Before I came to Albania I had forgotten that up until the eighties Europe had ist’s own version of Kim il Sung: Enver Hodscha, Albania’s Marxist-Leninist leader for 41 years. During his rule 173000 iconic circular concrete bunkers were built to avert the possibility of an attack  when I was visiting Albania in 2016 they were still scattered all around the country and “gracing” the crystal clear beaches around Dhermi in the south as well as the area around the enchanted isolated village of Theta in the Albanian Alps where not long ago the so-called “Gjakmarrja”blood taking, i.e. blood feud) was still ripe. I liked Albania a lot, not least because of its fresmarkets with the most succulent cherries I ever ate and the Albanians’ deep love for Mercedes cars of any kind. I strolled through villages towns where every single car was a Mercedes – the car hailing from my home in beautiful Swabia! Hodscha is long gone but my Albanian friends told me that they still suffer from politicians for whom politics woukd just be a mask for pursuits of other businesses. I saw far more beautiful masks  in the manufacture of masks in the in the city of Shkodra in northern Albania which produces them for the famous Carnival in Venice.