Yes campers, we’re still wandering the world looking for new places to call (temporarily) home. And now we’re in Tirana Albania. What might be the verdict? No idea yet, but … so far so good. This could indeed be an oft-returned-to place! SUPPORT THE CHANNEL If you feel the love and want to support our efforts, please consider one of these options: UA-cam Membership: unplanned.life Patreon: www.patreon.com/rickhiggins Buy Me A Coffee: www.buymeacoffee.com/rickhiggins Venmo: venmo.com/u/thepiratewanderer Paypal: paypal.me/thepiratewanderer INFO Website: rickhiggins.com
Such a great video! I am happy that you enjoyed our country. Albania 🇦🇱 is amazing 🤩. Greetings 👋 Edit: Agriculture in Albania is still a significant sector of the economy of Albania, which contributes to 22.5% of the country's GDP. We have ocra and many fresh vegetables and fruits. The main agricultural products in the country are tobacco, figs, olives, wheat, maize, potatoes, vegetables, fruits, sugar beets, grapes, meat, honey, dairy products, and medicinal and aromatic plants. USA 🇺🇸 citizens can stay up to 1️⃣ year in Albania 🇦🇱 without a visa 👍🏼
And believe me, we want to stay! :-) I do have one question for you though. You said tobacco. I did read that and even asked a couple of shop owners about it. Apparently that doesn't extend to cigars? They all mentioned that cigars were all imported. I assume Albania's tobacco market is strictly cigarettes?
@@rickhiggins Hi! I’m glad you like Albania. 🙂 To answer your question: Albania had a real tobacco processing industry in the past and produced completely local cigarette packs, with modest packaging (1913-1991). Some Albanian cigarettes brand names were: Iliria, Tirana, Vore, Zana, Lluks, Diamant, Sport, Partizani, Butrinti, Skenderbeu, Teka, Tomorri, Kruja, Shkodra, Berati, Besnik, Arbër, Rozafa, Korabi, Valbona, Vjosa, Dimal, etc. We had several factories for cigarettes 🚬 processing throughout the country. For various reasons after the change of the system, after 1991, the tobacco processing industry in the country was destroyed. While today, Albania is one of the largest exporters of tobacco in Europe as a raw material and of a high quality. Albania ranks among the countries that consume more tobacco in Europe. All the best!
Calling Albania "eastern europe" is utterly ridiculous. Absolutely no connection whatsoever by any metric with eastern europe, except for that brief stint with communism back a generation and a half ago. Ridiculous.
Well, it is in Europe and it does lie to the East. LOL! Seriously, I'm not trying to inflame. But I am learning that titles matter greatly over here. I meant no insult. Having said that ... EuroVoc, a multilingual thesaurus maintained by the Publications Office of the European Union, classifies Bulgaria, Croatia, Czechia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia, plus the candidate countries Albania, North Macedonia and Serbia as Central and Eastern European.
Than you should add Greece as well to “eastern” right? I am surprised to your excellent positive energy and kindness. Stay well and have fun wherever you “both” are.
@@rickhiggins well, if want to be technical then we can say that Albania is positioned on SOUTH-Eastern Europe, and as the person above pointed out, its a big mistake to group Albania with Eastern European countries, it has no affinities either culturally or linguistically (as you will see for yourself). Albania is not, was not and will not be part of that group.
Njatjeta! There is no Serbian Orthodoxism in Albania. Thats a blunder :). Albanian Orthodoxism is Albanian, with its own church and has nothing to do with Serbian and doesn’t connect to it. Especially since these two peoples and Churches are not fond of each other. Albanian society is irreligious in overwhelming majority. One cannot mesh in religious identities to Albanian culture because our identity and culture is not influenced or shaped by religion at the core. There are religious communities that live in harmony with one another but religion is a personal matter and not a cultural or identity marker. Only the Abrahamic principle of "the Devine" is observed generally. That is what Albanians call “religion”, excluding the other numerous principles that together form it. In other words, Albanians see no difference between Islam and Christianity or any other belief as long as the main principle is the Devine or similar. And that's where it ends. We are a European people with its own unique culture and identity but would not see our ideals any different to any other European values and behaviours.
Thanks! The way its supposed to work is you only get one and overall I get to see how they each perform through the many. There are actually some questions here in creator-land if it's actually working ... which is why I'm running this personal test.
seems like albania doesnt exist on the internet…. cant find a single cycling, motorcycle, car club, fitness/bodybuilding or other albanian facebook group… also practically no cars bikes or bicycles on facebook market place in tirana or vlores… getting ready to come out there to vlore but this is putting me off already. and the no rideshare/taxi apps.
Yes campers, we’re still wandering the world looking for new places to call (temporarily) home. And now we’re in Tirana Albania. What might be the verdict? No idea yet, but … so far so good. This could indeed be an oft-returned-to place!
SUPPORT THE CHANNEL
If you feel the love and want to support our efforts, please consider one of these options:
UA-cam Membership: unplanned.life
Patreon: www.patreon.com/rickhiggins
Buy Me A Coffee: www.buymeacoffee.com/rickhiggins
Venmo: venmo.com/u/thepiratewanderer
Paypal: paypal.me/thepiratewanderer
INFO
Website: rickhiggins.com
I'm glad that I see a happy Rick, different from Ricky in Montenegro 😅. Enjoy Albania Rick! 🇦🇱 😊
Me too. Life's too short to be grumpy. :-)
Such a great video! I am happy that you enjoyed our country. Albania 🇦🇱 is amazing 🤩. Greetings 👋
Edit: Agriculture in Albania is still a significant sector of the economy of Albania, which contributes to 22.5% of the country's GDP. We have ocra and many fresh vegetables and fruits. The main agricultural products in the country are tobacco, figs, olives, wheat, maize, potatoes, vegetables, fruits, sugar beets, grapes, meat, honey, dairy products, and medicinal and aromatic plants.
USA 🇺🇸 citizens can stay up to 1️⃣ year in Albania 🇦🇱 without a visa 👍🏼
And believe me, we want to stay! :-)
I do have one question for you though. You said tobacco. I did read that and even asked a couple of shop owners about it. Apparently that doesn't extend to cigars? They all mentioned that cigars were all imported. I assume Albania's tobacco market is strictly cigarettes?
@@rickhiggins Hi! I’m glad you like Albania. 🙂 To answer your question: Albania had a real tobacco processing industry in the past and produced completely local cigarette packs, with modest packaging (1913-1991).
Some Albanian cigarettes brand names were: Iliria, Tirana, Vore, Zana, Lluks, Diamant, Sport, Partizani, Butrinti, Skenderbeu, Teka, Tomorri, Kruja, Shkodra, Berati, Besnik, Arbër, Rozafa, Korabi, Valbona, Vjosa, Dimal, etc.
We had several factories for cigarettes 🚬 processing throughout the country. For various reasons after the change of the system, after 1991, the tobacco processing industry in the country was destroyed.
While today, Albania is one of the largest exporters of tobacco in Europe as a raw material and of a high quality.
Albania ranks among the countries that consume more tobacco in Europe. All the best!
I saw the sunset. I would not have clicked on the "Was this a mistake" 😊
@11:00 There goes your Nikkie's custody!
Mine was “Is this a Mistake”. Honestly, I had to go back and check. I would have clicked on it because it was Rick and I like your channel.
Thanks ... for the feedback and for your support. (To be honest, that thumbnail might be my fav, but it still needs work).
Albania is south Europe or central Mediterranean ! Just small enough to understand that sometimes the secret is on logic things
I saw the sunset thumbnail but I like the one with the cute meerkat-type creature more!
And strangely (that was my favorite by the way) ... that one is in dead last in early results. Hmmmm
Curiosity. It's lunchtime, I work from home in Texas. You're cool.
I saw the pretty one with the sunset/palm trees. 🌴
Cool! Thanks! (And yea, we have foubnd palm trees here all throughout Eastern Europe. Who'd thunk?
Very nice
I saw the third one, but I have been watching your videos since your Camino, so I would have watched regardless.
Why thank you!
Calling Albania "eastern europe" is utterly ridiculous. Absolutely no connection whatsoever by any metric with eastern europe, except for that brief stint with communism back a generation and a half ago. Ridiculous.
Well, it is in Europe and it does lie to the East. LOL!
Seriously, I'm not trying to inflame. But I am learning that titles matter greatly over here. I meant no insult. Having said that ...
EuroVoc, a multilingual thesaurus maintained by the Publications Office of the European Union, classifies Bulgaria, Croatia, Czechia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia, plus the candidate countries Albania, North Macedonia and Serbia as Central and Eastern European.
Than you should add Greece as well to “eastern” right?
I am surprised to your excellent positive energy and kindness.
Stay well and have fun wherever you “both” are.
Balkan
@@rickhigginsit’s southeast Europe and doesn’t have anything to do with the slavs. Thank you
@@rickhiggins well, if want to be technical then we can say that Albania is positioned on SOUTH-Eastern Europe, and as the person above pointed out, its a big mistake to group Albania with Eastern European countries, it has no affinities either culturally or linguistically (as you will see for yourself). Albania is not, was not and will not be part of that group.
Njatjeta!
There is no Serbian Orthodoxism in Albania. Thats a blunder :).
Albanian Orthodoxism is Albanian, with its own church and has nothing to do with Serbian and doesn’t connect to it. Especially since these two peoples and Churches are not fond of each other.
Albanian society is irreligious in overwhelming majority. One cannot mesh in religious identities to Albanian culture because our identity and culture is not influenced or shaped by religion at the core.
There are religious communities that live in harmony with one another but religion is a personal matter and not a cultural or identity marker. Only the Abrahamic principle of "the Devine" is observed generally. That is what Albanians call “religion”, excluding the other numerous principles that together form it.
In other words, Albanians see no difference between Islam and Christianity or any other belief as long as the main principle is the Devine or similar. And that's where it ends.
We are a European people with its own unique culture and identity but would not see our ideals any different to any other European values and behaviours.
That drink didnt give me a buzz😂🎉
Maybe we should buy the bottle then. LOL!
Please inform yourself before making statements like that. There’s no serbian orthodox! 😉💀 It’s albanian Orthodox!
Apologies, I was actually quoting Wikipedia.
@@rickhiggins 🤔
that last sip should be called "don't try this at home".
Nikki asked me last night ... did you really drink all the vodka? (I murmured something random and vague I think)
Open up a painting and decorating business in the Pyramid 😎
I saw the third one, but it was the first one I saw.
Thanks! The way its supposed to work is you only get one and overall I get to see how they each perform through the many. There are actually some questions here in creator-land if it's actually working ... which is why I'm running this personal test.
seems like albania doesnt exist on the internet…. cant find a single cycling, motorcycle, car club, fitness/bodybuilding or other albanian facebook group… also practically no cars bikes or bicycles on facebook market place in tirana or vlores… getting ready to come out there to vlore but this is putting me off already. and the no rideshare/taxi apps.
Serbian Orthodox? Please don’t say that in front of any albanian.First is a lie and second is an insult.
I can only speak what I read, and that's what Wikipedia told me. If it and I are incorrect, I apologize.
@@rickhiggins Serbs became christians only in XI century AD, Albanians since the year 48 AD.....................