Over the past four years, I have travelled to 17 countries for my book Goodbye Eastern Europe. In it, I try to chart a vanished eastern Europe, one in which cultural multiplicity and religious tolerance were the rule, rather than the exception. Albania was one of only a few places in which that legacy was not a memory but a living reality. Seeing it in action gave me hope, not just for the Balkans, but for Europe as a whole.
