We were pedaling along a dirt track, scouting for any corner of the forest to pitch our tent beside a lake in Albania. As we rode past a little seaside shack, a 60-year-old man asked us: “Camping?”. He made meals but he also offered us a patch of land with a small shower hut. “How much does the night cost?” “Whatever you want. Five euros, ten, nothing at all,” he replied in Italian. We set up camp, grilled fish for dinner, and the man, whom we will call Arjan because it isn’t wise to give his real name, invited us to a few shots of rakı. “I’m from Himarë, there I had a restaurant but the mafia kicked me out.” Himarë is one of the towns along the Albanian Ionian coast, a succession of white beaches and turquoise coves that is experiencing a tourism boom.
As a youngster, Arjan memorized Italian songs he heard in secret on RAI, banned by the dictator Hoxha. After the fall of communism he emigrated to Brindisi, worked a few years, and with the money he saved returned to the Albanian coast to open his small restaurant. “But here the mafia are the families of the government, the same ones who held power during the dictatorship and changed sides. They push us off the coast, expropriate us to build their hotels, restaurants, and luxury residences with private security. You swim in those beaches, you dine in those restaurants, but what’s happening in Albania you tourists don’t see.” That’s something that defines us as tourists: we go but we don’t see.