Alright, so the third and final post in this Albanian trilogy and I still haven't got around to making any really helpful comments about the place. I'd be a terrible travel writer, "Yeah, well, I don't know about hotels or attractions, but when I arrived in the country there was a fire at the side of the road! Wo-oah, talk about bad impressions". Whatever. I have a theory about travel writing and it goes something like this: It's a waste of time. Well, a waste of time with caveats. I mean it's a waste of time if your hope is to try and educate and inform your readers about what they should do. It's alright if you're doing it to entertain or make some money or tell witty stories (but I guess that's entertain) but as a form of writing that says "Hey you should this!" then it's fairly useless. Just because you had a fun experience trying out the Nordic baths of Huyskick does not mean anyone else will. Oh, I suppose travel guides are alright when it's all facts and no narrative, it's just the travel writing itself is useless for that purpose. The point of all this, where this is going, is that for me to sit here and try and tell you what to visit about Albania is nonsensical, I mean I was there for four days. Also for me to try and pass social comment on the place is like me passing social comment on the internet after using it for only four days. "There's loads of underlined stuff, and also, I found it hard to see the point in it all, it was rather like someone's arteries, in that I'm sure they had useful things in them, but I couldn't see it. Well, maybe not arteries, because they're red and visible, maybe more neural pathways. Sure, that's it."
So what I'll instead try to finish with is a few observations that all should read as commencing thusly; "bearing in mind that I was there for four days, didn't leave the capital for more than an hour or so, can't speak a word of the language and don't know anything, this really funny thing happened to me." I'll probably come to those few observations later though as now I don't have time. I guess the first sentence wasn't strictly true then.
This is a website by Mark Walley. If you want to find out more or get in touch, that'd be nice.
Getting around this website can be a tad confusing. If you're looking to explore the better stuff of what I've written then this navigation should help you. If you're after a specific post then searching or looking through the archives chronologically may help.
This site tries its best to be accessible for everyone. Atom, and RSS feeds are available. All content licensed through a creative commons licence. I may have stolen ideas off you when you weren't looking, but it was almost certainly an accident. As with all claims of originality and ownership Psalm 24 v1 applies.
abu sparky
You are too honest to make a travel writer. They, of course, are total experts after four days.