The preferred alcoholic hard drink is raki that is locally produced in small towns as well as in many homes in the countryside; in some instances you may run across men washing down breakfast with a few shots.
Republic of Albania, Republika e Shqipërisë. 3,154,000. National or official language: Tosk Albanian. Literacy rate: 85%. Blind population: 2,000. Deaf population: 204,565 (1998). The number of individual languages listed for Albania is 7. Of those, all are living languages.
Historically, Islam has been the majority religion of Albania, despite Communist efforts to enforce an atheistic, secular state. In 1967, the government closed more than 2,100 mosques, churches, monasteries, and other places of worship and declared the country an atheist state.