Our First Winter as Nomads: 176 Days in Sarande, Albania

When we left Athens in September 2022, the plan was to spend a few weeks in Albania before our next Schengen window opened. We took the high-speed ferry from Corfu to Sarande — a small coastal town on the Albanian Riviera — for what we thought would be a brief pause.

We stayed 176 days.

Arriving in the Off-Season

Sarande in September is still warm, still busy with Albanian vacationers and the last wave of European tourists. By October, the restaurants start closing. By November, it’s just you, the locals, and a handful of other foreigners who either got stuck or chose to stay.

The town has maybe 40,000 people. In winter, it feels like 4,000. The promenade that was packed with ice cream vendors and families in August is empty except for a few old men drinking raki at 10 AM. It’s hauntingly beautiful.

The Apartment

We found our place through Gazi, a local contact we’d made through our apartment in Tirana earlier that year. The deal: 600 EUR/month for a three-bedroom, two-bathroom house with a backyard and private driveway, directly across the street from the sea. In any other European country, a place like this would cost five times as much.

We had a balcony where we drank morning coffee watching the sunrise over Corfu (yes, you can see Corfu from Sarande). A full kitchen where we learned to cook tavë kosi. Wifi that mostly worked, except during storms. And more space than we knew what to do with — after months of studio apartments, having separate rooms felt like a luxury.

The Daily Rhythm

Without the structure of a city — no coworking spaces, limited cafe scene, no social events — we had to create our own rhythm.

• 9:30 AM: Coffee and breakfast on the balcony, or a short walk to Vence Cafe (tell Gazi we sent you — they also run cool boat excursions that we’ve taken when family visits)
• 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM: Walk along the promenade, run errands in town
• 1:00 PM - 6:00 PM: Work
• 6:00 PM - 7:00 PM: Sunset walk, sometimes a quick lunch and tea out
• 7:00 PM - 9:00 PM: More work
• 9:00 PM: Dinner — home-cooked most nights, out maybe 2-3 times a week

It sounds monotonous because it was. And that was the point. After months of moving every few weeks, the monotony felt like a gift.

What We Learned

Slowing down is harder than speeding up. When you’re a nomad, there’s always a new city to explore, a new cafe to find, a new neighborhood to learn. In Sarande, there was one main street. We knew every shop owner by face within weeks. The novelty wore off fast, and we had to sit with ourselves in a way that moving constantly lets you avoid.

Small-town Albania is deeply generous. Our neighbor brought us homemade byrek unprompted. The man at the corner market refused to let us pay for our first bag of groceries. When our hot water heater broke, the landlord’s cousin showed up within an hour with tools and stayed until it was fixed.

Winter on the Mediterranean is underrated. January in Sarande is 10-15°C during the day. Grey sometimes, rainy occasionally, but never freezing. We swam in December. We ate oranges from trees on our street.

The Hard Parts

The isolation was real. We went weeks without having an in-depth English conversation with anyone besides each other. Power cuts happened every few weeks — Albania’s grid is still developing. We ended up budgeting for a UPS that kept the wifi router, an external monitor, and the laptop running through the outages. When the internet itself went down, we switched to our Starlink Mini and always had great service from it. Between the two, we never actually lost a workday — but the first few cuts before we had the setup dialed in were stressful. And by month five, we were ready for a city again.

But we came out of Sarande different than we went in. Quieter, more settled in ourselves, with a better understanding of what we actually need versus what we think we need.

Would We Do It Again?

We’d go back to Sarande in a heartbeat — but for 2-3 months, not six. It’s the kind of place that heals you in small doses and tests you in large ones. The off-season Albanian coast is a secret that should stay a secret. But since you’re here, you might as well know about it.