Welcome to what was once one of the most messed-up countries on planet earth... Former-Communist Albania! Notice the glamorous sign of welcome that is shot full of bullet holes.
Cherish the endless landscape of concrete machine gun and artillery bunkers that are located every 100 yards within 50 miles of the border. During the time of communism they were filled with weapons and troops to defend the insane Stalinist leader Enver Hoxha and his criminal regime. If you look closely, you can see at least 12 bunkers in this one landscape photo: that's a lot-o-bunkers! Were these bunkers to keep foreigners out or the Albanians in? Both!
Stop in the local Albanian tourist shops where you can purchase a nice Joseph Stalin mug! What better way to celebrate the murder of tens of millions of innocent victims of communism than to have a hot mug of Joe with Papa Joe Stalin himself!
Hey look! It's another bunker. Wow. That's the 452nd one we've seen today! Hooray for commi bunkers! Only 699,548 more bunkers to go. Yes, it's true. With a population at the time of only about 2.7 million people, the paranoid communist regime had around 700,000 fighting/internal security bunkers. As the Glorious Leader Enver Hoxha liked to say, "the beatings will continue, until morale improves!" Wise man.
Thanks to the stifling and complete repression of the regime, while Europe boomed in the decades following World War II, Abania still had a per capita GDP of $750 per year in the 1980s. With the extremely tiny fruits of communist labour, a family could buy a roadside eel from an eel merchant once per year on Enver Hoxha's glorious birthday!
While the rest of Eastern Europe removed the horrific communists in the 1980s, Albania was the last hold-out. That meant Albanians could enjoyed their intense repression and misery right into the 1990s. Lucky!
Road test this Albanian communist-designed super-vehicle! All the finest Commissars are getting them, don't you know? In the time of communism, however, you couldn't take your vehicle out of the country, since foreign travel was forbidden! And, if you tried to think for yourself, you would be thrown in prison. One in every three Albanians got to enjoy the process of being thrown in prison by insane communists. Many were executed for their crimes against the state. Torture was also common and the relatives of suspected enemies of the state would be rounded-up and given harsh sentences. Communist Albania was basically the perfect utopia of leftist dreams!
Thank you for visiting the former communist paradise of Albania. All those who do not upvote and resteem this post will be imprisoned in the gulag and be denied Enver Hoxha's Birthday Eel dinner!