing, if no less dislocated in time. I set off down its main boulevard, built under Italian influence in the 1930s and now showing its age. Most of its cobbles were missing, and grass was growing through the concrete forecourt of the National Art Academy. A swirl of dust and pine needles blotted out the view of the mountains ringing the city, and people bent low, clutching their hats. Women carried parasols, protection against the fierce sun. None of the menfolk, I noticed, was wearing a tie or even a jacket. Communism may have gone, but egalitarian instincts are taking their time to die.

At the top of the street lay Skanderbeg Square, Tirana's focal point, a giant roundabout named for the 15th-century hero who had briefly stemmed the Ottomans' advance. The only surviving relic of the four centuries that the city was under Muslim rule is the mosque in a corner of the square. The attendant dozed as I looked at the frescoes inside, which show Tirana as a city of domes and minarets, all swept aside by the Stalinist architecture favoured by Enver Hoxha, who ruled Albania from 1945 until his death in 1985. His mausoleum, a cross between an Aztec pyramid and a spaceship, squats nearby. Almost the only other legacy of Ottoman dominance that I came across was when a man sardonically shouted the Turkish for "thank you" as a cigarette flew out of a window above our heads.

Durres - not Brighton, but breezier than Tirana

The elderly train from Tirana to the coast hooted self-importantly, as if trying to justify taking an hour to make a journey that can be driven in half the time. Still, I thought, looking out at a benign landscape of low hills and corn stooks, it's been a while since I paid 30 p for a train ticket.

In the fields, women in headscar ves - 70 per cent of the population is Muslim - were reaping by hand, using pony carts to carry the harvest. Behind them, the slopes were strewn with over-sized new villas painted in inappropriate colours. The streams we crossed were choked with plastic detritus. Some boys tugging at the branches of a mulberry tree broke off to wave, and we waved back.

As befits a seaside town, Durres has a breezier charm than Tirana, and a more notable history. Classical Dyrrachium was an important port in Roman times, and its large amphitheatre is a major draw, although I was more impressed by the neighbouring remains of its redoubtable city walls. Turning up the hill, I soon passed an ice cream-pink villa that had belonged to Albania's deposed monarch, King Zog, and found myself on a headland by a lighthouse from which I could see out over the wide bay at my feet, and all the way back to Tirana.

Though Albanians enthuse about its potential as a resort, Durres falls far short of the Croatian competition. The sand is greyish and coarse, the hotels are under-powered and the beachfront was almost deserted when I was there. Yet the sea is refreshing, as is the sense of priorities. As the train departed, another passenger appeared, and we reversed 100 yards to pick him up. You wouldn't see that at Brighton.

Albania: Stormin' Norman

Albania's lush countryside is an unlikely venue for a band to break into the big time. But when Norman Wisdom joined the tour, a hit song soon followed, writes Lucinda Labes

Sir Norman Wisdom, 87, tips his cap, dribbles the football across the pitch and trips over his feet. This is classic Wisdom material, a kickback to his years as Britain's top comedian. With one accord, the football fans in Albania's biggest stadium rise to their feet, stomping and cheering. For many in the auditorium, this is a déjà-vu moment; almost an exact replay of Wisdom's last performance in the country, when England played Albania in the qualifying rounds of the 2002 football World Cup. The match was gripping, the play fast, but when the diminutive comedian scuttled across the grass, he eclipsed every player on the field. Even David Beckham. Even Albania's David Beckham, whatever his name is.

It is the first time I have witnessed Albania's devotion to Norman Wisdom, known here as "Pitkin". The film star's popularity in this, the poorest country in Europe, beggars belief. Paradoxically, it was Enver Hoxha, Albania's Stalinist dictator, who made the British peformer into such a cult figure. For although the population was cut off from outside influences throughout the Cold War, in Hoxha's view, Wisdom's films, in which he plays an underdog in a series of battles against the strict Mr Grimsdale, were a fitting parable of Albania's own struggles against capitalism, and were thus deemed acceptable entertainment for the masses. The Albanians, in their turn, merely found Wisdom's antics hilarious.

Witnessing Wisdom's enduring popularity in Tirana is a relief as it is the basis on which my whole journey depends. I am here as a member of the Pitkins, a newly-formed backing band, set-up to support Wisdom on a one-off bid to top the Albanian pop charts. Considering that chart success in Albania is not determined by sales but by votes on the radio, this might seem a fruitless project. But this is no ordinary foray into the world of pop. For this single has only been put together to win a bet.

Drunk at a dinner party, British writer and broadcaster Tony Hawks bet pop impresario Simon Cowell that he could get a top-20 pop hit somewhere in the world. After trying his luck in Nashville, Sudan, Holland, Ireland and Romania, Hawks turned to Albania. With lyricist Sir Tim Rice writing the words, his daughter Eva and I on the backing vocals and Norman Wisdom as the lead, Hawks was all set to conquer the Albanian airwaves.

Thursday night
The trip begins fittingly enough. In Rinas airport, there are packs of wild dogs on the runway and a long entrance queue for foreigners. At the sight of Norman Wisdom, however, we are fast-tracked through to arrivals. We emerge into a rusting tinpot of an airport, with creaking Coca-Cola hoardings flapping beside open bins. Taxi drivers tout rides into town in their 30-year-old Mercedes. The vehicle I end up in has to be push-started.

London to Cape Town by bike: Battling through the Balkans

Arriving in Montenegro is like stumbling into a world in slow motion. Men dawdle in cafés and women saunter along the road nodding their heads, while kids hold out their hands lackadaisically to give us high fives as we pass.

In the Balkans, we are discovering, every conversation turns to politics. This evening, Mima, a glamorous young Serb on holiday with her sister, chatted to me about life in Serbia after Milosevic as we walked around Budva together. I asked her whether Montenegro should leave Yugoslavia. She tutted. "We have been together for years. Why do they want to leave now?" I gambled that the question was rhetorical. "But the most important thing," Mima broke the silence, "is that there is no more war."