What to do when you arrive in Albania?
At the airport
An airport is rarely the end of your journey, because that’s where your adventures in a new and perhaps foreign country begin. You’ve probably been making travel plans and doing map exercises on your couch with your laptop in your lap.
At the airport, your plans become concrete and you look around with curiosity and a little flutter of excitement in the pit of your stomach. You hear foreign languages all around you, the most common of which is Shqip, or Albanian. It is a language that is hard to find anything familiar in. It doesn’t even really resemble any other language. Sure, you might recognise some familiar words, but familiar words don’t mean what you think they mean. For example, yoo means no and ura means river, to name a few.
Entry documents
Be prepared to show at least your passport as your entry documents. Remember that you can bring in up to €10 000 without customs clearance.
Little hungry..
For a quick snack, Tirana airport is an easy place to buy delicious byrek pies filled with cheese, spinach, minced meat or vegetables, for example. It’s worth taking the liberty of trying other café delicacies, as you can rarely go wrong.
Currency
You will need cash in Albania, so it’s a good idea to exchange small change at the airport. At the airport, exchange fees may be higher than elsewhere along the way. It is easy to find currency exchange offices in every city. You can also pay in euros in many places, but it is usually cheaper to use local currency. You can pay by debit card in clothes shops and grocery stores. In restaurants you will usually need cash. If you are travelling in a rental car, there are no credit card machines in Albania. All petrol stations are service stations where you pay cash directly to the attendant.
Telephone access
The next thing on the agenda is often the purchase of a phone line. One of the easiest options is, of course, to upgrade to a Finnish subscription with reissunet, where you can usually get 1 or 2 gigs of internet for just over two dozen euros. Here’s a link to the options from Elisa, Telia or DNA.
If you want a bit more of a challenge, you can buy a local phone line. Of course, you will have to insert a new card into your phone, but e-sim options are also available.
Subscription sellers usually speak English, so you don’t need to learn Albanian to buy a subscription. There are at least two operators in Albania with some differences in their subscriptions and it is worth asking for offers. You can get considerably more gigabytes for less money if you choose to buy your prepaid from a local stall.
In Albania, One or Vodafone subscriptions are widely used. You can also buy them directly at the airport. I have used the first one so far and it has worked very well. You can also get phone software for both, which makes it easy to keep track of the amount of data you have left and even buy more if you need it.
Hotels
Flights often arrive at Tirana airport quite late and you may need hotel accommodation. There are several hotels within walking distance of the airport. Of course, there are also plenty of taxis available.
I have stayed at Best Western Premier Ark Hotel, N hotel by Nosh, Airport Garden Hotel, Vila Zeusor Hotel Verzac. Of these, the first two have been of the highest quality and I can recommend them.
Time zone
It’s worth noting the time difference to Finland and checking that your clock is set to the correct time. In Albania, the clock is one hour earlier than in Finland.