This is not Tirana. These are not my photos.

Koli Vercani took these photographs of Tirana and more like them that can be found here.
Koli Vercani has taken other great photographs of Albania that can be found here.

What’s Albania Like? 3.Very Central Tirane in Pictures.

There is a big space at the centre of Tirane, much more than a square though that’s what it’s callled. Skanderbej Square. That’s him on the horse. It was a building site when I was here in July and in October, it’s almost finished now. None of these photographs are very good but maybe together, and with the song below them, they convey some sense of just what a cracking place to be it is.

Hapagrup nr.3 Ilirian Pema performing live at Scanderbeg square in Tirana https://www.facebook.com/pages/Hapagrup/267354540004663 video by erandistic

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Women I Honour Today.

I posted for International Women’s Day today over at Stephen Barker Says.

BOGUJEVCI // HISTORI PAMORE was at the Galleria e Arteve in Tirane in Feb/Mar 2012, will go to Belgrade later this year and then hopefully to Manchester.

What’s Albania Like? A short walk on the edge of Tirane (with pictures).

A twenty minute bus ride, a cheeky lift and a short walk took us about 5K north-ish as the crow flies from the centre of Tirane, to Babrru on the very edge of the city. Detail of where and how to get there at page bottom.

From the bus stop we were drawn to take a look at a small mosque and almost immediately as we continued up hill from that we got good views over the city and toward the mountains. It was not clear where the new tarmac road might lead but we were assured it would take us to where we wanted to go.

A short distraction followed as we gave the once over to a totally rust-free 1992 VW T4. Shitet! Looked great, not sure about the price and online tittle-tattle says they are slow and thirsty. If you know any different please call.

The van owner ran us a few minutes up the hill to where the newish tarmac dried up and we wandered into the blurred edge of the city and surrounding countryside.

Albania is known for the 750,000 bunkers that Enver Hoxha’s regime scattered all over the country, to defend the adthe [fatherland] from imagined foes, and where they remain, like glitter on the face the day after the communist party. Most are a small, legendarily strong, pre-fab concrete mushroom that can be seen all over the place.

Others are more substantial, more interesting.

There are perhaps as many as ten of these cut into the hillside here.

The dairy (photo at top of page) was just below the line of bunkers (you can see one top-right) and the three women that work there were between milkings so they had a little time to chat. Twenty-five cows are milked three times a day, giving 15 litres a day each and being expected to calve 15 times. They were eating dry maize and being bedded on moist, fir-tree-smelling wood chippings, the straw from last summer’s harvest having run out by now.

There is never anything wrong with a nice cow picture. This one is a prize cow. Hence the natty headgear.

Passing by again on the way back later we bought a litre and a half of straight-from-the-cow milk – lovely it was – for 57p which is 17p less than milk in the shop here and 12p more than a British farmer would get for it. Hence the rise of the mega-dairy; if you want to know more about that, listen to The Archers.

We walked on and away from any homes along a path where a small old woman in a black dress was coping ably with the big bundle of sticks strapped to her back whilst the teenage boy in jeans with her loped alongside idly carrying nothing but the axe. Stereotypes huh.

Two ponies came our way and we came upon a pond with frogs guarding their spawn and newts swimming about. Not seen a newt for ages.

In part now the hillside was almost clear of the scrub that covered it elsewhere as preparations were made for the cultivation of grapes for red wine with a first harvest expected two years from now.

At the end of the cleared land we turned back rather than get lost in the scrub and retraced our steps back to the tarmac road. From here we took a left up towards the olive trees on top of a small hill that we had been able to see all afternoon. Five minutes later it was just before sunset as we sat amongst those trees with a view of all Tirane and way beyond in all directions.

Walking back down for the bus bats beat their way around the houses and the Moon and Venus shone in a clear, dark blue sky above the minaret of the mosque (more damn stereotypes).

We saw a dog sitting in front of the simplest of shops and we stopped in a couple of places for provisions (biscuits mainly).

With less traffic now the bus back into town only took 10 minutes.

Later in the evening someone, only half joking, called Babrru “that slum”.

Not the bit we saw.

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Where?

To see a google map of Brabbu and the spot from where we watched the sunset click here.

Getting there.

Take the Tirane – Babrru – Paskasqan bus from close to the Mosque on Skanderbeu Square or where the flowers are sold on the street behind that scruffy piece of land (where I’m told to expect to see a big mosque) behind Opera. They run every 20 minutes, it’s 20 minute journey in traffic and it costs 30 Leke. Then make an easy fifteen minute walk up the street with the pretty small white Mosque on it. There are good views over north Tirane and towards Mount Dajtit When the road drops down after maybe 1K there is the chance to turn left. Take it and within a few hundred metres you are in opening countryside.

Sunset over Tirane.

For the Olympic boaters amongst you … I posted something here.

I’ve been looking forward to this summer for ages, hoping that the London 2012 Olympics and Paralympics could turn out to be the boating event of the century given the location of the Olympic Park in relation to London’s waterways. 

Is it possible that far from being the boating even of the century, the London 2012 Olympics will mark a period when very few boats are on central London’s waterways?

More? … Click here

What’s Albania Like?

A lot of people ask me that. Forty odd years of mad-cap communist isolation threw a cloak over this particular corner of Europe such that despite its proximity to pretty well known Croatia, Italy and Greece, and even though the dictatorship ended over twenty years ago, Albania is still relatively unknown.

I wonder how many of us can even place Albania on a map with absolute confidence.

I’ve been here a month now on this visit, and just more than a month altogether on previous visits, so I know very little as yet. I’m going to start posting a few pictures and stories and see if they don’t add up over time to form some sort of impression of the place.

A few for starters then. What’s Albania like?

The idea of being able to get a late-night taxi from the same place you get a pizza is genius. It’s advertised, – Pizza Taxi – all over the place. You do so often want both at the same time and their clever co-ordination keeps the taxi fare down and the pizza hot. Then I learnt that ‘taxi’ means ‘delivery’.

If you don’t want your eggs to be coming courtesy of a battery hen you need to be seeking out and buying veze fshati, village eggs. The price of an egg is a good relative-economic-circumstances indicator and half a dozen of the factoried ones will set you back about 50p here. Veze fshati cost twice that price.

The architect of the communist dictatorship that ran from the end of WWII to five years after his death in 1985 was (Uncle) Enver Hoxha, a former teacher, sometime Tirane tobacconist and big fan of anti-revisionist Marxism–Leninism (aren’t we all?). He was originally buried in the Martyrs’ cemetery close to the statue of Mother Albania (Nuna Shqipari) but his body was moved in 1992 to Sharra cemetery where he’s buried, without grandeur, beside his brother and amongst his countrymen and women.

The large square in the very heart of Tirane has just been redesigned (using a loan provided by the Emir of Kuwait). The buildings around the main square include government offices, the National Museum, the Opera house and very lovely mosque. Lots of young trees have been planted. On the grassed area in the centre of this square that shares his name still stands the statue of the Albanian national hero Skanderbeg on his horse. At night the buildings are all well lit and the speed of the cars whizzing by is something to behold.

Tirane is a pretty new city. Durres, Albania’s second city (first village?) existed for 2200 years before Tirane. Even in the 1930s it was quicker and easier to cross the Adriatic from Durres to Bari in Italy than to travel inland to Tirane which only became Albania’s capital city in 1920. We made that sea crossing twice this week on an abandoned- due-to-snow-and-ice trip to France. The Adrea boat leaves Durres at 11pm and takes 9 hours. Two people can share a good cabin for less than 100 euros. One person with a car pays about the same. Bargain.

Albanians don’t say Albania, they say Shqiperi. And speak Shqip. (The q is almost silent).

Phew! What a Korce!

And we’re back.

It’s five months since the last post here which came from Tirane, Albania. Lots of lovely Albanian places were visited after Tirane but I kept them to myself during a self-imposed social media holiday.

Well, no more of that, because I’m back in Albania (for the 4th time in those five months) and this time it’s for an extended stay.

Tell people you’ve been spending time here and the most coming response is, “What’s Albania like?”. And that’s the thing; places that have previously closed themselves off to the outside world (as Albania did for 45 years or so under Enva Hoxha) remain, even twenty years after opening up, relatively unknown to many of us even when less than three hours and a hundred quid away.

So in the next few weeks I’m going to have a go at working out ‘what Albania’s like’ and I’ll be writing about it here and here (but not yet here).

If you’re interested keep reading. If you’re not there is loads of other stuff on the Internet to distract you from what you should really be doing – have a look at some of that stuff instead.

Still with me? Good.

What’s Korce like? In January it’s cold and snowy as well it might be 937m above sea level. It’s also very pretty, at least in the cobbled old town and on the main boulevards and on the tree lined paths and parks. At the end of most streets you can see a snowy mountain or two.

The bazaar is lively with lots of good looking fruit and veg on sale alongside a vast amount of cheese (Albanian fact 1 : cheese with almost everything). You can also take your pick of a good range of inflatable animals.

You can eat tasty traditional food at very reasonable prices (soup and steak at a slightly fancy place with wine for €7) and there are some new and pretty upmarket bars, restaurants and a smart boutique hotel. (You can pay €27 for a rib-eye steak at the place the President stayed the other night if you wish.) Summer might be the best time to enjoy the ones with extensive outdoor areas and even pools.

If I can find it I’m off to have a look at the museum of Mediaeval history (I’m in need of an icon fix) this afternoon before catching a French theatre company’s experimental video and performance piece at the freezing cold and somewhat run down theatre. That’s the real reason we’re here and the thing that will take us over the next few days to Elbasan, Vlore and Skhoder via Tirane.

Let’s see what they’re like.

Getting here : We came here by minibus from Tirane which takes about four hours (800 lek = €6). It’s a lovely trip coming via Elbasan and then climbing up towards Macedonia and skirting southwards the wonderful Lake Ohrid that I first saw from the Macedonian side as azure blue during the summer heat but which now shimmers with a wintry silver and reflections of the snow covered mountains all around. Still Europe’s best kept secret in my book.

Sleeping here : Hotel Anton is modern, clean, warm and friendly – all for €25 for a double.

Martin Parrthenon.

At the Galeria Kombetare e Arteve in Tirane, supported by the British Council, there is a three part exhibition by Martin Parr.

He came to photograph ‘Albania 1990′ and captured a country about to change. In his shots of city streets and schoolrooms, barber shops (full) and bread shops (empty) there is an absence of the bright colours that define modern economies; no product, no advertising, no packaging-to-attract. (Burma in ’95 was like that).

On the other side of the gallery ‘Common Sense’ is a wall of 270 non-Albanian photographs full of the processed-product brightness that was not in Albania in 1990 but which is very much here in Tirane now. It’s an exciting contrast.

In between these two, offering a neat challenge to the far from home viewer, is ‘Small World’ which looks at the to-see list commercialisation and human herding of so much of modern tourism; The Acropolis, the leaning tower, Vegas, Goa, Sun reading Brits on the beach.

Great stuff.

Ohrid? No, it’s lovely.

The ‘summer place’ of the Macedonians and a fair few others besides is Ohrid and its lake which straddles the border with Albania (I’m there now, in Tirane).

The old town with its winding streets, amphitheatre, churches, mosques and fortress is delightful in a way similar places sometimes just fall short of being. The new town is very lively; a folk dance and French film festival (both needing subtitles) are on now and the strip of beach, and beach bars, offers the Skopjan holidaymaker a quality getaway.

It’s the oldest and deepest (almost 300M) lake in Europe. It’s tectonic and a lovely azure (always azure isn’t it) blue (which is probably tortological). It’s about the temperature of a swimming pool but with the benefit of 30 degrees of sunshine.

I cycled 30k south along the eastern shore to a Monastery tourist trap stopping off at three beaches along the way and back. The best is on a big campsite which is not so busy right now as it’s a couple of weeks yet until the season gets into full swing. The nicest setting was in a small village accessed down a steep slope and steps where guest houses line the narrow shore. The third was at the bottom of a cliff, one of four small party beaches – often accessed by boat – that each deliver something different from the musical spectrum.

I’ve never heard of Ohrid. I’ve no idea why. It wipes the floor with a lot of places like it scenery wise, the weather can be very good, accommodation is cheap and a good two course meal with bottle of wine can be less than a tenner. Whizz Air have just started flying from Luton to Skopje which is a 3 easy hours away by bus making it a simple getaway possibility.

A few days here and a few in Skopje would be best because Skopje is great too.

Do come. You won’t be disappointed.