Music fans flock to Albania’s beach festival despite virus

A long convoy of cars waited over weekend to get into the huge beach area at Albania's Unum open-air music festival

RANA E HEDHUN, Albania -- The Albanian beach site had everything in one place: pine trees, sand, sea, nearby mountains and days of nonstop music. “It’s very rare that you got all of those things together at one time,” said the director of the open-air Unum music festival, Grego O’Halloran. As an Englishman living in Ibiza, Spain — another magical beach music scene — he knows what he is talking about. “Albania is the hidden gem of Europe," he added. "(It's) an hour, two hours, from almost all of Europe and it’s so beautiful and undiscovered.” Organizers sold all 10,000 tickets for the June 3-7 festival featuring 50 international and local musicians, as people jumped at the chance to hear nonstop music for five days at Thrown Sand beach, 75 kilometers (45 miles) northwest of the capital, Tirana.