Previously: 40 Years in Beer (Book II) Part 53: The birth of Samichlaus at Zürich’s classic Brauerei Hürlimann (1994).
Our flight from Zürich to Tirana got into the air, and I found myself strangely nervous, as if I’d finally be meeting a long-distance pen pal in person. What if we didn’t like each other’s looks?
The notion of Albania as an object of fascination began during a European history course in university, when it dawned on me that as modern nations go, it had appeared on the map very late in the game (1912).
In due course, having aligned myself with a band of malcontents, we launched an independent collegiate fraternity, declaring ourselves to be Albanian as opposed to Greek in recognition of the historic enmity between these two Balkan peoples.
My first glimpse of real-world Albania came in 1985. I was lounging on the deck of the ship traveling from Greece to Italy, eating gloriously oily tuna straight from the tin with a camp fork and washing it down with a can of...Read more
