Obsessions can be of lasting duration, as with my history of 47 pilgrimages to the European continent since 1985, or they can be more self-contained, like our three journeys in the past 13 months, all to vicinities on or near the Mediterranean and Adriatic Seas.
- #45 Feb. 2024 Nice, France
- #46 Nov. 2024 Split, Croatia
- #47 Feb. 2025 Skopje and Ohrid (North Macedonia); Tirana, Albania; and Budva and Kotor in Montenegro
Traveling has always provided me with the mental conditioning necessary to subsist amid countrymen with whom I’m often radically at odds, a topic to be treated elsewhere in greater depth.
In an academic sense, Europe is the great love of my life, and that’s just the way it has been for me since I was in my early twenties. Being anywhere in Europe is a spiritual exercise for me, and as close to a religious feeling as I’m ever likely to experience.
This year’s opening excursion was no exception, functioning as an exercise in the metaphorical closing of circles. Skopje and Ohrid are places I first visited in 1987, when they were part of the ill-fated nation of Yugoslavia, and during the same year I’d have continued to Albania if allowed. But at the time Albania was Europe’s North Korea, and setting foot there had to wait until 1994.
- Hip Hops: New Albanians on a beer holiday in Old Albania (1994)
- Edibles & Potables: 31 years of Albanian cuisine (1994 to 2025)
- Edibles & Potables: Might there be Cincinnati-style chili in the North Macedonian homeland?
- Hip Hops: Pivo in Skopje with the greatest seismologist of them all (1987)
Obviously the passing of three or more decades served to heighten my fascination with how much these areas had changed (noting that it was the first time I’ve been to Montenegro).
Tirana in 1994 was in recovery from hardcore communism, notable for a village-like atmosphere. No longer, and while Albania’s capital city still doesn’t feel mainstream European, it is a thousand times shiner and more modern, and bears a pulse all its own. Among the other lessons learned was the fact that Tirana’s airport absolutely rocks at 4:00 a.m.
The countryside has catching up to do, and yet Albania is wealthier than it’s ever been, even while remaining the poorest country in Europe (annual incomes for ordinary people are around $10,000).
In 1987, Skopje (now independent North Macedonia) was similarly bucolic, a provincial outpost marked by weird brutalist architecture in the center and rows of...Read more
