Thank you all for the comments! Just to circle back on this and close the loop. Passed through Albanian airspace twice (once with the AIP required 2hr notice via a flight-plan, once without due to last minute weather changes) and they were smooth on both. No issues at all, they were helpful with avoidance headings. Flying through Albania is easy!
Last week from Skopje to Tivat.
I had to be flexible due to some cloud build up.
And so were they.
No restrictions, no airways, just wanted to know where I was and what were my intentions.
Different issue: no VFR through Kosovo ! FP was rejected (by Budapest handling FPs on behalf of whoever ;-) )
We passed the airspace of Tirana on our Greece trip at Eastern. No problem at all. Tirana control took us from the Greece guys and delivered us to the next region. Absolutely smooth.
I too some years ago, but I can’t remember any problems flying VFR to Tirana and Montenegro, very straight forward.
It was VFR and following the coast line with bad weather and low ceiling. No problems with Tirana Approach at that time.
My memory from 10 years ago was that Tirana Radar was comforting and without any restrictions for my Greece to Tivat VFR flight.
My experience, from a very long time ago, is that Albanian ATC did what almost nobody does and actually looked at the route on a VFR FP 
and they wanted traffic on specific routes. In my case it was a few miles offshore. Montenegro did the same.
So, while I flew all the way down the Adriatic at say FL085 (i.e. not following the low level ADRIA1 route) I had to follow specific routes going past these two.
But as I say this was a long time ago. Some people have flown down that way recently, VFR, but I can’t remember them. If I do I will see if I can dig them up.
One tends to find that these things improve over time. There used to be a lot of NATO restricted airspace down there, for example.
@denni and @benoit might know more, if they are still around.
TimR wrote:
I’ve just read the odd post that they get twitchy about VFR traffic sometimes.
Like almost all places they just want to constrain VFR to specific routes/heights?
The “preferred VFR routes” may not be obvious in the AIP (mostly sits on ATC desk)
It has been some time ago, but I have been flying from Greece north along the coast through Albanian airspace towards my destination Vienna and experienced no problem whatsoever. I think that I was in contact with Tirana Approach the whole time who were accommodating.
