2022 in Albania (Tirana)

October 7, 2022 : the Balkan bus tour brought me to Albania (Albanian: Shqiperi)

I first entered the country via Shkodër, in the northern part of the country. The bus then drove south to the capital city of Tirana:

"earlier hints of Albania"

I first heard of Albania in the 1990s while reading the "world book":

• told of how Albania was a "closed land" and "hard for outsiders to get in"
• also once saw a clip of The Simpsons (from 1990) that had an Albanian
  • at the time, Albania was still under Communism!

"fast forward"

fast forward more than thirty years later:

• found myself crossing the border from Montenegro to Albania
• hints of a Cold War still lingered, as many gray, stone bunkers would show up beside the highways
• however, upon coming to Tirana, it all looked so "up-and-coming"
  • new buildings springing up like beanstalks
  • crowds were young and looked like they had somewhere to go
  • folk songs played in Skanderbeg Square, the main meeting hub of the Albanian mainstay

sights of Tirana

• Skanderbeg Square
  • the must-see main meeting hub
  • a big "mural" at the National History Museum
    • was getting fixed fixing in 2022 so they showed a mere lookalike
• Resurrection of Christ Orthodox Cathedral
  • a great newly built hub of worship
• 4ever Green Tower
  • a bright green stone steeple-like building
    • opened in 2022 only a few weeks before
    • across the street from the RCOC
• Independence Memorial
  • a new craftwork of two big flat stones
• Bunk'Art 2
  • an underground craft house in a Cold War stone bunker shaped like an upset bowl
• The Cloud
  • an outdoor craft made of some hard stuff looking like the outline of a great new building
• Friendship Monument
  • marking a friendship between Albania and Kuwait
    • another outdoor craft that gives some food for thought

"free time"

after a brief sightseeing walk, we had about two hours of free time to wander around:

• withdraw some Albanian lek (the "local currency")
• ate the midday meal at "Tirana Fried Chicken" (somewhat of a gimmick)
• walked around on own and found The Cloud and the Friendship Monument as said above

"learning Albanian"

Albanian words learned in my short time there, merely taking heed to the "signs" and markers:

• hyrje = "entrance"
• dalje = "exit"
• rruga = "street"

Albanian has roots in Proto-Indo-European (as with English) but it sounds like an other-worldly and, though written in Latin, has a one-of-a-kind look to it!

"leaving Albania"

the trip went on towards the southeast:

• went through Albania's second biggest town of Elbasan, with some tall bridges (such as Ura e Bushtricës) going over the steep landscape
• stopped over at a shop to buy some food on-the-go and saw something that looked like a "stand 2 metres aside" sticker on the ground in Albanian, Macedonian and Turkish (with no English)