1st impressions of Tirana, Albania!

I’m ready to share my 1st impressions of Tirana, Albania, after 30 hours in the country. I also try my 1st Albanian pastry and show you around the country’s capital. Spoiler alert: I love it!

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Chapter Breakdown
0:00 – Welcome to Albania
0:30 – Albanian pastry
0:43 – Green Tirana
0:59 – The people
1:18 – Prices
1:38 – Weather / Parks
2:17 – COVID situation
2:43 – Walking / Biking
2:59 – Religion
3:25 – Tirana is HIP
4:08 – Language
5:16 – Nicki’s Channel

I’m Art at Gringo Nation! Thanks for watching! 😎

#TiranaVlog #AlbaniaVlog #TiranaAlbania

It’s a new day in a new country welcome to tirana in albania I’ve been in tidana albania for about 30 hours now so i thought it’d be cool to give you my first impressions of this city and country i’m staying at an airbnb nearby so i actually live right up these stairs that’s my window there and down this street

Is the supermarket it’s literally a one minute walk away and i just bought my first albanian pastry this is called pispile i’ve never tried it before i think there’s like spinach and cheese so creamy albania is starting pretty well with the pastry game i’m in skanderberg square which seems to

Be the main square here in tirana and one of the first things i’ve noticed is that albania is pretty green you can see a lot of new buildings coming up it seems like in a few years tirana is going to be kind of hustling and bustling but for now at least there

Are some parks in the proximity of my airbnb one of the first things i noticed about albanians actually is that at least so far they’ve been quite nice to me the lady at immigration was nicer than most my host in aldo is a very nice guy he went and picked me up

At the airport and yesterday i went out and got a sim card and the vendor was actually quite nice to me another thing i’ve noticed so far is that things have been reasonably cheap that sim card cost me about 15 dollars for like a three month contract i did my first grocery shop

Yesterday that cost me about thirty five dollars and it aldo my host charged me about 12 euros to pick me up at the airport which i thought was a great deal the weather here in tirana has been pretty good it’s 8 30 a.m right now and it’s 22 degrees

So it has been quite sunny and hot although yesterday there was quite a storm it even hailed a little but for the most part during the day you can enjoy the sun so we are now at iodopa park which is just next to skanderburg square and it looks like there’s another part

Just a short walk down the road so we’re gonna go check it out and i’ll tell you a little more about tidal we’re arriving now at park renia which is actually much bigger than the park where we were at previously another thing i’ve noticed about tirana albania

No one is wearing masks of course that’s probably due to the low numbers of covid that they have here i’m still quite confused with the whole situation so i probably will be wearing a mask indoors i actually wore one at the supermarket yesterday because coming from turkey

It felt too weird not to summer is coming here in albania and they’re pretty much accepting people from all over the world so you just never know something pretty awesome that i’ve noticed about tirana is that it is actually quite walkable it’s very flat so you can get to places really easily

And they seem to have a lot of bike lanes and i’ve seen a lot of bike riders around town so it’s a very bike friendly city albania is a very tolerant country in terms of religion so they do have islam they have christianity and some other religions that means that i have

Somewhat escaped the call to prayer but not really coming from turkey it seems to be more moderate here maybe there are less mosques i haven’t heard it be as loud as it was in turkey where they seem to have one in every neighborhood it doesn’t

Exactly wake me up at 5 00 am it was a pretty good upgrade Another thing that i’m actually quite happy about here in tirana is that it seems to have some pretty hip spots my airbnb is not far away from a neighborhood called buloku where it seems that all the youth hang out on the weekends i’m not exactly youth but i hope they’ll have me anyways

And now we’re actually going to walk there for the first time seems like hygge is street which is easy for me to remember because it’s like in portuguese another thing i’ve noticed about albania is that the streets are actually quite clean Is actually quite hip on my short walk i saw tons of cafes gelaterias and restaurants there’s one just behind me there with the italian flag that’s something i want to mention as well most of the people here have quite a good understanding of the italian language

My host ed aldo was telling me that when he was a kid he would wash dragon ball z through like satellite and that would come from italy so he learned how to speak italian with italian dragon ball z that’s pretty cool it seems that the english language is more

Understood widely here in albania than in turkey which actually makes me feel a little more comfortable i will try to learn as much albanian as possible of course and maybe even brush up on my italian Another thing that i forgot to mention is that when my airbnb host picked me up at the airport he told me i’m gonna give you one tip you gotta cut that hair man people are gonna judge you because you look like a dirty hippie all the albanian men like to have really

Tight cuts let them judge it’s taken too long to grow this baby out sorry albania you just have to put up with it another thing that i’ve noticed while being here in albania of course it has nothing to do with the country itself is that i am traveling solo again bear with me

While i get a hang of this selfie mode again nikki helped me make these videos in the past year and i’m so grateful to her for that for now we have parted ways and she has gone back to the us her travels will continue so if you want to see what she

Is up to just click on the link that’s on your screen that’ll take you to her channel called nikki post travel stuff and nikki will see you over there in three two one