Blogging Albania: Reconstructing images in the eye of the beholder
Blogging Albania: Reconstructing images in the eye of the beholder

Summary/Abstract: In this article, I discuss blog narratives written in English by visitors to Albania during the second decade of the twenty-first century, a time when information and communication technologies had shaped communication and connection in the online mode, and Albania was already in its third decade after the fall of communism. I will discuss the stories published on Yomadic, a blog started by a passionate traveller, Nate Robert, about little-explored places. I will read them as travel narratives with the intention of pointing out how Albania, often clichély deemed an underexplored country, is reconstructed through the eyes of what I call “the beholder.” In referring to the visitor as the beholder, I try to avoid particular references made to the traveller-writer in the literature about travel writing and focus instead on the spirit of observation that permeates these narratives. I will read them through the lens of discourse analysis, which I believe is more appropriate for analysing the retelling of personal experiences of visits to Albania.

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