This Country Was Ready For War! 🇦🇱

when i was growing up in the 1980s there was one country that fascinated me more than anywhere else and that was the mysterious little land of albania a land that was once ruled over by king zog and then by a paranoid dictator called envero who is more stalinist than stalin himself well it's six o'clock in the morning and i've just flown into albania to begin a little adventure i'm now gonna somehow get to the bus station and get a coach down through the country to the southern city of florida from where we're gonna begin our exploration of albania and i'll tell you on the way what i've got in store for you so um yeah albania let's do it okay bus station to vlore please okay now speaking please don't speak english okay okay i don't speak albanian yet tomorrow thank you mate goodbye wherever that is in albania right we're at the bus station let's look for a bust of laura check this out some sign some people who died in 44 the end of the war red star [Applause] here are all the places we can go to in this country pyramid well that was simple wouldn't it turn up in a taxi bus is ready to go in a minute soon as we fill up wow and check out the mountains of albania in the distance can you see them albania down in the heart of the balkans and those are the i don't know what they are some mountain range and here's another albanian bus off to fear i wonder what that sounds like i wonder what happens in fear anyone know [Applause] that's it he's driving to fiat backwards wow hell of a journey but i'm on the old um fish wenger bus the old fish wenger down to vlora let's hope we make it and i do like that i've seen this word a lot in albania already only arrived this morning but the word it the word it don't if you can see that is everywhere in albania well we're off on the fish wenger in the 1960s enver hodger the stalinist leader of communist albania was a paranoid dictator who'd fallen out with pretty much all of his allies he fell out with the ussr because khrushchev was not hardline enough for him he fell out with communist china he was convinced tito planned to invade from yugoslavia in the north and that greece was determined to reclaim his ancient lands in the south and the hodger saw enemies everywhere [Music] hoja and the party mobilized the population of albania to defend their homeland against these so-called threats how by instructing them to build bunkers [Music] over the next 20 years under his tyrannical reign enver hoja demanded more and more bunkers be built in every corner of the country bunkers of steel and concrete were constructed on beaches on mountain passes and farmers fields in villages and towns and anywhere else the paranoid leader thought an enemy may [Music] appear [Music] but times have changed the bunkers of the hoshi regime are now being dug up and used as rubble for road construction and their rusting iron rebar sold for scrap i'd come to albania to see these reminders of a brutal period in albania's history before they were gone forever thank you driver bye-bye we've arrived in beautiful vlora let's look for some bunkers now then you can't go end behold your bunker adventurizing unless you've got your own transport you can't do it on a bus oh babushka's albanian babushkas so um we've got to look for somewhere that's going to rent me a scooter of some sort or a car or something we need our own wheels basically because we're going to be hitting the mountains off the beaten track so um let's go and look for a rental place wow albania anglais london bunker goodbye okay okay okay nice to meet you nice to meet you mucho gusta hello well that's the issue we're gonna have here in albania i don't know what they're saying and they don't know what i'm saying anyway we found our first little bunkers here in florida but these aren't the kind of bunkers we want we want the real ones in the villages in the mountains ones that were actually going to be used not some tourist bunkers let's continue well i finally found a scooter i've got no map no internet no idea where i'm going perfect let's go bunker hunting guys we've only just started the adventure and look what i found already on a wall up in the hills here is an old mosaic now it looks like it's either been deliberately torn down or maybe just with the passing of time but no doubt before that was some slogan from enver hodger probably telling the people to build bunkers but now of course falling down wow we've already found something hodgirist after five minutes on the road this is a good omen for the trip up in the hills i see three bunkers let's go bunker rising no one said bunkerizing would be easy especially when it's one-handed the road to the bunkers has been closed off by this huge bloody brambles bush oh hi anyone home and this is obviously private property and i don't know what albanian farmers are like when you go knocking around on their property illegally hmm but we can't let a fence stop us from bunkerizing oh yeah oh oh no benjamin don't hurt your knackers any more than they've been hurt already oh i'm in let's hope no one catches us where's the bunkers we're bunkerizing whoever built them certainly knew how to hide a bunker are they up or down falling down the mountain oh oh it's not easy being a envelope explorer oh oh my god i've seen the bunkers i didn't imagine it one more fence across from the bunkers oh man there they are look ow and here are the brambles ow ow wow look at it bunker one bunker two and bunker three we found some we've lost our bunker virginity which is probably how most albanians lose their virginity inside a bunker so guys let me tell you a little bit about these bunkers that we found this is the commonly found three bunkers in a row called q-type bunkers designed by a colonel in the albanian army back in the 60s called joseph zigali they're built all over the country joseph zigali went the way of most people in the administration and the army in um enver hodge's time he was arrested and sentenced to eight years in prison for being a foreign spy his wife went insane and ended up in a lunatic asylum but this is his um legacy the q-type bunkers to be found all over albania pretty awesome you never know what you're going to find when you're traveling around the back quarters of the country and here a war memorial probably a battle took place here says up there 1920 to 43. so i presume those dates were some kind of independence battle mixed in with the second world war this part the balkans has constantly been in flux so you never really know what the dates represent exactly but obviously something that meant a lot to the people and over here i presume was once the eternal flame but in the modern albania of pyramid schemes and a government that has no money things like that don't work anymore but this is it the war memorial look at that wow you are albanian don quixote bye-bye wowzers are we gonna survive this albania's most dangerous bridge by the looks of it whoa dodgy for the tires audrey for me as well whoa but what have you what have you one handed and filming i'm the ultimate blogger in albania easy easy whoa not so easy [Applause] hello possible little bit trim okay thank you not clean shave just oh this yeah okay okay wow we got there in the end get rid of the white stuff [Music] you like that okay ah the old yeah you're right sweaty hot hot in albania swash up [Music] okay just think what these lovely people in these villages have been through the reign of hodger the terrible sufferings that they had and they've still remained jolly and positive it seems friendly but for decades they lived under the most tyrannical of leaders maybe his barbershop was here back in those days who knows what a nice guy in the old envelope hodgesink i love it not quite as nice as a soviet sink but a hodgeris sink what oh super oh yeah watch out albanian chicks there's a youtuber on the run it's okay it's okay no no it's okay thank you goodbye take care bye-bye let's get on the road to bunga i should have asked him where a bunker was i didn't think i got caught i was too enamored with my own reflection like narcissus once i saw that beautiful albanian beard room he gave me let's get back on the road hoja is bunkers on the hillside check it out check out the bunkers oh oh my knackers good job me knob shrunk otherwise i would have torn it off then check out the bunkers we've got ourselves a what is that is that a q-type bunker it's another qe let's go check it out obviously built here a strategic point on the highway so you could see an invading army coming up the road or along the road here the army that was never going to come no one wanted to invade albania what do they have really but that didn't stop pen bahaji from using his paranoia to cement his power the external enemy the classic technique of any dictator us and them and that's why these are all over the countryside bye-bye g-type bunkers we'll meet again another day i've stopped off at an old memorial that i found here in some village you don't see much left from the old regime from end behold his time and that's because you see the albanians suffered greatly under enver hodger unlike in say the soviet union where they had a liberalizing figure like khrushchev enver hodgia never liberalised in fact he got more and more style in his retirement and so when the regime ended the people with i don't know some kind of vengeance in the hearts i suppose they ripped down everything everything that was a reminder of enver hodger and the period that they lived under yes how are you you okay nice to meet you my friend nice to meet you okay okay well mind your shoe i have a question i have a question wow you're friendly you're the jolliest man in albania but i have a question for you look look look at this uh this okay yeah okay yep okay cool thank you he has no idea nice to meet you my friend let's hug it out albania england yeah headlock ah ufc what a jolly young man [Applause] he's still smiling wow i'd love to live in this village but it's epic with people like him knocking about have a right good old time yeah okay there's something around here other side of the road thank you okay okay thank you very much thank you bye-bye bye-bye wow what a lovely lady she understood my albanian who get your jedi bunk in it we're off bunker i like it i can see a house over there in the hills that seems to have a couple of bunkers in his garden let's go and see if the owner will let us have a little snoop around uh bunker possible photo bunker oh gracias gracias it out this guy's got bunkers in his garden wow and the turkeys are coming wow these bunkers everywhere in the country even in some dude's garden probably his grandfather helped build it look in there wow and now is his turkey pen and that's what he would have shot out at the invading chinese and now you're protecting albania you're the soldiers bye-bye thank you wow super the turkeys are coming you gotta stay there well attacked by albanian turkeys well where you going i'm going home you can't come with me i can't smuggle a turkey in my underpants it wouldn't work okay beer beer always beer always ready for beer okay thank you albani beer albany beer let's try it thank you for the invitation into your house thank you very much could you translate a question for me um do your parents remember the time of ember you were bought they were born and this time and do they remember this time as a good time or a bad time bedtime because don't have fun okay okay so she remembers and go hodge's time no money the bonkers in the garden like do you remember when they were put here i mean your parents not you but do they remember when they were built or where they go he was 15 years 15 years in this house when the bunkers were built wow so you remember 1982 what is thank you in albania okay then i'll leave you thank you i'll go back now thank you so much [Laughter] thank you fulham and daddy one more time thank you so much tell him daddy okay turkeys fan i'm dairy turkeys we're absolutely amazing people just to invite your stranger into their house and give them a beer just wow albania gets better by the minute amazing trip wow so impressed he had a little communist torture and the whole and the check out what they play on albanian tv wait for it that's the kind of stuff you can watch ah yeah we're gonna put some music okay crank it up wow sounds terrible but thank you oh we are we're going to have some rakia are we together wow it's a lot to brag here grande [Music] man [Laughter] i don't know why but i thought rakia would be like 10 that's the strongest vodka albania [Applause] mascara wow this bar owner is determined for me to finish my rakio because he brought me a sausage meat and said with this i can finish the raffia when you meet these people in the villages you kind of wonder what their role was under um under envelope and his regime i mean not everyone was a school teacher you know they say something like every fourth person was a policeman a secret policeman and so a lot of the people that you bump into you see on the streets the older folk they would have had careers oppressing the people i'm not saying this chap of course but um yeah you don't know people i've met on this trip for sure have pretty sinister pasts all right the last bit of albanian mountain rakia i didn't let you down britain i got through it with the help of some sausage and some peanuts back in the game no pinito come on man i've got to get back down on mountain roads he's trying to get me pissed up i've seen some bunkers i think it's time to go inside a bunker let's hope no one's it oh man let's hope it's not a snake's nest do they have snakes in albania i don't know if they do this is the kind of place one would hang out ah we're in are we oh man we are wow look at the view they certainly built their bunkers with nice views i'll give them that just room for one man and that was the stupidity of it it was that the bunkers weren't even practical what was a guy gonna do halfway up a mountain when his ammo ran out who was going to resupply him nobody is the answer the bunkers were complete folly why elephants of course the army generals knew that the bunkerization of albania was pure stupidity in 1974 the defense minister general balaku spoke out criticizing enver hodge's policy saying that albania didn't have these external threats well he was arrested not long after he was labeled in the press arch enemy balaku what a great name and then he was executed i've just discovered a bridge that is so dangerous and looks so intimidating that wow just glancing at it makes my heart start beating my palms get sweaty let's go and investigate oh man there's bits missing it's all on one side check it out this really is albania's most dodgy bridge whoa well let's get on oh man it's just bits of old oh what oh it's basically a suicide mission let's strap up and see what we can do wow it's a death trap it's a suicide rap look at it there's nothing there oh man obviously when was the last time someone crossed this bridge whoa who designed this a blind man the same man who designed the leaning tara pisa oh oh shoot oh man oh man it's on its side well look this bits missing wowzers oh man oh man right angle we're on an angle oh man the things you do for adventures the things you do when you're adventurizing in albania oh man oh dude hello anything in the oven hello chicken in the oven it's a bridge like i've never seen before across the old dustbin lid the classic engineering technique when you're building a bridge use a dustbin lid we made it across which has to be the dodgiest bridge in the balkans check it out the angle my god how did we actually survive that the only thing is i've gotta get back across it to the scooter are you okay bueno okay good luck well i think that's the perfect time to end the video we've seen some different bunkers i've told you a little bit about the history we've had a little look around the back rows of albania we've tried to communicate with some people and well yeah so um yeah i suppose if this was a right on youtube channel i'd now end it by making some speech about isolationism and how bad it is and what the bunkers represent but well fortunately we're not so um yeah the buggers are pretty cool in my book so that's it if i knew how to say the word goodbye in albanian i'd say it it's probably got a an x in it and a q somewhere all words in albanian have x's and q's so um yeah until next time from wherever and whenever see you guys later thanks for joining me it's been fun bye-bye he let the console play with his heart jack and the

Channel: bald and bankrupt

Views: 3,544,323

Rating: 4.9288812 out of 5

Keywords: Albania, bunkers, Enver Hoxha, travel;, Adventure, bald and bankrupt, Vlora, motorentvlora, Tirana

Id: ROozLTYm_OQ

Length: 33min 4sec (1984 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 02 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/AmbitiousPresence5]

So happy to watch bald again

[u/seanleabhair]

Can't believe he crossed that fucking bridge

[u/[deleted]]

Nearly had a heart attack when I saw it was 30+ minutes long.

Beautiful! Can't wait to watch.

[u/Diegobyte]

This is classic bald. Great video.

[u/Throwawaycccm]

Cool to see some different techniques with him cutting in the historical footage, was nice to get a bit of extra background.

[u/FerraristDX]

Oh boy, Bald bonding with an Albanian lady. Some folks will go haywire, lol.

But interesting video nonetheless. Not just because of the bunkers, but because of how Bald was able to move in Albania and communicate via gestures and such with the locals.

[u/HMJ87]

The (fisch)wenger bus is comin' and everybody's jumpin'

[u/[deleted]]

Love his reaction to the Albanian road sign https://gfycat.com/anotherwelllitatlasmoth

[u/rukatamoto]

As an Albanian I was waiting a long time for this video.