I thought I would post this here as a warning about a hostel in Korca, southern Albania. Not a lot of people visit Albania and Korca especially but it's a nice city to spend a day in on your way to or from Greece or Lake Ohrid. I'm going to preface this by saying that I travelled through Albania (and Kosovo) alone and then with a girl I met in Berat and I have never been more amazed by how welcoming and helpful the people are. I felt incredibly safe and every other person I met felt the same way. Albania is beautiful and should definitely be on your radar if you're traveling through that part of the Balkans.

That being said, I met a lot of women who were traveling alone in Albania so I thought this might serve as a cautionary tale that unfortunately, not everyone can be trusted. I'm not going to name the hostel but I did leave a review on booking.com. I was actually going to stay at this hostel alone before I met my friend and now I'm counting my lucky stars it didn't happen.

The hostel is a house with a dorm and a couple of private rooms. I had originally booked a private room alone but then I met my friend and we decided to stay in the hostel together and just stay in a dorm. He was very nice to us when we arrived and took us to a restaurant and showed us the church and told us some stuff about the city. He acted perfectly normal but I remember texting my boyfriend "there's something off about this guy he's giving me weird vibes and I think he likes my friend". I thought I was exaggerating but later in the evening she told me he had tried to kiss her when they were alone, which came completely out of nowhere. She is in a relationship and I'm pretty sure she gave absolutely no impression that she wanted to hook up with him. He was also the only member of staff in the hostel and he stayed there 24/7 when he wasn't working as a guide or something like that, so it was a pretty awful situation.

Anyway, after that, we started noticing some creepy behavior during the rest of the evening and the day to come (touching her knee, stroking her hair, trying to hand-feed us a piece of chocolate). We talked about how uncomfortable we were and how we were glad to be leaving the morning after our second night.

The second day we came home after exploring the city and sat down in the common area. We were the only guests so we were alone with him. I was pretty much ignoring him at this point because I thought he was a piece of shit but my friend is nicer than I am so she made conversation with him. We drank some wine and when the bottle was empty he even went out to buy more, probably hoping to get us drunk or something. Idiot. The conversation somehow turned to him saying some incredibly controversial and insensitive things about the Holocaust and Hitler and parts of Albanian history and my friend and I started argueing with him. It got pretty heated and she screamed at him and got very emotional and when the discussion died down I told her I was going to bed because it was late and I knew she wanted to leave too.

The only reason I'm even mentioning this is because I want to make it clear that there was NO way this guy could have thought she was into him after that. Bringing up a topic like the Holocaust is pretty much a surefire way to guarantee you're not getting laid that night, but apparently this guy thought his game was amazing.

I went upstairs and when she hadn't come up yet after a couple of minutes I went down only to see that the lights were off and he was trying to kiss her again. She said "get this guy off me before I punch him" (pretty straightforward message) and when I confronted him he acted like it was all a misunderstanding, even asking "did I make you uncomfortable?" and she was like yes you fucking did. Apparently this guy had a "no means yes" attitude and tried to defend himself by saying that he had not being using physical force but we were so done with him at that point that we went upstairs and went to sleep. Needless to say we felt incredibly unsafe that night.

Why the fuck does acting like a decent human being and making conversation with somebody imply that you are in any way comfortable with them touching or kissing you (or worse)? And how dare this guy run a hostel and act that way? I'm pretty sure this has not been the first time that he's hit on girls staying here and I feel like some girls who are younger or less experienced could feel scared and like they are obliged to deal with harassment, maybe because he bought them wine or food or because he seemed like a nice guy. If you feel like you have a hard time with this stuff, please know that it is absolutely okay to be rude and say NO, leave me the fuck alone, you have no right to assume I like you.

Sorry that this post is so fucking long but I feel like I need to let the world know shit like this happens. Do any of you guys have similar stories?