Tirana, a capital that is different from any other European city I have visited

It has been an intense four days since I left Lubbock, with much travel, lounge layovers, and already a first two nights in Tirana, and thus, Albania. I am starting to write this blog post while in the small van that will transfer me to Lake Ohrid, where my cycling tour will start in just a few hours. Originally I hadn't planned to update the blog until well into the trip, but my 36 hours in Tirana warrant a separate post before I start my cycling trip.

I arrived at the Mother Theresa Airport, as TIA is locally known, on time around six o'clock on Tuesday afternoon, coming in from London on a comfortable BA flight. (I had been able to use miles to buy a Business / First Class ticket for pennies, barely leaving a dent in my mileage account.) A driver from Cycle Albania was supposed to transfer me to my hotel in the city center, but when he hadn't shown up after 15 minutes I made a call to the tour organizer. Apologetically he told me that there had been a problem and to just take a taxi and he'd reimburse me.

An hour later I was at the Tirana International Hotel, once the tallest building in Tirana with its 15 stories of Soviet-era ugliness. At night one doesn't realize the stark contrast to the surrounding buildings, some of which are just now in the process of being built. Right behind the Tirana International the ultra modern InterContinental is seeing its finishing touches; both have the same owner.

After two days of travel I really should have put my head down and gotten some rest, but isn't that what lie-flat seats on a 777 are all about? And indeed, I had slept for almost five hours during my Atlantic crossing. I had chosen my hotel for its central location on Skanderbeg Square (of course, I also parlayed a great Qantas.hotel.com promo into something advantageous 😊), and from here the city was open to me. Those who have followed me know that my obvious choice for a spot for a bite and a drink is a microbrewery, and Mr. Google directed me to the taproom of Pan's Brewery, one of the very few such establishments that seem to exist in Tirana, maybe just one. With two nice IPAs on tap there was no reason not to linger and make this brewpub number 570 in now 28 countries.

By chance, a woman my age from Michigan with whom I had chatted before boarding the flight from London happened to sit at a nearby table; with her were another four Americans, all of them here for guided e-Bike tours! Cyclo-tourism in Albania seems to be booming. We had a lively conversation about and around bikes, and this was only enhanced when a handful of young Dutch fellas (here to have a "good time," not to ride bikes) started to throw in their comments as well. What a fun evening!

It may seem like an eternity ago, but it was just yesterday that I started my first full day in Albania by looking from my 11th-floor window down upon the immense Skanderbeg Square. The entire area is a car-free zone, with pedestrians, bikes, and e-scooters sharing the more than 430,000 sq. ft. of smooth pavers. Skanderbeg (named after the country's beloved hero, whose real name was Gjergj Kastrioti and who lived in the early 15th century, abducted as a child by the Ottomans and rising to national hero by using his martial skills to keep the Turks at bay for as long as he lived—in other words, a real mother fucker!) was not created until the early 20th century, after the Communists had been ousted (or had closed shop, however you want to see history), during a period when Albania was in complete and utter freefall! You may want to Google Kastrioti as his story is truly remarkable.

Had it not been for a walking tour that I joined yesterday afternoon, led by an early middle-aged tour guide with a master's degree in history and numerous certificates as a top national tour guide (you may want to go back to my post about my guided hike in Guatemala with a young man who was following the same path to understand the importance of these certs), I wouldn't have come to understand Tirana in more than just a very cursory way. It was in November of 1989 that the Berlin Wall (an actual piece is memorialized in Tirana, see pic) finally fell, and the events right before and right after will forever be a whirlwind of history. At the time I was properly ensconced in Texas, with a local news network that is cartoonish and laughable. How otherwise could people in their right minds put any credence in the political exclamation points of the man with the Trumpet? Even back then, in '89, we got 2-minute blips of what was happening on the other side of the world, just to be preempted by yet another blip, the Exxon Valdez running aground off Alaska and of course the US invading Panama to get rid of ol' scarface, Manuel Noriega.

Remember all that? That's the time when Albania suddenly woke up from its long sleep, this long period imposed by Communist rulers who didn't give a single cent about the people they had come to control after World War II and whom they milked (and tortured and killed) for everything they had. Yes, they simply shot them. Dead. Shot. Dead. Estimates list 100,000 people were extinguished.

Sheepishly, I have to admit that I knew about some of this, but not much and certainly not the extent of the damage that it did to this country. Rulers of countries are vicious; it is not the people they rule. There was nothing wrong with the German people after WWI; there was everything wrong with Adolf Hitler. There's nothing wrong with North Koreans; there's everything wrong with Kim Jong-Un. There's nothing wrong with the Israeli people; there's everything wrong with Benjamin Netanyahu.

On our tour we saw several bunkers; there are an estimated 750,000 of them, about six of them every 15 square miles, and mind you, this place is mountainous and empty! Who knows how much it cost to build them when the cost to remove them is estimated around $800 or so each now. If interested, Google this topic. While using Wikipedia, check out Enver Hoxha, the 40-year-Communist leader of the country who—thanks to massive support from his red brethren in the Kremlin—kept Albania as isolated as North Korea is now, if not more so. It all suddenly stopped for Albania in 1989, yet North Korea is still closed off from the world! Just five years ago a sitting American president met with the dictator who rules this Asian country with a triple iron fist and praised him in his yellow-haired kind of adulation. And there are people in the US who want to vote for this person? Look at Albania, please.

Our tour guide told us about how things changed when the Iron Curtain suddenly came down. He talked about the mundane things:

• "We didn't know what to do with bananas. We tried to peel them like cucumbers. We didn't know what they were."
  
  
• "I had never had a chewing gum. The first I just ate, but it was difficult to swallow. The second, I had in my mouth for many hours. Then I put it in a glass of water for the next day."
  
  

He told us about the House of Leaves, where the equivalent of the KGB kept records of everyone. Nobody was safe. Friends spoke about friends, husbands denounced their wives, fiancées never trusted their lovers. We really can't imagine it. We have no idea.

As most of you know, I am an atheist. It would make me a bad person if I denied anyone the right to worship her or his deity. The Communists moved in and eradicated it all. That's why you can find essentially no old mosques or churches. Nada—all destroyed, and all the imams and priests killed, after being tortured to implicate others. Pretty sick. Most mosques are probably less than 45 years old. Nowadays, Albania is a majority Muslim country (around 60%), with about 25% to 30% orthodox Christians and the rest Catholics (plus some fringe groups). According to our guide, Albanians have more religious holidays than any other country on Earth because the members of the three main religions live in such harmony that everyone shuts things down for any religious holiday. Catholic churches next to mosques next to orthodox churches, and nobody gets pissed off at the others. Wow.

There's more to the story, and as so often happens, part was eaten up while trying to edit on the phone. I know I shouldn't but sometimes I have to. Look, Tirana is a different place: The architecture is weird and wild, people speak way less English than you'd think, boatloads of chics from the European Union (and other, more easterly parts) are arriving to party, increasing numbers of older EU folks are arriving because it is the new in place, after all. It is a European capital, but it is one so amazingly different, so somber yet exuberant, an old, no, ancient nation with a new, bright, youthful face. That was my first impression of Tirana, and will be interesting how I will perceive the rest of this nation during the next ten days.

Jürgen