Beauty Without the Noise

Albania wasn't really a place I had grown up dreaming about.

- writes Vinod K

It was not like Paris with its postcards, or Italy with its cinematic memory implanted by films. Albania was a curiosity, a whisper I had heard from a social media influencer who swore it was the most beautiful place no one talked about. That idea stuck somewhere in my head, and one day, while looking for flights without a real plan, I saw Tirana appear on the screen as if the country itself had tapped my shoulder and said, “So, shall we begin?”Landing in Tirana felt like arriving in a stranger's living room—comfortable, yet unfamiliar. The airport was small, nothing dramatic, but there was warmth. A slight chaos. A familiarity that somehow reminded me of home. My cab driver, who introduced himself only as “Ardi, friend,” spoke with that earnest enthusiasm that people from proud countries wear like a badge. “We were closed for so long,” he said, sweeping his hand theatrically at the city ahead as if revealing a secret painting, “now the world is coming to see us, finally.” It was not arrogance. It was longing finally met with recognition.

Tirana itself is a strange, delightful, layered city. Buildings painted in bright oranges, pinks, blues—colours you'd normally see in a child’s drawing book, not on government structures. The scars of its communist history are still there, stubborn and silent, but someone decided to soften them with paint and cafés and music. I walked through Skanderbeg Square with the hum of the city in my ears. Families walked slowly, kids ran ahead of their parents, and people sat at outdoor coffee tables as if time had slowed slightly just to watch them breathe. Albanians take their coffee seriously—almost spiritually. One afternoon, I sat at a café with a view of the mountains faintly visible beyond the city skyline and thought, “This feels like Europe and something entirely different at the same time.”