In 2007 there were a few functioning train journeys in Albania. I did a couple including the one from the capital to the coastal city of Durres.
Sadly nowadays trains in Albania are either not running or extremely limited. On my last visit in 2017 there were none.
The going was extremely slow – an average speed of 35 k/mh in fact. We left from the now demolished Tirana Train Station. It fell into disuse about a decade ago with plans to build a new station in the suburbs alongside a flashy new bus terminal. This has of course never happened.
With the train moving so slowly we were overtaken by cyclists on occasions, whilst the carriages were often moving targets for stone throwing kids, as evidenced by the majority of the train windows being cracked.
The seats were rock hard but the excitement of being on a train in Albania meant we could not have cared less.
I sported my Norman Wisdom t-shirt as a conversation piece – he was a national icon for older generation Albanian’s starved of western culture by former dictator Enver Hoxha.
Norman was deemed to be safe enough not to corrupt Albanian minds. Happily my ploy worked as I struck up a conversation with an elderly chap who had learned English in his fifties. He was now learning French and we ended up having an impromptu French vocabulary quiz which he won!
I published a book chronicalling all my train journeys in the Balkan Region that you can purchase from Amazon.
