“If you visit a country for a week, you can write a book. If you visit for a month, you can write an article. If you visit for a year, you can write nothing at all.”
This is one of Travel writing’s oldest aphorisms. One AI search engine attributes it to Pico Iyer but different AIs disagree. After spending a week in Tirana I have enough impressions to fill a book. But when we first landed in Tirana in 1993 and my friend Anila asked me for my impressions after a week, I told her it was too soon to say anything. That was a wise decision.
My early letters from Albania are full of impressions, it was, and still is, sensory overload, but as I got down to work, I realized the contradictions inherent in my early observations. I was hoping to write a book when I got home after three months. But after reading “real” travel writers, who had been in Albania for a shorter time than I, I realized that they, whether they knew it or not, were confused. At least I knew I was confused.
Our second assignment in Albania, about a year later, lasted just under two years, I still didn’t know what to write. I have been back several times but this is my first trip back in 17 years. I am flooded with impressions, had reunions with people who had become dear friends but I have been putting off writing about Albania for two weeks. I am still processing.
On my first night in Tirana back in 1993 we went for a walk, Suzi and I repeated that walk just before sunset a little more than two weeks ago. Then I saw kids climbing to the top and sliding down Enver Hoxha’s pyramid. (Hoxha was the Communist despot who ran Albania from the 1944 to 1985.) And although the pyramid is no longer Enver’s, it has been remodeled and repurposed, there are still some smooth bits and kids are still sliding.
There is still a lively street scene with the evening promenade or xhiro (pronounced djee-ro, or in Italian the corso). The coffee culture, with its animated discussion, is still part of the Tirana Scene. And the evening call to prayer at the Et’hem Bey Mosque right off Skanderbeg Square is still mostly ignored.
Driving into Tirana from the airport nothing seemed the same. The Airport is completely different, and the city has developed right up to the runway. We didn’t drive through countryside. We did not see any bunkers, the last time we were here the landscape was strewn with them. We rode in on a six lane highway and when we got to Tirana, we approached from the west and not the northeast because the ring road had finally been completed so we avoided central Tirana.
The first building I recognized was the University building where I taught, then the US Embassy. So, we must be on Rruga Elbasan. A left turn and we I saw the Palace of Congresses, once the most modern looking building in Tirana, now not so much. Across the street was a skyscraper that turned out to be our hotel, built around the soccer stadium, which preserved its original façade but otherwise was completely transformed. We passed a double decker hop on hop off bus. I never thought I would see one of them in Tirana, let alone ride on one. (But we did.)
Bunkers used to be everywhere. Now they are hard to find. I saw exactly two “wild bunkers” in our week in Tirana. One near the airport on the way out of Tirana and one on the slopes of Mt Dajti when we went to dinner with a friend. The others were either museums, art installations (Bunkarts I and 2), an obstacle in a miniature golf course, or as part of a memorial in freedom square near the Bloc where Enver Hoxha lived. It’s part of a tryptic with a piece of the Berlin Wall and concrete supports from a mine in a prison labor camp.
The Hotel Dajti, where official guests were put up and where the American community had a weekly kvetching session, is now part of the national bank. Between the Tanner’s Bridge and our old flat is a huge new mosque built by the Turks. It is styled the largest mosque in the Balkans, but that can only be true if you think European Istanbul is not part of the Balkans. Our old flat is in the process of becoming an Air B&B with a rooftop garden, the big hole which we passed from our flat to Skanderbeg Square is filled in and is a park. The Stephen Center, an American Missionary Restaurant and the American community’s home away from home has closed and the circle along which it sat is dug up to create underground parking. The statue of the Partisan in the square is gone. No one can tell me if it will be put back when the underground car park is finished. For Friday prayers at noon the Et’hem Bey Mosque had spill over to what used to be a street but now is a pedestrian plaza where the mosque rolls out prayer carpet and has sunshade umbrellas. In fact, the whole of Skanderbeg Square is a pedestrian zone.
So, while Tirana looks like a modern and shiny European Capital, some things remain beneath the surface, like the old water pipes which still cannot carry potable water to homes. The water comes out of the plant clean but by the time it reaches the tap we are urged not to drink it. That is if it gets to the tap. Tirana still has water rationing, with water only at certain times of the day. When we lived there it was a problem. But today every building has either a cistern or rooftop tank, and pumps that make sure that you have a steady supply, providing your toilet does not keep running and the pump keeps working. Some of our friends found themselves without water while we were there. But unlike when we lived there, electricity seems to be reliable.
Tirana’s mayor is in jail, has been awaiting trial for 18 months. He is still trying to run the city and, as of now, plans to run for re-election from his cell. He is held on corruption and money laundering charges which came to light when his wife gave her old cell phone to a friend without wiping its memory clean first. Opps. Welcome back to Tirana.
