Questionable tourism data

In a previous post, Golden tourists in Albania?, I was describing how there are misleading tourism statistics for Albania. Fortunately I had the opportunity to organize a roundtable to discuss about it with the relevant involved institutions. The results were good, as you can read in this article on UNDP website: "Coordination key to reliable tourism data".

Didjeridoo TV performance

On 1 November I was invited by a friend of mine for a didjeridoo performance at a TV program. The didjeridoo (also spelled didgeridoo, didjeridu, etc.) is a musical instrument created by the Australian aboriginal people thousands of years ago. I have been playing it for many years, not in a professional way but in Rome I had my band, the Didje Open Project. As soon as I arrived in Tirana, I created few didjeridoos out of plastic pipes. Even though their sound is not as nice as the ones in wood (aboriginals use eucaliptus and bamboo), they work pretty well.
I was very proud to have had this opportunity to show to the Albanian audience this not so famous but incredible instrument. You can see this short video, unfortunately recorded from the TV with a bad sound quality, but I hope to post a better version soon. As you can see, I played with a local band (the bass guitarist is Angjelin, my friend) and we improvised on the moment.



In internet you can find many information and didjeridoo music. You can start from the link on the right column.

Road safety in Albania

Arriving in Albania you can notice immediately that the driving style is not very respectful of the road code. This feeling has been calculated with statistics and below you can read a sad news appeared around a month ago...

At a conference on road security in Tirana, a representative of PAMECA (Police Assistance Mission of the European Community in Albania) said that one has 20 times more chances to die in a road accident in Albania than in any other country in Europe. Director of Public Security Department in the State Police Rashim Borishi said that the year of 2007 has been the most tragic one compared to previous years when it comes to deaths due to road accidents. The participants in the conference proposed drafting of a strategy aiming at reducing the number of road accidents. According to Borishi, the greatest number of accidents occurs on the fist day of the week.