Honestly I've had a period earlier in life where I had some opportunities for traveling and didn't take it because I'm cheap and traveling alone blows, but touring other countries and continents is still on my bucket list. And countries like Albania are easily overlooked due to low media exposure, stereotyping, and former-soviet-union things.
But Albania, Slovenia, Croatia and Hungary should be really nice places to visit. I don't know about Serbia or Bosnia/Herzegovina, I only know anything about that from media coverage during the 90's.
Serbia has nice things to see (Tara mountain, Belgrade, etc.), but if you make a Balkan tour you should not skip Montenegro. They have everything - nice seacoast with a number of old cities, mountains, lakes... And it's all condensed in small country, meaning daily trips will give you a lot of variety.
Just don't go there July-August since it's packed full of tourists and traffic jams are everywhere. May, June or September are the best.
Just a note that working as a remote developer(counted as export) there is no VAT and no profit-tax in Albania until ~$125K/year of revenue. It's 15% if you pass $125K though (for total profit).
Honest question I find myself asking these days about new places: are you generally safe flashing some wealth in Albania, as a single foreigner? Like for example nice car, camera, phone, mountain bike.. or best to keep a low profile?
I found Tirana weird given how many flash cars there were. 750i’s and s600’s just driving around like they were doing laps on a Friday night.
However, there was also some very nice streets with new bars and restaurants. Like a lot of people had recently been pouring cash into the place which is always a good sign.
The people who I met were always super friendly and outgoing too, some of the most friendly I’ve experienced.
I'm not super sure about Albania, but in Romania, where I'm from, you'd generally face 2 possible problems:
1. scams as tourist (should be easy to avoid: a) know the exchange rate and the local purchasing power, i.e. think if a local paid $500 per month would buy the thing, b) don't take almost anything offered "for free" unless it's from already trusted persons)
2. theft; not robbery, theft (your stuff might get stolen when you're not around; robbery or outright violence is rare, maybe even rarer than Western Europe, but you know, poor people, expensive stuff, it's going to be tempting)
Albania doesn’t have either. Scams or thefts are rare. It is a very tourist friendly country as it gets almost 2.5x tourists a year compared to its population.
This is surprising to most americans, but the Western EU countries are the least safe when it comes to mugging, stealing, and general crime.
Maybe it is family values, or the fact that many people have immigrated to work in the richer countries, countries in the Balkans are really chill and crime free. The only danger is driving, as the drivers are probably not the best and roads can be tight.
So... the obvious question, then, is how many robberies do not result in a police reports in each country, and how good each country is at reporting all robberies to Eurostat.
I suspect that this map is more of a reflection of the rate of reporting for robberies than the actual rate of robberies, which is why the map is so surprising: it's misleading and does not reflect reality.
If you can make up claims without backing them up with anything, so could anyone: I raise you and say that there are more unreported robberies in Western EU countries.
FWIW, I cannot imagine anyone in Serbia being robbed without reporting it to police (and since you usually lose your ID document if it's your wallet or purse, you have to go to police to report it stolen/lost and get a new one issued), unless it's something like multiple gangs against each other.
What I can imagine not being reported are attempted-but-failed robberies, but that strikes me as something anyone anywhere would not report to avoid the hassle for no gain.
Out of curiosity, how's the quality of life there?
Being originally form Eastern Europe myself, devs earn and live like kings here, especially those freelancing for remote US companies, but socially you're mostly confined to these high-earning circles and gated communities where you're mostly insulated from the poverty, corruption and inequality surrounding you, along with a feeling that everyone from individuals to local businesses could be potentially unscrupulous ready to scam you of everything you've got, if your scam detector is not finely tuned and you don't know exactly how things work, as laws and regulations tend to be very loosely enforced.
Plus, complete lack of infrastructure, functional government and public institutions. Roads without potholes that don't ruin your car? Forget it. Public transport? Barely. Pedestrian sidewalks not full of illegally parked cars? Nope. Drivers disobeying the law and being a hazard to everyone? Check. Police doing something? Forget it. Public hospitals? Avoid if you can. People behaving like a-holes in public. Yes. Gangs of roma beggars and parking scammers? A given. General disregard for following laws and regulations? Check.
And that's in an EU country that, at least on paper, should be doing way better than Albania.
Not like Brazil or Russia, but the newly developed suburbs of the nuveau-rich are the equivalent, even though they lack armed security and barbed wire fences typically associated with gated communities.
i am curious, what are the gated communities in russia and how prevalent are they? from my cursory search it looks like there are more gated communities in us, australia, and the uk
So, a gated community without actual gates? I mean, suburbs where each house is surrounded by a high fence/wall, security cameras etc. (what you are probably referring to) are not nice either, but "real" gated communities are nevertheless something different...
i have never visited albania, but from personal experience i can tell you that countries of former yugoslavia (albania's neighborhood with significant albanian minorities) are amongst the safest in terms of public safety (with exception of petty theft in large cities such as zagreb, belgrade, and sarajevo). importantly, this is not due to these places being heavily policed as is the case in australia for example, but because of culture. i imagine the same to be true for albania
i think that public safety is a feature of eastern europe most westerners are unaware of. this is often due to a false association of low income and high crime rates that is prevalent in anglo communities. the only place in western europe where i experienced comparable public safety was in portugal, curiously another low income country. anyway i think that you should not sell your homeland short despite its shortcomings. btw you did not make it clear what country you are talking about
> People behaving like a-holes in public. Yes. Gangs of roma beggars and parking scammers? A given.
As a French guy visiting Albania quite frequently, I can tell you that I feel safer there than in Paris.
People are mostly welcoming. I always travel with Albanian speaking people there, so it might be the reason. I’m pretty confident that it’s much safer than a big American or Western European city.
Paris at night can be scary, while I never felt that in any Balkan city. On the other hand few smaller French cities I visited felt safe. It could be a problem with super-touristy capital of France.
Slovenia has a "sole proprietorship" system that's fantastic for IT professionals since it has standardized costs, which means in the end you pay 4% tax on any income up to 150k€.
But you also pay FIXED "social contributions" (aka. tax) for pension and healthcare since you, as an "s.p." are considered to have a minimal pay... no matter how much money you make. This is a little under 500€/month. This is due the first month you register your business.
This leads to a reducing effective tax rate - the more you make, the less you pay.
We also have no way of doing business if you can't afford the ~500€/month tax. As far as the government is concerned, everyone starting a small business just "magically" starts making enough money from month 1.
Watching ex-communists (who are still in power) trying to work this whole capitalism thing is hilarious sometimes.
Germany is no different. Everyone is required to have health insurance(since not treating the uninsured is not an option in a humane socitey), and as a sole proprietor you must pay for that health insurance even if you earn very little.
I am not sure why you expect the state to subsidise the health insurance of people who voluntarily put themselves in the position of working for an employer(themselves) that can't afford to pay them.
Anyone starting a business has to get together starting capital for the costs of the business itself, plus the costs of necessary employees up until the company starts earning money. This is one of those costs.
A number of countries make employer contributions to health insurance entirely a percentage of salary, sometimes with a lower threshold before payments (be it employer or employee contributions) kick in at all.
> Germany is no different. Everyone is required to have health insurance(since not treating the uninsured is not an option in a humane socitey), and as a sole proprietor you must pay for that health insurance even if you earn very little.
Singapore has rules that make something like health insurance mandatory for locals and most foreigners here. However, if you are on the visa for highly paid foreigners, fewer rules apply. Specifically, health insurance is optional.
In general, I agree that leaving rich people out of your paternalism is perfectly compatible with a humane society. Rich folks can look out for themselves and only have themselves to blame.
(The health care for locals in Singapore largely works as a health savings account, so the system has less need to force healthy people into contributing to balance the books. Largely everyone pays for themselves, though there is a genuine insurance component to the system as well; as in a mechanism to shoulder large unpredictable risks.)
..and don't forget, that as an American, if you lived in Albania (or anywhere else in the world!), you would still have to pay US taxes.
To the best of my knowledge, no other country does this.
I agree, as a general matter. Then again, the sibling comment immediately below, from someone apparently familiar with the Albanian system, seems to say that it does work this way in Albania.
Yes, that was a bit weird! Though I assume that almost everyone will register expenses, so in practice it's not nearly as awful.
Reminds me a bit of when Greece required everyone to collect receipts to get the first portion of their income tax free. The idea was to indirectly force businesses to actually ring up purchases properly.
as in other countries in the region, this will last only a few years, until enough IT capital flows in. one noteable exception is bosnia & herzegovina, where the personal income tax and the company profit tax is 10% flat. moreover, this has always been the case and it is unlikely to change in the near future
It's for every type of export. Previously, it was 0% until $50K. 5% until $125K. 15% after $125K. So pretty near to what we have now. I don't expect it to get worse than that.
from what i can see the tax laws in albania are pretty strict, and tax seems to be applied on world-wide income [0]. i think this is rather problematic for incentivizing foreign investment into startups. compare to general tax rules in bosnia and herzegovina [1]
Does anyone know if there's a corresponding group in Greece working on the same goal? I'd hate to imagine a whole river as a national park but on the other side of the border they're dumping fertilizer and building dams.
Yes, nice goal but the claim is exaggerated. In neighboring Serbia there is the Tara National Park [0], and nearby to this, but in Bosnia & Herzegovina, there is the famous Sutjeska National Park [1], which is one of the two last remaining primeval forests in Europe. That said, significant threats are still posed by potential exploitation of areas and rivers surrounding protected zones [2].
Thank you for that. I actually did confuse the two! The Tara river [0] and the Tara Canyon [1] are absolutely amazing! To add to the confusion all the mentioned national parks are very close to eachother
None of those rivers are national parks though (although some I believe might run through a national parks). National parks have even stricter requirements and restrictions.
Curious thing to fixate on. Are you perhaps implying that the presence of Islam and their Communist past turn make them un-European? Despite being geographically situated right between Rome and Athens?
Definitely a great initiative. I was made aware what irreversible damage so called small hydro plants are doing to these creeks and rivers. Pretty much all they do is to generate additional revenue to local tycoons, while producing insignificant amounts of energy.
Maybe a little harsh. Rivers do nothing but jam up and break up logjams, have for millions of years. Maybe it's healthy.
Here in the US, the environment was mostly chains of stagnant beaver ponds for millennia. It was the Iroquoi Confederacy that kilt them all, broke up the dams. For money - beaver hats in Europe were all the rage. Remade the topology of a continent in a few score years.
In the Egyptian Book of the Dead, one of the things you had to attest to at death was that you had "never willfully blocked the flow of a river" -- makes sense given the prominent importance of the Nile. With respect to your comments, I think that temporary logjams and permanent human dams are not comparable.
> there are eight dams planned—large ones. With the tributaries, there are another 36 or 37 dams planned. The specifics are always changing—[but] currently the number is roughly 45 dams in the entire river basin.
That sounds like a really aggressive engineering plan (probably with its own low carbon packaging). I can see why that would be destructive.
Anybody who thinks you have 10 bucks asks you to invest in a micro hydro venture there. It's not planned, those are mainly just a bunch of randos who want to build their own dams. I am glad these guys are trying, but my hopes are low.
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[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 145 ms ] threadBut Albania, Slovenia, Croatia and Hungary should be really nice places to visit. I don't know about Serbia or Bosnia/Herzegovina, I only know anything about that from media coverage during the 90's.
Just don't go there July-August since it's packed full of tourists and traffic jams are everywhere. May, June or September are the best.
BTW and fwiw, I loved being in Albania, also Macedonia. Bulgaria was cool, and Romania is crazy hilarious.
However, there was also some very nice streets with new bars and restaurants. Like a lot of people had recently been pouring cash into the place which is always a good sign.
The people who I met were always super friendly and outgoing too, some of the most friendly I’ve experienced.
1. scams as tourist (should be easy to avoid: a) know the exchange rate and the local purchasing power, i.e. think if a local paid $500 per month would buy the thing, b) don't take almost anything offered "for free" unless it's from already trusted persons)
2. theft; not robbery, theft (your stuff might get stolen when you're not around; robbery or outright violence is rare, maybe even rarer than Western Europe, but you know, poor people, expensive stuff, it's going to be tempting)
People are very welcoming.
https://landgeistdotcom.files.wordpress.com/2021/10/europe-r...
This is surprising to most americans, but the Western EU countries are the least safe when it comes to mugging, stealing, and general crime.
Maybe it is family values, or the fact that many people have immigrated to work in the richer countries, countries in the Balkans are really chill and crime free. The only danger is driving, as the drivers are probably not the best and roads can be tight.
lol! yeah balkans has many schumachers, of all ages and genders too :)
This map would also be surprising to Europeans.
This map was generated based on data from Eurostat, "who bases these number on police reports from each country." (sic, cf. https://landgeist.com/2021/10/12/robbery-rate/).
So... the obvious question, then, is how many robberies do not result in a police reports in each country, and how good each country is at reporting all robberies to Eurostat.
I suspect that this map is more of a reflection of the rate of reporting for robberies than the actual rate of robberies, which is why the map is so surprising: it's misleading and does not reflect reality.
FWIW, I cannot imagine anyone in Serbia being robbed without reporting it to police (and since you usually lose your ID document if it's your wallet or purse, you have to go to police to report it stolen/lost and get a new one issued), unless it's something like multiple gangs against each other.
What I can imagine not being reported are attempted-but-failed robberies, but that strikes me as something anyone anywhere would not report to avoid the hassle for no gain.
Being originally form Eastern Europe myself, devs earn and live like kings here, especially those freelancing for remote US companies, but socially you're mostly confined to these high-earning circles and gated communities where you're mostly insulated from the poverty, corruption and inequality surrounding you, along with a feeling that everyone from individuals to local businesses could be potentially unscrupulous ready to scam you of everything you've got, if your scam detector is not finely tuned and you don't know exactly how things work, as laws and regulations tend to be very loosely enforced.
Plus, complete lack of infrastructure, functional government and public institutions. Roads without potholes that don't ruin your car? Forget it. Public transport? Barely. Pedestrian sidewalks not full of illegally parked cars? Nope. Drivers disobeying the law and being a hazard to everyone? Check. Police doing something? Forget it. Public hospitals? Avoid if you can. People behaving like a-holes in public. Yes. Gangs of roma beggars and parking scammers? A given. General disregard for following laws and regulations? Check.
And that's in an EU country that, at least on paper, should be doing way better than Albania.
Because I haven't heard about gated communities in Slovakia and Serbia, I I'm guessing it's the same in neighboring countries.
As a French guy visiting Albania quite frequently, I can tell you that I feel safer there than in Paris. People are mostly welcoming. I always travel with Albanian speaking people there, so it might be the reason. I’m pretty confident that it’s much safer than a big American or Western European city.
Yes, assuming you haven't registered any expenses. 15% of total profit (revenue-expenses=profit).
Slovenia has a "sole proprietorship" system that's fantastic for IT professionals since it has standardized costs, which means in the end you pay 4% tax on any income up to 150k€.
But you also pay FIXED "social contributions" (aka. tax) for pension and healthcare since you, as an "s.p." are considered to have a minimal pay... no matter how much money you make. This is a little under 500€/month. This is due the first month you register your business.
This leads to a reducing effective tax rate - the more you make, the less you pay.
We also have no way of doing business if you can't afford the ~500€/month tax. As far as the government is concerned, everyone starting a small business just "magically" starts making enough money from month 1.
Watching ex-communists (who are still in power) trying to work this whole capitalism thing is hilarious sometimes.
I am not sure why you expect the state to subsidise the health insurance of people who voluntarily put themselves in the position of working for an employer(themselves) that can't afford to pay them.
Anyone starting a business has to get together starting capital for the costs of the business itself, plus the costs of necessary employees up until the company starts earning money. This is one of those costs.
Singapore has rules that make something like health insurance mandatory for locals and most foreigners here. However, if you are on the visa for highly paid foreigners, fewer rules apply. Specifically, health insurance is optional.
In general, I agree that leaving rich people out of your paternalism is perfectly compatible with a humane society. Rich folks can look out for themselves and only have themselves to blame.
(The health care for locals in Singapore largely works as a health savings account, so the system has less need to force healthy people into contributing to balance the books. Largely everyone pays for themselves, though there is a genuine insurance component to the system as well; as in a mechanism to shoulder large unpredictable risks.)
Just in general: almost no sane tax system works like this.
There are sometimes some nooks and crannies of insanity in some parts of a tax system, but seldom in something as mainstream as income tax brackets.
Reminds me a bit of when Greece required everyone to collect receipts to get the first portion of their income tax free. The idea was to indirectly force businesses to actually ring up purchases properly.
[0] https://taxsummaries.pwc.com/albania/corporate/taxes-on-corp...
[1] https://taxsummaries.pwc.com/bosnia-and-herzegovina/corporat...
I'm sure many other countries have such rivers as well
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tara_(mountain)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sutjeska_National_Park
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buk_Bijela_Hydroelectric_Power...
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tara_(river)
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tara_River_Canyon
Or they just hate Albania, but in that case the likelihood is higher that they're actually from Europe and maybe even from the Balkans themself.
Here in the US, the environment was mostly chains of stagnant beaver ponds for millennia. It was the Iroquoi Confederacy that kilt them all, broke up the dams. For money - beaver hats in Europe were all the rage. Remade the topology of a continent in a few score years.
So it works both ways.
In the scheme of nature, humans are just a blip so far.
That sounds like a really aggressive engineering plan (probably with its own low carbon packaging). I can see why that would be destructive.