Successfully Shaking Off Communism...The Lively City of Tirana

July 23, 2008

Tirana, Albania

(Amber)

We woke up in Ohrid, and the plan was to do a quick walking tour, buy a t-shirt, find a decent meal, and then head to a nearby town to catch a bus to Tirana. As we were walking out, the woman of our house..."mom"....caught us and asked us (in sign language only - she didn't speak a word of English) to sit with her for coffee on the veranda. We of course accepted. We sat on the unbelievably beautiful patio overlooking the lake, drank strong Turkish coffee, and tried to make small talk....without being able to speak a single mutual word.

It actually worked quite well. "Mom" did what all Macedonians had done which was to just talk to us. I have some hilarious incognito video of the phenomenon. It's as if they think that surely we'll get it if they just talk to us...loudly, quickly, and lots. Somehow though, we can usually follow the general meaning. For example, we know from our Macedonian conversation with "mom" that she picks the kiwis, which hang over the deck, in November and makes jam out of them. How we know that, I don't know. But we somehow figured it out.

Amazingly, Spanish sort of seemed to help. As we drank the amazingly strong Turkish coffee and enjoyed the cool breeze and the view, "mom" ducked back into the house and came out with two small bowls of what appeared to be jelly. Great! We were getting bread to wash the coffee down with. But I soon found out that this was her great (but sweeter than any I've ever had) homemade jam, and she wanted to watch us eat it and rave. So we each ate a bowl of super sweet jam with a spoon, guzzled strong Turkish coffee, and had a conversation in Macedonian while watching the cats frolic on the shore and white birds line the bobbing boats. Not a normal....and certainly not a bad...morning.

We left with our bellies literally full of jelly and went on one last quick walking tour of the city before grabbing a piece of pizza and heading to find our bus. By 12:30, we were on-board a bus bound for Tirana. The bus ride was uneventful, and the border was amazingly easy, although it took us six hours to go 95 miles. Welcome to Albania. Road travel is incredibly slow here.

Albanians live by an ancient social code called the Kanun, which outlines aspects of social behavior including treatment of guests. As a result, Albanians are incredibly hospitable and go out of their way to help. We have been offered food, gum, directions, and even hugs....just while riding a bus or walking down the street. Considering that the generosity often jumps the hurdle of language barrier, it's really great to experience.

When crossing the Macedonia-Albania border, we didn't have the two Euros needed to for a visa, and the woman next to me paid mine...without me knowing...and then refused to be paid back. Meanwhile, two people behind Matt saw that we had only U.S. dollars and gave him Euros for his dollars and then translated for the bus driver. Similarly, while walking down the street in Gjirokastra, we saw the owner of our guest house sitting in a cafe. He invited us in and bought our coffee, refusing to let us pay our share. This is the same man who did our laundry for....FREE! Unheard of one the road. It's the first free laundry I've had done since I stood in my garage in December of last year! A guy on the street heard us speaking, asked if we needed help, and then tried to help point us to the bus stop....just to be nice. Not to sell anything.That's Albania.

So the Albanian people are the highlights for me, even though mountains, castles, and coastline abound. That being said, life here has been difficult, and there's a rougher side too. While the exception rather than the rule, there are people who are gruff, and there are also, in the cities, some homeless people. As in Macedonia, these beggars are likely Rom, or gypsies. And trash disposal and litter is a monumental problem throughout Albania.

(Matt)

In addition to the kindness on the bus, after we crossed the border, we immediately saw another thing for which Albania is known--the bunkers. Enver Hoxha was essentially the dictator of the communist People's Republic of Albania and ruled the country from about 1941 until his death in 1985, 7 years before the end of communist rule.

During these years, his regime built 700,000 small concrete domes with rectangular slits all over the countryside of Albania. It is really bizarre how many there are. Constructed of concrete and iron, they were meant to be a bulwark against foreign invasion, and you notice them the instant you cross from Macedonia into Albania. Our guidebook says that some locals have tried to make them blend by painting them and putting plants on them, but we saw only randomly-placed, gray concrete domes all over the country. Because they were built to be indestructible--the engineer that designed the bunker was forced by Hoxha to stand inside the first one while it was shot at by a tank to prove it worked--they are not easily removed. Our book calls them an "indestructible reminder of a cruel regime." I'm sure, however, that the local high school students are just fine with 700,000 private hideaways.

One strange thing about Albania is the name. Most of the time, the translation of a country's name into other languages is very similar to its own phonetic pronunciation. For example, the country of Turkiye translates its name in English to Turkey, which is almost identical. Macedonia is the same in both languages. Albania in English translates to Shqiperse in Albanian (Shqip)....which I think you'll agree is very different.

In the spring of 1999, Albania was swamped with an influx of 465,000 war refugees from Kosovo. While initially a problem, the amount on international aid money given to the refugees has boosted the Albanian economy. We noticed a considerable amount of construction projects and renovation throughout the country, and it looked to us, without doing any research, that Albania is economically more prosperous than Macedonia.

Random notes:

• There are tons of Albanian flags (red with a black eagle) flown from the buildings. It seems quite patriotic here.
• We are back to Latin script, which is really much easier than Cyrillic because our maps are always in Latin script.
• Albanian music sounds like a cross between Romanian gypsy music and Jewish Klesmer music.
• Albanians do not use mozzarella cheese on their pizzas; they use gouda, which is really weird....and disappointing because it looks like a regular pizza but does not taste like one.

(Amber)

When we finally arrived in Tirana, we wandered pretty aimlessly looking for a hotel. We found one that had rooms, but it was more than we wanted to spend, so we moved on. This is always an exhausting aspect of getting to a new city....getting off a bus, strapping on our packs and random other things, and walking in search of a bed. Eventually, while walking back through the main square with no real plan in mind, an older man came up to us and said "hotel?"

We would normally blow an approach like this off, but we needed a hotel and were exhausted...and more importantly, we'd seen a real honesty and generosity in this region, and we trusted him. He spoke only two words of English, "hotel" and "Euros," and the rest of his pitch was done in sign language. He pointed to a big hotel and wrote 100 Euros on an old newspaper he had in his pocket. He pointed to himself and then wrote 20 Euros. So we decided to take a look.

We weaved through town, around back streets, through some dusty alleys, by neighborhood markets, bars, and fruit stands...and ultimately landed in his modest and small, but spotlessly clean, apartment on the fifth floor of a completely nondescript building where we rented Mr. Iliazi's second bedroom for the next two days.

(Matt)

One hilarious thing about Mr. Iliazi was that he wanted to be paid upfront. As soon as our bags were off of our backs in his apartment, he started saying repeatedly, "Euros! Euros!" I showed the man my empty wallet and left Amber there and went on a hunt around Tirana for a working ATM, one that had the Cirrus logo on it, which was harder than in most places. It took me 6 tries before I got money. Plus I had to go to a money exchanger and get the Euros that Mr. Iliazi was demanding. Then I got cute and took a "short cut" and got lost for a while. I was hungry and had needed a bathroom even before our bus arrived in Tirana. So I was out of my mind by this point.

Finally I found the apartment again. Iliazi was all smiles when I got back with the Euros. I, however, thought I was paying for 2 nights when I gave him 40 Euros, 20 Euros per night, and the next morning when we emerged from our room he was standing there and immediately exclaimed, "Euros! Euros!" with his hand out, and we had to spend that morning again trying to get them for the guy. Apparently we were charged 20 Euros per person per night instead or 20 Euros for the room. Oh well, it was still a lot cheaper than the hotel. They wanted 70 Euros per night.

Random notes:

• Albanian, when spoken, sounds a little like Italian to me, though it really shouldn't.
• Albania, like many countries we have been to, is all about copyright and trademark infringement of every kind. One case of trademark infringement in particular caught our eye because it was so hilarious. There is a restaurant in Tirana called Kolonat that, like restaurant McDowell's in the movie Coming to America, has ripped of every aspect of McDonald's except its name. The golden arches are there but are slightly broken apart into shards, like McDowell's golden arcs. There is the Big Menu that looks like a Big Mac, which is just like the Big Mick in Coming to America, which had "two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, and onions...on a bun with no seeds." Plus all of the colors at Kolonat are exactly like McDonald's, as are the employee's uniforms and all the fonts and the menu. We actually thought it might be McDonald's at first but then realized after a closer inspection that it was a McDowell's-style rip-off.
• Smoking in Albania is out of control. At internet places, they place ashtrays by the computers for their smoking patrons, which is everyone but us. Plus internet is expensive in Albania and, like Macedonia, too slow to upload pictures. [Note from the future: After being in Greece, which was $10/hour for both of us to use the internet in Corfu, we no longer think Albanian internet is all that expensive]

(Amber)

According to our guide book (not to mention several people we have met in Greece) the Western Balkans, and Albania specifically, is thought to be a destination for only the adventurous. The truth is that it is only visited independently by a handful of backpackers, and while it might take some patience and willingness to go with the flow, it's peaceful, and I wouldn't call it a place for adventurers only.

We have the added benefit of being able to completely blend in with the local population once we shed our backpacks, which is a first on this trip. When we have our packs on, however, we get the same kind of attention that we have grown accustomed to during the rest of our travels.

Because of its unfortunate legacies of communism that plagued it until about 23 years ago, not many tourists visit Albania. So for now you feel very much off the beaten track....in a good way.

Albanians trace their heritage to the Illyrians who occupied the western Balkans, Illyria, in the 2nd millennium BC, and flourished under the Greeks and Romans. When Rome fell, the ethnic Illyrians were forced south. In 1344 Serbia annexed Albania. Later Albania fell to the Ottomans in the 15th Century AD. Mussolini invaded Albania in 1939. Beginning in 1941 and continuing until 1992, Albania was a held under a communist regime. But just as they were ushering communism out, a privately owned nationwide pyramid scheme collapsed, and 70% of Albanians lost all of their savings. This lead to nationwide violence. Then in 1999, 465,000 refugees from Kosovo flooded the country, stressing its already fragile and dilapidated infrastructure.

However, the long-term effect of the refugee issue has actually been positive with increased international aid money pouring in and inflation dropping. Since 2002, Albania has seen a boom in construction projects and infrastructure, so what we have seen is complex....and wonderful.

It's a country with a rich and often turbulent history, one with extremely friendly people, and one with a beautiful landscape.

The food? Not so great. I'll go ahead and blow the ending by saying that Macedonia and Albania have both been highlights of our trip for me. We very randomly picked these places, and I'm so glad we did.

The Albanian landscape is gorgeous with pebbled beaches, blue seas (Ionian and Adriatic), and old villages tucked in beautiful mountains. Though the bunkers are eyesores, they remind you of how much this country went through during the 20th century.

So back to Tirana.....it's a city of about half a million people. It has pretty 1930s architecture, shady streets, a huge square featuring a pretty Mosque, tons of shops and cafes, and communist era block buildings that people have attempted to liven up with brightly colored paints. We've been to a number of other communist or formerly communist cities, and one thing you notice.....gray and square and dreary architecture. It's not the case here. Those buildings do of course exist, but there's been a widespread and concerted effort to beautify, and it shows.

We spent our days in Tirana wandering. On our second day, we literally walked for about 10 hours, largely trying to locate bus tickets to Gjirokastra. It's an interesting and lively city, and we really loved it.

Food included great pasta (there's a huge Italian presence here), unbelievable pastries (chocolate brioche at a French-owned bakery), and cheap and tasty rotisserie chicken. The good food in Tirana would not be repeated as we moved south and things got progressively less tasty and less interesting. And we also said goodbye not only to good breakfast...but to any breakfast. For those of you who know me, that's a terrible, terrible hardship....no breakfast. Unthinkable.

Perhaps to highlight the fact that Albania is still relatively new to the tourism arena, we actually had more trouble than we've ever had finding a bus ticket. I think sometimes when people are nervous about international travel, it's because they can't imagine how you get around without knowing the language. In general, it's really no problem. But in Tirana....getting a bus ticket was tough.

We walked for hours, spoke to at least five people (two of whom made calls for us), and when we really didn't know what else to do, a woman made a call (six actually) and found someone who could sell us a bus ticket. No one, including travel agents, knew where the buses were or how to buy tickets. Essentially, there's no central station. Buses leave from random places all over town. And all agents don't sell all tickets. Some sell some, and no one knows which some...or where!

So with a huge language barrier, in a city of half a million people, you have to find out which particular agent sells a ticket to your destination, go there....convince them to sell you a ticket...and then just pray that the bus picks up on the street that they told you. It was crazy. But again, so many people helped us when they didn't have to. So as exhausting as the hunt was, it helped us to not only see mile after mile of the city, it gave us even more respect for these very friendly and hospitable people. That being said, I think if Albania does ever become a more frequented travel locale, they're going to need to tighten it up a bit and try to make this a little easier.

As we walked out of the small office where we finally bought our tickets, Matt spotted something beautiful....a tiny movie theater. And it was showing a movie in English (with Albanian subtitles), that we wanted to see. It felt like a much-needed reward for persevering, not killing each other, and ultimately finding a bus ticket. We saw Charlie Wilson's War, which was wonderful and only the third movie we've been to in a theater since leaving home. After the movie, we grabbed dinner (half a rotisserie chicken each at a great hole-in-the-wall) and headed home to sleep and prep for a long day of travel tomorrow.

(Matt)

The highlights of Tirana for me were...

• Patisserie Francaise
• People being helpful and welcoming
• The large mural on the National Museum called Albania.

For photos of Tirana, click here: http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=8AatmbZk0ZtFIX8&notag=1