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A starry night in Valbona
About a week after the blood moon, I happened to experience another night-sky adventure in Valbona. After the extraordinary red eclipse, which lasted several hours, the next adventure had no moon, but a sky absolutely full of shooting stars. A sky lighting up with stars is another magical experience you can enjoy in Valbona National Park, alongside hiking and food.
The absence of nearby urban areas and the pollution cities cause leaves the sky above the Alps free of smog, a mirror at night. Such a mirror that the atmosphere brings to mind science-fiction films like “Star Wars” or “Star Trek”. When you gaze at a sky full of stars, you understand how small the world is against that whole universe of them.
I had tried stargazing in the Alps before. In Shala, Theth and Valbona too, but the atmosphere on the night of 4 August was something else altogether. After two days of rain, Saturday evening found the valley clearing beneath an extraordinary glow of stars.
The “Milky Way”… the “Great Bear”… or the various constellations you often hear about could be seen with the naked eye, because the night’s dazzling Moon was nowhere to be seen.
With the training group from the summer school organised by GIZ, we equipped ourselves with a few torches, took our cameras and set off on a short hike at the foot of Mount Kollata. Do not imagine it was frightening, because it was nothing of the sort.
The mountains stood in darkness, absorbing the glimmer. In their sleep they did nothing to disturb the sky’s backdrop, leaving the stars plenty of room, so much so that, unlike in the daytime, their heights did not intimidate the eye.
Once the cameras were in place, each exposure of several seconds was accompanied by the whole group keeping their heads tilted upwards. Some of us lay on the ground among the flowers and the mountain breeze. Have you never seen a shooting star?
What about a whole shower of them?! Well, never miss an opportunity like that. Go to a mountain in August and wait for the night to glitter…
How does the saying go? “Make a wish every time you see a shooting star”?!… I can tell you that the saying fits precisely because seeing such a phenomenon in an urban area is so unusual, whereas in Valbona we saw plenty.
We even caught some of them in the photographs we took. I invite you to enjoy them and, why not, find even more inspiration to enjoy nature as much as you can.
Photographs by Enis Mehmeti and Gledis Hoxha.
* This article was reviewed and corrected on 8 October 2026.