If someone were to ask me why they should visit Albania, the very first thing that I would tell them about is the land. Albania lays claim to a gorgeous piece of this planet with some of the most beautiful beaches, mountains, and rivers that I have ever seen. A trip here would be worth your time if only to see the southern coast along the Ionian Sea, the Dinaric Alps in the north (see blog banner), or Mount Nemercke as it rises nearly vertically out of the Vjose River Valley-- just to name a few.
I'll talk about those things in good time, but for Behind the Boot's first edition of the Albanian Travel Guide, I'm going to start in a completely different realm. In a country full of quiet villages, lonely mountains, and meandering shepherd paths, we'll be starting with the noisiest, liveliest, most crowded, most traffic choked place in the entire country:
Tirana. The capital and largest city in Albania.
I should begin this by saying that I am hardly an authority on the subject. If you were seriously planning a trip here, there are many other people that you could talk to that would serve as much better guides for this city than I. I wouldn't go so far as to say that I avoid Tirana, but I don't exactly seek it out in my free time, either.
Despite this relative lack of familiarity and my preference for other places in Albania, I have decided to start here for a couple of reasons. One is that a trip to Albania without a stop in Tirana would be, in some strange way, incomplete. England without London. France without Paris. Turkey without Istanbul. A visitor's experience in a country is shaped as much, or more, by its people than the land that they live in, and when a country has one city that towers above all the rest in terms of size, power, and cultural influence, it is worthy of a visit if only to allow you to better understand the currents running underneath the people of the country. With one-third of the population of Albania living in it and a wealth of ideas that I will address shortly, thus is Tirana.
Secondly, in the process of establishing the order in which I'll present the destinations in this guide, I decided that it would be best to actually have a logical order, as opposed to randomly picking and choosing at my passing whim. Therefore, we'll stage these destinations as though they were listed on a travel itinerary. Seeing as how Albania has precisely one airport for your avionic entering and exiting pleasures, it seemed that this would be as good of a place as any to start. Tirana, your number has been called once again.
So we begin.
I must admit that my first impressions of Tirana were not overly favorable. By nature, I tend to gravitate towards situations and places that are quiet, calm, and relaxing. Tirana is precisely none of these. Walking through the city is an experience in sensory overload. You are assaulted from all sides by the noise of traffic and construction and loud conversation. Bobbing and weaving through the crowded sidewalks may seem like a trying task, but eventually that sidewalk ends and you are then confronted with the even greater challenge of crossing a street. If your American sensibilities wait for said street to clear itself of traffic before you cross, your progress through the city will effectively end at your first major road. Instead, you must simply wait for a small gap in the closest lane of traffic and then strike confidently out onto the road for a true to life game of frogger.
I don't mean to throw around super technical language on this blog, but as someone who has studied urban growth and development and plans to make a career in the field, I can confidently say that Tirana suffers from the condition of “too big for its britches.” In layman's terms, that means that the population growth of the city has outpaced the infrastructure expansion needed to support it. Twenty years ago, the city had a population of about 300,000 people. When communism came to a close and the people of Albania were finally free to move about the country at their pleasure, Tirana quickly assumed the (domestic) role of “land of opportunity.” It offered jobs and better schools and entertainment and the people came in droves.
Today, the population of the city reportedly hovers around the one million mark. While growth on that scale brings with it many opportunities, it also brings many challenges. It was a very dense growth that saw two story homes leveled and then replaced by high rise apartment buildings-- the new residents of which used the same infrastructure that was available before. Where you had one person using the garbage bin on the corner, you now have three. One person on the roads and buses and in schools and parks in the neighborhood is now three. It is possible to do dense growth well, but it takes lots of planning and resources and, quite simply, the city of Tirana has not always had those things at its disposal. They are doing much of that work now, but it seems like a perpetual game of catch-up.
Throw on top of all of that the oppressive summer heat, the dust, and the (relatively) high price tag attached to just about everything in the city and you have the reasons why I felt a profound sense of relief as I watched the city retreating behind me at the conclusions of my first few visits.
It also was the reason why I couldn't help but feel slightly confused when I heard Albanians (especially young Albanians) throughout the country speak so reverently of the city. At first, I attributed it to their desire to fit in with the greater European community. Albanians are surrounded-- on the internet, on TV, in newspapers-- by stories and images of life in the west. Things aren't terrible here, but there is an unmistakable gap separating Albania from the cool and refined European world that they keep in their minds.
The gap still exists in Tirana, but it is smaller there than in most places in the country. The skyline is dotted with tall, shimmering office buildings. Shopping malls and mega-stores are appearing on the periphery of the city. Nightclubs and bars stay open late into the night and are filled with live music and dancing. You won't be fooled into thinking that you are in France or Germany or England, but it doesn't really feel like Albania either.
As time has gone on, however, I've come to realize that it isn't just the glitz and the glamor that built Tirana's reputation. Underneath the lights, there are also ideas and an energy you rarely find in other places in this country. The signs are so subtle and familiar from an American's perspective that I didn't fully appreciate them at first. After some time and separation from the world that I once knew, however, I began to see them.
You see the people running (Lots of people say they run in Albania, but what they usually mean is that they go for brisk morning walks. In Tirana, though, they are really running! Like two-feet-off-the-ground-at-the-same-time running!) in the park. Dogs come in two varieties: stray AND domesticated. Restaurants boast crazy ethic themes like Mexican and Chinese. Bikes are available for rent within the city. And then you get to fashion and decoration.
A walk through a high school or college in America can itself be a lesson in social dynamics. As each person there pursues their interests and works their way into their social groups, they take on a certain look that reflects that personality. The jocks. The preps. The skater punks. The country boys (and girls). The music dorks. The hippies. And on and on and on. This idea of individual expression is so pervasive in our society that, to some extent, businesses seem to market themselves especially towards some of those groups. You have the cozy but dingy local bars. The posh clubs for high society. The frat and sorority bars. The good ol' boy dance halls. The super-granola vegetarian restaurants and hookah bars.
It is something that you subconsciously notice and base your decisions on when you are in America but like anything that surrounds you every day, it doesn't seem remarkable.
Then I came to Albania. I'm sure that Albanians have their own opinions of my dressing habits (how could you dress so... so... simply? Have you no self respect?), but from my perspective, just about everyone here dresses alike. The boys have white shoes or flip flops, tightish jeans with lots of zippers or capris or plaid shorts, tight shirts that are either striped or have BIG WRITING that SENSE NO CHIPMUNK MAKE, and short, highly flammable... I mean finely sculpted... hair. The girls, on the other hand, walk/teeter around on 4 inch heels, and wear tight jeans or skirts, tight tops with low cuts, are highly made up, and have big, also highly flammable and usually artistically styled hair. And they have sparkles. Everywhere.
Everyone looks good in that sense that they are cleaned and groomed have taken the time to make themselves look show worthy, but everyone also seems to be looking at the same Italian fashion magazines for ideas. The same can be said for the cafes and bars. (The two merge into a single entity in Albania: the lokal. I would feel strange walking into a bar in America and ordering a coffee, or into a coffee shop to order a beer. Here, however, if you don't have both, you are a very strange exception.) First, you must understand that these cafes are everywhere in Albania. I haven't taken an official head count in Pogradec, but I'm guessing that there are probably in the neighborhood of 100, if not more. Of the thousands that likely exist in this country, however, about 90% of them can effectively be categorized in one of three groups.
The first is the man bar: White walls, simple wooden or metal tables, minimal decoration. The second is the Lotosport. Similar to the man bar, but the walls are covered in TVs that are showing soccer games and a couple of screens showing the betting lines for all the sporting events the world over. And finally, the third is the swank modern Euro cafe. Cushy furniture with highly design upholstery. Nice wooden or wrought iron tables. Shiny metal ash trays. Bright colors. Modern abstract art. Recessed lighting. Really, nicer than the vast majority of coffee shops that you'll find in America.
What does all of that have to do with Tirana, you ask? Well, the same basic rules apply in that city, but you see many more exceptions to the rules. It is not uncommon to see someone that has noticeably different fashion tastes-- a little artsy, a little sporty, a little goth. And the bars and restaurants follow the same patterns- you can find quiet wine bars with books on the walls, beer gardens with fun outdoor wooden patios, small, poorly lit neighborhood bars with eclectic wall paper and decorations. In a word: variety.
I don't want to speak as though I truly understand all of what this country has gone and continues to go through, but this seems to be a new direction for modern Albania. Variety certainly didn't happen (wasn't allowed) under the fifty years of iron-fisted communism. When the country reopened in the early 90's, I imagine that people realized that their culture was different than most of Europe but weren't sure what the next steps of change should be. They adopted the fashion tastes of their neighbors in Italy and Greece, but in some way, it almost comes across as a caricature of those fashions. The look is about the same, but it comes without the same attitudes and ideas and culture that accompanies them in the places where they originated.
Albanians are very proud to be Albanian, but they seem to still be figuring out what to make out of Albania itself. It's home and therefore loved on some level, but they are very conscious that it doesn't quite look and feel like the world that they imagine they should be part of themselves. It never is a bad thing to look towards others for ideas and direction, but ultimately I hope that they find the answer for where they want to go within themselves. From an outsider's perspective, that is one of the main things that I look forward to seeing in Albania in the future: a culture and fashion that is distinctly Albanian and proud to be so, rather than one that takes pride in it one moment and seemingly apologizes for it the next.
That's what I think you can see emerging in Tirana. It is a place where Albania is growing comfortable in its own skin and trying out new and different things. I realize that this entire ramble of mine may seem very superficial, but these are just the outward expressions that you can see while walking around the city. Advancing at an equally impressive rate are the ideas that you can find there, be it for environmental protection, women's rights, business development, education, or any number of the issues that come to the forefront as a country is developing. There is an entirely separate discussion that could address the frustrations that come from the fact that the leaders of Tirana (public and private) often fail to see beyond the borders of their own city to consider how these issues are affecting the country as a whole, but the very fact that they are being talked about and acted upon at all is encouraging. As goes Tirana, so goes the country, and overall I think that the direction is exciting.
Now then. What can you actually do in Tirana?
The Block- During communism, there was a quarter of the city that was restricted to Enver Hoxha and his leading cronies that is affectionately referred to now as “The Block.” The streets are shaded with very nice trees and the architecture has a richer feel to it (except for Hoxha's actual house. A sad monstrosity of modern architecture if I've ever seen one). Today, the Stalinists are gone have been replaced by the best of the west. The irony is delicious, and so is some of the food. The neighborhood is filled with restaurants (including most of the ethnic restaurants I mentioned previously) and clubs and bars. Several universities are located nearby, so the crowd is always young and energetic.
Mount Dajti- Tirana is located on the far eastern edge of Albania's coastal plain where it meets the high fortress of mountains that mark the interior of the country. A national park was created on one of these neighboring mountains that you can reach by road or by gondola. It is a popular place for a break from the summer heat or a taste of snow in the winter. The view of the city is supposed to be fantastic as well. And don't worry... you'll have a nice selection of lokals waiting for your wining and dining needs at the top.
Museums and Theaters- The national art gallery, history museum, stage and opera theaters are all located in Tirana. Information regarding shows or displays can be tricky to come by, but I've heard that most of the productions are quite enjoyable.
The apartment buildings- Albania is still full of communist style block apartments and Tirana is no exception. The previous mayor of the city is an artist and started a movement to paint pictures and designs on the walls of these buildings to break up some of the monotony. I wouldn't go so far as to call them artistic murals, but it is still something that is fun to pay attention to as you wander around the city.
Kruje- Kruje is actually a small city that is entirely separate from Tirana, but it is a common day trip for visitors to the capital. The city has a well maintained castle that still has residents inside. The main road to and into the castle is lined with vendors selling crafts and other traditional hand made products. Touristy, yes, but I've heard nothing but good about it.
I'm sure that there is more to do there, but that's about where my knowledge comes to a close. So there's that. Tirana in an vague and abstract nutshell. What more could you ask for? Next month, we'll head to the beach!
