Tirana - city of cafes and dust
Trip Start
Aug 13, 2005
1
Trip End
Aug 21, 2005
Tirana,
Albania
Tuesday, August 16, 2005
I'm here for a few days to update the Tirana In Your Pocket guide, which was last done a few years ago. The franchiser of the guide runs a car rental agency too, so I hope to get a car and rattle around the country a bit to before I leave.
I visited once before, in 2003, as a tourist (possibly the only one in the country that summer) and it's clear to see the progress. Modern petrol stations (oddly, all with english-only signs reading 'unleaded' etc), ATMs that accept foreign bank cards (Albania's the last country in Europe to get these) and many good new buildings that make you forget about the dreary, crumbling blocks around the centre - even though many of those have been given a new appearance with completely random colour schemes.
Although there's improvement there are also enough problems in Tirana - there is rubbish strewn all over the parks and in empty lots, and only a few people seem to care. There are still plenty of mangy stray dogs.
The zoo is a collection of depressed animals in white-tiled square cells.
And the electricity is still not reliable, right now I'm hoping for it to come on again, and this is a Tuesday morning - many office employees are out having coffee, waiting.
The city only has a handful of sights; three museums, a mosque and a few pretty tekes (meeting places for a Muslim mystic sect that's based here in Albania), but it's the liveliness of the city in the evenings that makes it worth a visit. Thousands of people do the giro each night - walking up and down the main boulevards, having coffee and talking to the friends they meet along the way. The Bllok area (a few city blocks that were previously for Party members) is crammed with pavement cafes, bars and clubs and is noisy and fun. And the Albanians dress up seriously for the event too, looking quite glamorous.
