Albania

Albania spent most of the 20th century as one of the most isolated countries on Earth - a self-imposed hermit kingdom under one of communism's strangest dictators, Enver Hoxha, who built over 170,000 concrete bunkers across a country the size of Maryland. When the regime finally collapsed in 1991, Albanians discovered they'd been sealed off from a world that had largely forgotten about them.

Fast forward to today and Albania is one of Europe's fastest-growing tourist destinations. The Albanian Riviera along the Ionian coast has beaches that rival anything in Greece or Croatia but at a fraction of the price. Berat and Gjirokaster are UNESCO-listed Ottoman towns stacked with white houses climbing impossibly steep hillsides. The language is its own branch of Indo-European - not Slavic, not Romance, not anything else - just Albanian. It's loud, it's chaotic, it's incredibly hospitable, and it's the kind of place where your waiter will refuse to let you pay for dinner because you're a guest in his country.