Baki's Kosovo map; Ladi's Albania map; Nikita's Czech map

I took a trip to Kilburn to the Queens Arms pub, which has recently become a centre for Kosovars and Albanians in London.

There, I met Baki and Ladi who drew their maps of Kosovo and Albania for me.

(Things were a bit complicated: all these guys were Albanian, some of them from Kosovo. So I asked Baki from Kosovo (who is Albanian) to draw Kosovo, and Ladi who is Albanian to draw Albania...)

Both were part of a group celebrating a friends' birthday. I stayed with them a while and had a wide-ranging conversation about tourism in Albania, Serbian women, mad people in Ireland who support Nazis, the NHS and how the name Adrian is very international.

Later, I realised that one of the bar staff came from Czech Republic, so asked her to draw a map for me. Nikita's response was, "are you really serious?" but she drew this great map anyway.

What is in Albania

A few weeks ago, during a holiday in Corfu, I went on a day trip to Albania. We took a ferry to a town called Sarandë and a bus to UNESCO archaeological site called Butrint.

Butrint was very interesting - a huge site, dating from Roman, Greek, Venetian and Ottoman times.

Sarande surprised me - it was a new town, built in the early 20th century. The town was very modern - lots of art-deco-ish architecture. It was quite Miami. The bars and restaurants seemed modern and new - a very different place to how I expected.

What was odd, however, was that this town with nice buildings and a long, lovely seafront promenade was empty. It was 4pm on a Wednesday - there was hardly a soul to be seen. Perhaps it was an Albanian version of siesta?

I particularly enjoyed seeing Albanian folk-pop videos on a screen in a café. I can't decide who my favourite performer was: the woman called PONI or the woman bottom right below: she certainly was her own biggest fan.