Tirana - A Young Capital
I did not expect to enjoy Tirana. I thought it would be one of those big, chaotic, dirty, polluted capital cities that you just can’t wait to get out of. I figured one night there would be more than enough. Like many places you have to go through the capital to get to most other places. It turned out to be much more interesting and manageable than I expected.
Olditmers singing and playing music near main square
Before we got here a European couple we met in a restaurant referred to Tirana as a “young” capital and by European standards it is young. It become the capital in 1920. Mostly because of its central location. It feels new and like it is still trying to figure out who it is. In many ways it remained me more of a large city in a less developed country, than a European capital. Except it had some of the aspects of Europe, like low violent crime, pubic transportation that works, cafes every where and clean bathrooms, that I appreciate.
Used books for sale by the river:
Today you can feel and see the vestiges of Albanian style Communism contrasted with the growth and surge in capitalism since the fall of Communism. Every thing looks modern. The communists did not leave much of the past around. They loved big things, big sculpture, big building, big bold statements.
This pyramid was going to be in honor of Enver Hoxha the dictator. It has been abandoned, never opened for that purpose. No one had anything good to say about him.
We went on a “Free” walking tour and got an excellent education on the recent, since WW11 history of Albania as well as the growth of Tirana. We learned that all the communist sculptures were taken down and some destroyed. The photos below are of a few saved behind the art museum, way out of sight unless you know to go there.
Being in Albania and other Eastern European countries and especially meeting and taking with people here has given me a different understanding of communism. It played out very differently from country to country, but there are similarities besides the architecture. People my age often had less opportunities. Spying on each other was a very real experience for many people and led to trauma that these cultures will be dealing with for a very long time.
The Bunker museum above, in Tirana illustrated the reality of spying on each other and labor camp/prisons, some said to be the equivalent of concentration camps, that existed in Albanian. Much of this we know next to nothing about because the country was so closed off to the rest of the world for so long. How the country deals with these past traumas will probably decide a lot about how it grows and develops in the future.
There is only one older mosque left in Tirana. In the 1976 the party of the dictator, Enver Hoxha, declared Albanian the first atheist country in the world and made all religions illegal, destroying many mosques and churches. Today people are eager to rebuild and practice their right to observe whatever religion they want. There are various forms of both Christianity, the Orthodox Albanian church probably being the largest, and Islam now having a resurgence. That said we did not meet many devout people of any religion in our travels.
One night here did not really feel like enough. If I come back I will take more time to explore the capital. But we went on to a very different city and UNESCO World heritage site, Gyrokaster.
