Albanian History

"Use the motorway, you must always use the motorway" the driving instructor shouted at us in Albanian, which was being translated by one of his 5 pupils from the back seat. We were heading north from Tirana having finally escaped from its traffic mayhem which first involved being gridlocked, followed by a period of weaving around constantly stopping minibuses and bike eating manholes before enduring a dead straight highway on which the traffic noise alone was intensely unsettling. "And you must stop before dark as there are robbers about" he added helpfully before offering to put us up for the night.
Earlier we had passed a timeless scene of an older couple shepherding their goats and considered what they might have lived through. The reign of King Zog, invasion by Mussolini, occupation by Greece and Germany during the war, rule by Europe's most maverick dictator Enva Hoxha, who brought Stalinism and a cultural revolution before isolating the country and covering it with thousands of concrete bunkers due to fear of invasion.. Or perhaps they had just flown in from Monaco.
He may have ended up a tyrant but having joined the Resistance it should be noted that Albania, with its majority Muslim population was the only country occupied by the Nazis to end the war with a higher Jewish population due to their being sheltered and given false papers.