Albania Zone Sortie - Tirana bound

The first leg of our February trip to Albania saw us drive from the Black Sea coast in Bulgaria to the Macedonian town of Struga at the northern end of Lake Ohrid.

Having spent the night in Struga we rose nice and early and had a hearty Macedonian breakfast before making our way to the Albania border crossing point some 20km to the south west.

The road to Albania and border crossing

The road from Struga to the Albanian border saw us drive progressively up hill as we headed into the mountains. As we got higher patches of snow and ice started to appear along the roadside and the temperature had dropped quite noticeably.

Thankfully I was not the registered driver of the car and so on reaching the border it was one of my colleagues that had to get out and experience the freezing Macedonian and Albanian mountain air and not I.

Getting into Albania from Macedonia by land is a three stage process:

1. Firstly you have to get out of Macedonia which involves passing through the Macedonian border check point.
2. You make the short trip across what I guess is no-mans land.
3. Pass through the Albanian border check point and into Albania.

Surprisingly this did not take very long but that may well have been due to the fact it was early and there were very few other people crossing at the same time as us.

Both the Macedonian and Albanian border police were very interested to see the relevant paperwork for the car we were taking into Albania and the Albanians also had a rustle through the contents of the car boot. Fortunately we had come to Albania well prepared with all of the relevant vehicle documentation and so did not encounter any problem with the border police. If you are driving by car to Albania make sure you know what documentation you need as you may come unstuck without it.

Regular Border Taxes and an unusual Coffee Tax?

Now this is one area that we were a little confused (though pleasantly surprised). On entering Albanian you are supposed to pay a €10 entry tax per person. However we were only charged €9 in total for three people which as you can imagine we were not complaining about.

What we did have to pay that we were not expecting though was €5 to one of the Albanian policemen for as he put it “Coffee, Coffee, five euro“. Though I suspect this is not an official tax being levied we thought it prudent to pay it as we still had to negotiate one last barrier to get into Albania and you can guess who was in charge of the raise/lower barrier button.

The net position on border taxes was that we should have paid €30 but had only paid €14. As we left the border checkpoint and headed down the mountain road in the direction of Tirana, we could not help but reflect that having only been in Albania for 15 minutes we had already encountered our first Albanian bargain.