Albania

Albania's most consequential pre-travel fact is legal, not medical: the drink-driving limit is 0.00. Not 0.05 — zero. One glass of raki with dinner and you cannot legally drive, on roads that already rank among Europe's most dangerous — narrow, unguarded, and unlit in the mountains. Don't drive at night outside Tirana, and take a 4WD if the Alps are the plan.

The medicine: hepatitis A is actively transmitted and the vaccine is non-negotiable — do not skip it. Typhoid earns its place for rural travel, rabies pre-exposure for extended trekkers, and the tap water is bottled-only everywhere. The Valbona–Theth hike through the Accursed Mountains is genuinely one of Europe's great walks, and genuinely three or more hours from any hospital — carry a satellite communicator and confirm your insurance covers helicopter rescue before you go, because the evacuation runs to Shkodër and then Tirana. In the capital, American Hospital Tirana is the private facility I'd point travelers toward — EU-trained, English-speaking — and anything serious flies to Athens in ninety minutes or Rome in two hours. The organized-crime violence behind the Level 2 rating is faction-on-faction; tourists are rarely touched. The mountains and the roads are what will actually test you.