Peter J Meehan

That Weekend in Albania Peter J Meehan

An Albania emerging from a repressive past is the setting for an expatriate family's road trip to the southern port of Saranda to see the multi-civilization ruin at nearby Butrint. It is two months after 9/11 in the only Muslim country in Europe. Despite its location at the crossroads between Italy and Greece, Albania is still largely avoided by the rest of Europe-a Stalinist past and reputation for money laundering in support of terrorism limits interest, but there are growing investment opportunities for multinationals. Tony is working as a manager for a Vienna-based company that is experiencing threats in one of its contract areas. The location is near the Kosovo border, where drug and weapon trafficking persists despite a peace settlement having been reached in the former Yugoslavian province. While finalizing plans for his upcoming family trip, Tony receives an informal diplomatic request to note illegalities on his excursion. He hopes the weekend outing will help heal his problematic relationship with his daughter, who is visiting from a Vienna boarding school. The trip will be their first overnight stay outside the capital, and unbeknownst to him, Saranda is now a regional Albanian mafia centre. His "diplomatic" contact arrives for a meeting in Saranda and quickly becomes a mafia target. In the ensuing struggle, the organisation hires a former Yugoslav Cobra sniper to eliminate their problem, but the American target has a resilient local backup. As Tony tries to deal with family and work issues while travelling across classic ruins and remnants of Albania's heritage as a Christian bastion prior to four hundred years of Ottoman rule, the conflict to control the growing underground economy heats up. He and his family witness the nearly unknown Mediterranean coast road's natural beauty, but the remains of an ancient past, and the consequences of the more recent brutal military dictatorship, continue to confront them; it's evident that the state's