Shqiperi Doo Dah
Loading Map
Tirana,
Albania
Thursday, October 13, 2005
Albania, or Shqiperi as the natives call it, is a much maligned part of Europe. Everybody else seems to hate Albanians, especially Croatians, Serbs and macedonians. We have been asked why we would bother coming to such a poor country full of thieves and beggars. OK, so it is polluted, there are piles of rubbish in many areas, especially the countryside, loads of building work taking place, nobody speaks English, people really like to pick their nose in full view of others - really getting up there too, it is difficult to find out any information about anything, particularly transport, where buses leave from nowhere in particular and drop you off at a totally different, yet identically obscure location, people stare at you and those that try to ask you something want to know where you are from and ehy you are there, it takes a long time to cover a short distance due to poor roads.... in fact, we could be back in China, but with white people. For us, all this makes it a wonderful place to visit.
The similarities with China shouldn't come as a surprise, as once the Albanian communist rulers fell out with the Soviets in 1961 they aligned themselves with Mao and his chums until in 1978 even they moved on. Albania remained closed until 1991, and if we had travelled here before that time, we would have had our guide book confiscated at the border, would not have been allowed to wear short skirts (this would presumably only be a problem for women and Scots), and we may have been subject to a haircut by the border barbers. My unkempt mullet that is growing at the moment may have taken them some time to sort out.
Albanian facts for you:
1. The currency is called the Lek, one of my favourite currency names in the world, the other two being Kip (Laos) and Dong (Vietnam). The currency cannot be exchanged outside of Albania, in case you ever need to know that, but you get 180 Lek to the pound.
2. Water costs 50 Lek. The size of the bottle is irrelevant. Beer is 100 Lek.
3. There are around 700,000 concrete bunkers that can be found in the country. These sturdy things were built to fend off threat of invasion from abroad between 1955 and 1985, but the invasion never came. The then leader, Hoxha, wanted something that was totally bomb-proof, and the engineer that came up with the design was lucky enough to be invited to test the success of his creation. He was forced into one of his bunkers and a tank fired its cannon at it repeatedly. The engineer came out unscathed physically, but a little shaken.
Fortunately (actually, I did hope this would be the case...) we arrived in Tirana at 5pm on a Wednesday afternoon. At 6pm, Albania vs Turkey kicked off at the Qemal Stafa Stadium. After finding a place to stay we hurried to the stadium, ticketless, and with an Aussie bloke in tow. We met a line of police with shields and batons, and when they couldn't understand us they waved us through. Presumably we weren't the people they wanted to hit. The next cordeon wielded guns, and when we tried to ask for the ticket office they waved us up some stairs, and we were in for free! In the Turkish end.... Turkey are on a par with Germany when it comes to teams I support, but a few Albanians had snook in too, so we weren't totally overwhelmed. Just outnumbered about 100 to 1. Unfortunately, Turkey won 1-0, and when we tried to get out of the stadium they wouldn't let us. Just before we would have been there long enough for the baiting Albanian fans to throw things at us, they realised we were English so let us oue to enjoy a few Tirana beers on King Zog I Bulevardi.
Albania has a really nice feel to it - immediately we liked it, despite Tirana being Europe's most polluted capital in 2004 and a complete inability to communicate. So, why does nobody else in the region like it, and why does nobody come here?? The mayor of the city is an artist too, so many buildings are gaily painted, giving what would otherwise be a grey, dull city a nice colourful air. The national hero, Skenderbeg, whose statue stands in the middle of the main square, would surely approve.
