A Taste of Tirana
A bird’s eye view of Tirana
I congratulated myself on having survived the trauma of the drive to Tirana. Once His Lordship had found a parking space and I had checked that I still had my full complement of feathers, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the atmosphere in the city centre was totally laid-back. An oasis of calm after the motorway madness!
The first thing I saw when we wandered onto the main plaza was a familiar face: my old pal Skanderbeg. I should have guessed, of course. The main square just had to be called Skanderbeg Square. My favourite Albanian superhero looked to me as if he were trying to decide whether to head for the Opera House or the National History Museum. While he dithered on his sturdy mount, the Oldies made a beeline for the museum, no doubt attracted by the powerful communist style mosaic on the facade, imaginatively called ‘The Albanians’.
I’m not a great one for museums, to be honest. Too much sensory and data overload for my poor little bird brain at times. But I certainly remember the incredible collection of exquisite sculptures in the museum’s Pavilion of Antiquity. And I was pleased to see the old photos of Mother Theresa as a child and a young woman. I’ve seen hundreds of pictures, plaques and statues of her since I got here and it’s easy to forget that she wasn’t born a wizened, elderly nun.
I also sat up and took notice in the Communist Terror Pavilion, where clothing and personal items of people who had died or been killed in prison were on display. I think I’m going to have a hard time shaking off the memory of a pair of trousers I saw there. It was basically a patchwork of rags. I couldn’t make out a single piece of the original garment, just the dozens of ragged scraps of material, all sewn together with human hair.
The city is a hive of activity on the building front, with some amazing modern apartment blocks, hotels, office buildings and a seriously impressive football stadium going up all around the centre. There is an air of a work in progress, even the modern Orthodox cathedral in the city centre is as yet unfinished. It was nice to see that, just like in Durrës, the town planners are definitely not afraid of introducing a bit of colour.
I always love cities with plenty of green areas and in Tirana I enjoyed strolling through the parks and wandering past the elegant shops, restaurants and cafés in the shade of tree-lined streets and pedestrianised areas. In this well-to-do and relaxed atmosphere, it is sometimes hard to imagine how different life must have been during the old regime, only a few short years ago.
This sign reminded me of the Andy Warhol quote about everyone being famous for 15 minutes. In Tirana they certainly make it very easy for you. Pee here and the city will post the video on YouTube. Instant fame guaranteed!
In the middle of all the stunning new modern edifices shooting up around it, the Pyramid of Tirana, formerly the Enver Hoxha Museum, stands ruined and vandalised. The Peace Bell, hanging above a bridge in front of the Pyramid is a small but sobering memorial. I read that it was made from molten bullet shells collected by children after the civil unrest in 1997 which followed the collapse of the Ponzi pyramid schemes.
I’d have thought that Albanians would have had their fill of pyramids after all that, but apparently the citizens of Tirana have voted to keep the Pyramid rather than demolish it. Supposedly there are plans afoot to convert it into an IT learning centre for children. It would certainly be no harm to turn this eyesore with its unhappy past associations into something more positive and forward-looking.
I haven’t been in this country for long and I’ve already seen that Albanian hospitality is second to none. But it seems that these amazing people take hospitality to the level of heroism. In a city park, I came across a plaque honouring the Albanian people for having saved thousands of Jews – refugees as well as locals – from being deported to concentration camps during the Second World War. Indeed, Albania is the only country occupied by Germans which ended up with more Jews after the war than at the beginning.
The longer I am here, the more I like these people. In spite of their driving skills.
As we wandered around town, we stumbled across the Block. As in the Block Area where Hoxha and his honchos used to live during the communist dictatorship. At the time, it was apparently a no-go area for mere mortals – such as ordinary citizens. Today, in front of these exclusive villas, there are reminders of the ‘bad old days’ in the shape of a typical Albanian bunker, the framework of a mine shaft from one of the infamous forced labour camps and a section of the Berlin wall. Concrete evidence of hard times, in every sense.
By coincidence, just around the time we were visiting Tirana, Her Ladyship spotted this newspaper article covering the news that Hoxha’s villa is now to become a public space. It is to be preserved as it was when the dictator and his family lived there, but it will also be used to host functions that Hoxha would have hated, such as cultural and literary events.
Now, that’s what I call poetic justice!
