A Nevada Yankee in King Zog's Court

An Ozzy in Albania

2012-01-25T11:31:00.000+01:00

Despite a double-barreled last name and the alarmist tone of this article that overstates the danger and the absurdity in Albania, I have to tip my hat to this gentleman who is currently relating tales of travel. A witty style, keen observations, and a sly, backhanded manner of compliments make for good reading. He had me hooked when he described a fellow furgon traveler as "an old man who looks exactly like Dobby from Harry Potter.

... and he does!

What A Difference A Decade Makes

2012-01-23T21:47:00.001+01:00

Twelve years ago when I arrived for the first time at Rinas Airport in a driving, cold December rain, if you had asked me to complete the sentence "Tirana Airport - an unlikely ...?", I might have said:

"... place for aircraft to land."
"... destination for travelers with a choice."
"... amalgamation of decay, sloth, and corruption masquerading as a transportation hub."

Yeah, it was that bad. The runway had been recently repaved to handle the heavy aircraft involved in NATO's mission to support the war in Kosova, but once the SwissAir plane trundled off the main landing strip, it was back to the sixties. The surface was composed of six-sided slabs of concrete place in reasonable proximity to one another. Taxiing at any speed above a slow dog-trot produced percussive rhythm that can only be replicated by a bad impression of some good scat-singing: "Takita, tak, tak, pap, pap, chunk, chunk, kechop, kechop, kechow!"

And that was the good part.

Once off the plane, the ramshackle bus delivered me to a terminal building that, to put it politely, had seen better days. Surrounded by packs of stray bitches with pendulous teats, the arrival terminal reeked of neglect. One door led to an arrival hall which made a phone booth seem spacious. I shouldered my way past the clog of arriving passengers to see if I could identify the best way out of a bad situation. There were two booths for immigration and customs clearance. Once was for Albanian citizens, the other for foreigners. I pushed toward the foreigners line, hoping to make some progress among the surging mass of humanity that pressed in all around.

I'd be less than honest if I didn't admit to traveling with a diplomatic passport at the time. A swarthy gent with a safari vest which barely concealed the Beretta in his waistband shouted at me, "Amerikan?' I waved my passport in response and he physically dragged me through the scrum at the immigration booth. On the other side was a concrete cell block where were a ragged hole in the wall substituted for the baggage conveyor belt we spoiled Westerners are used to. As my suitcases were unceremoniously chucked through the hole, I pointed them out. My minder shouted at a local porter who snatched them up. Once all the bags arrived, my newly appointed guardian bundled me and my bags into a waiting armored SUV, turned to me, and loudly proclaimed, "Welcome to Albania!"

It's not like that anymore. Hasn't been for years. Now, arrivals in Tirana number in the millions and pass through a thoroughly modern terminal. A slick glass and steel facade greets travelers as they are deposited by kneeling buses at the gate. A spacious immigration area awaits inside with booths clearly marked and manned by professional border police officers equipped with the most modern of electronics. You enter a queue, by itself a huge advancement for Albania, and when you arrive at the booth are quickly processed.. Passport scanned in a flash. Unbeknown to you, your details are flashed to the Albanian Police and Interpol for a check against the most current wanted persons databases.

Once through, the baggage claim area is clean, efficient, and open. Exit customs and you are greeted by olive trees and masonry that reflects traditional Albanian construction techniques. A thoroughly enjoyable airport experience.

That could explain the phenomenal growth of air traffic in Tirana. Year after year the number of airlines serving the city has increased. Passenger numbers have mushroomed. Less than three years after the new terminal was opened, it was expanded by 5,000 square meters to accommodate traffic volumes. Where once there were four intrepid airlines that dared make the inbound flight, there were now more than 15 battling for supremacy. The winner so far has been Belle Air, the cut rate Italian operation that serves the needs of all the Albanian immigrants in Italy.

That said, I was quite surprised to learn the airport was due for another expansion this year. The volume of passengers has reached the capacity of the terminal to handle and another extension was needed to keep up with traffic. Which leads to a headline that answers the question originally posed: Complete this sentence: "Tirana Airport - an unlikely East European success story." And it is!

A Beautiful Stranger

2011-11-09T08:17:00.000+01:00

Is it a sign of something special when a New Zealander finds your country fascinating? I'd say if you have people from the country where "The Lord of the Rings" was filmed impressed, you must be doing something right.

Gearing Up for Next Year

2011-11-04T09:12:00.000+01:00

Daytime temperatures have yet to dip below 20 degrees as summer continues to cling to Albania and the tourist press is already touting the country as "the best bargain vacation destination." Check out this gentleman's take on Frommer's recent rating. He starts out with:

“… I had never been there before and I knew nothing about it, and neither did anyone else,” Paul Theroux wrote of Albania in 1995 in The Pillars of Hercules. “… here on the most heavily beaten path in the world, the shore of the Mediterranean, it was still possible to travel into the unknown.” Still remote, Albania – for 40 years the most isolated country in communist Europe – is blooming.

To me, Theroux's blank slate is the best way to approach your first trip to Albania. You'll never be disappointed if you don't build your expectations. You'll also be directly observing the country rather than looking to confirm the things you've "learned" before you arrive.
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Parrullat (Slogans)

2011-08-18T16:25:00.000+02:00

A catch phrase. An advertising jingle. A right-wing talking point. The rote recitation of prayers over worn rosary beads. All serve the same function of constantly reminding us of what the dominant forces in our societies want us to retain. To internalize. To accept without question. It's a frighteningly effective technique that touches us all.
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Don't agree? What comes to mind when I say, "You can take Salem out of the country, ...?" If you are an American of a certain age you most certainly finished the phrase with, "... BUT, you can't take the country out of Salem!" And you probably put a lot of stress on the "but" part of the jingle, just as it was originally sung back when it was still legal to advertise tobacco on American TV. Granted, these light-hearted rhymes used to encourage us to buy smokes, or cereal, or B-O-L-O-G-N-A don't seem all that important, and certainly not sinister. Move to the realm of political or governmental sloganeering and the power of these phrases begins to emerge.

These Guy's Slogan Must Have Been: "Get Your Sh*t Straight!"

"Uncle Sam Wants YOU!" "Loose Lips Sink Ships!" Powerful phrases which stir deep emotions even in those of us who weren't alive during WWII. Governments know the power of slogans and, when they really have nothing else to offer their citizens, they excel in the art. Albania was a classical example of that under communism.

There is a great film entitled "Parrullat" (Slogans), made by Gjergj Xhuvani which illustrates the extent to which this obsession with slogans extended to under Hoxha's regime. A commenter on the IMDB website summed up the movie very well:

Slogans' is a wry and entertaining commentary on the excesses of Communist Albania in the early 1970s. Andre, a new biology teacher posted to a school in a remote mountain village, soon finds the staff and students there to be far more concerned about the upkeep of the Communist slogans they have depicted on the surrounding hillsides in large white stones than the Three Rs. Failure to devote one's full time to this endeavour will supposedly earn the wrath of district party officials, although as the film progresses, it quickly becomes clear that the village itself seems far more obsessed with the task than the rarely seen bureaucratic overlords themselves, and failure to uphold the zeal for rearranging the stones becomes ammunition for the true believers to engage in witch hunts against anyone they have personal grievances. Andre and those of the village not fully enraptured with the community's purposeless raison d'etre find themselves forever treading through a minefield of contradictions, paranoia and party dogma that could explode around them at any moment.

The film is an excellent study in farce, and claiming to be based on real events, it is a very welcome and healthy progression for Albanian society to be able to laugh at the absurd, almost Orwellian blind alley they once stumbled down. Indeed, 'Slogans' takes many delighted pot shots at the futility of the locals' single-minded determination to pepper the hills with important-sounding slogans - the meanings of which they are unable to actually explain, such as the declarative 'American Imperialism Is Only A Paper Tiger' and 'Finish Successfully The Campaigns Of Our Harvests And Sowings'. The loss of a generation of children, so tired from spending their days building giant letters for phrases they cannot hope to understand that they have no energy left for actual studies is all the more tragic because of their excited determination and uncomprehending devotion to the task, reminiscent of the first generation of the children who grew up in Mao's China, becoming the most devout party members of all, yet the most ignorant.

'Slogans' also shows the way in which the real world continually steps in to foil the Party's designs and is punished for doing so. The giant letters are continually unearthed by fauna, romances evolve, and children play, all resulting in stiff penalties for the unwitting transgressors. One of the most touching scenes for me features Andre and a dirt-poor, illiterate herdsman, who implores the teacher to help him convince the local government to provide him with better housing. The poor peasant, whose lack of education precludes him from understanding anything of the local politics, is ultimately destined to be condemned for his ignorance, his plight an excellent metaphor for the absurdity and failure of the Communist ideologies, which have been stripped away of every last scrap of meaning and do nothing for the people who actually matter. Ultimately, any such efforts at normality are quashed, and the final message of the film is clearly that the people are slaves to the system they themselves willingly perpetuate, which is ultimately too powerful to resist. Thankfully, history has proved this not to be the case.

The slogans now are mostly gone. You catch a glimpse of one now and then on a dilapidated factory wall or under the peeling paint of a rural school building. In fact the farther you get from Tirana, the more likely you are to find slogans that have not been erased or painted over too well. And you can't get much farther from Tirana than Shistavec.

South of Kukes, snuggled up against the Kosova border at almost 1,500 meters above sea level, time passes un-noticed in Shistavec. Life is controlled by the passing of the seasons, the coming of the snow, planting, harvesting. Things change slowly. The old building still bear their parrullat.

"Socialist Albania Marches On" and "Glory to Marxism and Leninism!"

This one says, " The Seventh Five-Year Plan Is A Work Of The Masses." Evidently the people were so overwhelmed by this work they were too worn out to re-do the whole slogan every five years. You can make out under the word "Seventh" the outlines of the word "Sixth."

The film had a wonderful scene where the district party official was inspecting the route Enver Hoxha was expected to travel through a village and he stops at a one-shack village and demands to meet the "keeper of the slogan" which is prominent on the hillside above the road. It says "Vietnami do te fitoje", or "Vietnam will be victorious!" The local leader points out that Vietnam has already won the war against the Americans and the village will be assigned a new slogan which must be ready before Hoxha's visit. The new slogan is very, very long. The old man protests that he is the only male left in the village and can't possibly finish the task in time. The official relents and tells the old man to put up a slogan of his choosing. During Hoxha's drive-by we see the new slogan "Mbahu Vietnam" created from the old slogan with minimal work. "Hold On Vietnam!"

These little guys won't have to live through the tyranny of slogans their parents and grandparents did. With luck, Shishtavec will be spared from the invasion of modern parrullat for some time yet.

It's Not Albania, But You Can See It From Here

2011-08-17T09:32:00.003+02:00

Kosova is not technically in Albania, but its population is predominantly Albanian and figures large in the history of preserving ethnic Albanian identity. It's also a beautiful city within a few hours drive of Tirana thanks to the recently completed 1-billion Euro road/tunnel project. A sunny day, a quick hop across the border, and here we are! The pictures give a small taste of the city.

A River Runs Through It

Striking Ottoman Architecture

In The Old Hamam, Looking Up

Offered Without Comment

League Of Prizren Museum

Snow-Covered Albania In The Distance

Albania In The Spotlight

2011-08-17T08:09:00.001+02:00

Seems this country continues to capture attention in a variety of ways. Athletically, Albania will soon host the World Mountain Running Association Championships for 2011. Evidently there are people who have no aversion to running up and down some of the most rugged territory in the world. Different strokes for different folks, I guess.

On a less sweaty (I hope) front, Eliza Dushku continues her whirlwind tour of Albania, The petite starlet is of Albanian descent on her father's side and has for several years taken an interest in her dad's native land. She joins the distinguished list of, well, basically her and Jim Belushi who have received the prodigal son's welcome upon return to Albania. She one-upped Belushi by getting a two-headed eagle tattooed on the back of her neck a few years back and now has done it again. She was officially made a ctizen of Albania and presented a passport and identity card by the President of the Republic. She says she is making a documentary to highlight the history and tourist potential of her adopted country. It remains to be seen if she will go "full Belushi" and make a cheesy commercial for a cell phone company to cash in on her regional fame.

Best of all, from the perspective of showing an authentic face of Albania, we turn to Sundance. Josh Marston, director of the Academy Award-winning indie film "Maria, Full of Grace," has had his most recent production picked up by Sundance Selects for distribution in the U.S. This means we may get a chance to see it soon. The film, "The Forgiveness of Blood," is set in modern-day Northern Albania and tells the story of a family afflicted by an ancient curse: the blood feud.

Like all things Albanian, I managed to be separated by two degrees from the making of this movie. I got an e-mail from a production assistant who was looking for a hairdresser for one of the actors or somebody. She found me via the intertubes and gave me a brief rundown on the production schedule and general theme of the flick. She mentioned Mr. Marston's name but it did not click at the time who he was and I remember thinking, "Good luck getting your film made." Over two years later Albania has the good luck to have its story told by a true artist. I can't wait until we can get a pirated copy of it here in the videoteka!
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Fool Me Once ...

2011-08-16T19:31:00.009+02:00

A few years ago I took a quick trip in August to Theth and have been meaning to get back again to further explore the area. Alpine scenery, dirt roads winding over high mountain passes, authentic Albanian culture preserved by the remoteness of the valley. What's not to like? This year I chose the May Day holiday weekend to make the journey. I reasoned the valley would be even less busy with tourists as schools had not let out and the locals would be even more welcoming of paying visitors after a long winter's isolation. Heedless of relatives warnings, I packed up the family, convinced some co-workers what a glorious spring outing it would be, and headed north for adventure.
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The first clue things might not go my way was when I got lost on the paved portion of the road up from Koplik to Boga. Usually I have a keen sense of direction and good memory for roads I've traveled before, but something went wrong and we ended up at a dead-end in a village I think might have been Rec but I can't be sure. The road was newly paved and seemed to be "the way" rather than a little side road. At least we got to see some cool old military storage tunnels.
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Back on the right road I felt a little unnerved by my unplanned detour and this feeling of unease wasn't helped when the road ended in Boga. I mean, it just ended. I remembered the end of the paved road from the last trip. The gravel road into the village seemed like the right one. Then...... pffft, nothing. Road dead ends in a creekbed. Map consulted. Head scratched. Alternatives considered. Against my best instincts, which now seemed to be sorely lacking, I took advice and drove up what looked like a driveway paved with boulders from hell. After 200 meters we were back on familiar terrain with the road heading up the valley like I remembered. Either the road had been recently re-routed or I had "sleep-driven" that section last time around.
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Once the ascent started up the steep Qafe Thore road I started to regain confidence. From here to Thethi there's only one road and it was looking mighty familiar. The emerald fields of grass before the switchbacks start; check. Broad views down onto Boga as we crisscrossed the face of the pass; check. Amusing, yet tragic, roadside monument to a truck driver who lost his life on this perilous road and left one word for his epitaph engraved on a roadside marble slab: "Accidentally"; check. I was on familiar ground now..... Oh, wait... make that "snow." Near the top of the pass there was still snow on the ground. By the time we crested the pass, drifts up to two feet high lined the road. "It's May, for crying out loud. This is not supposed to happen!"
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The kids loved it, but the prudent adults in our party were starting to doubt my rosy depiction of flower-strewn meadows and sunny afternoons spent basking under the pines. The lowering grey clouds did little to ease their doubts. Then it started to rain. Just a little. At first.

Dropping into the valley, we began to pass the first of many guesthouses which operate in Thethi. I knew of four from first-hand experience and had read of many more. They all had one thing in common: closed, closed, closed. Evidently the road had been cleared on snowdrifts only the week before and the owners of some of these places had not yet returned to gear up for tourist season. I kept my hopes up as we finally entered the village of Thethi proper and began to see signs of life. Some people working on the roof of their house. A truck rumbling down the riverbed, loaded with construction material. The one sign of life we didn't see was electric light.

Four false starts later we settled on our accomodation for the next two nights. The other places we visited that were inhabited were just not ready for guests. They would have accepted us but it would have meant we lived with cement dust everywhere and climbed over piles of stone and wood to get to the bathrooms. Our default home ended up being the guest house of Ndoc Gjecaj, smack in the "center" of Thethi. They were eager hosts and soon arranged for our families to occupy two rooms on the second floor with a recently upgraded bathroom right next door. They even moved a Dutch gentleman to a smaller downstairs room to make room for us. I don't know which suprised me more; their willingness to accomodate us or the fact that we were not the only guests!
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By now it was dark, the rain had started in earnest, and we were hungry. Our hostess explained that the small hydropower station was out of service so there was no electricity. Thethi is not connected to the national power grid so when the aging Soviet-built turbine conks out, it's back to the 14th century. She assured us the village "specialist" was working on it and light was expected soon. We were joined for a candlelight dinner by the Dutch tourist who was returning for his third trip to Thethi. His guide, the 10-year old son of the guesthouse owner, spoke good English and helped relieve the kids boredom from being trapped in a dark, cold, wet vacation by their overly-optimistic father. We rewarded Ronaldo with uniquely American treat of marshmallows roasted over a woodfire.
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The lights did eventually come back on but with only enough voltage to push 5 watts of light from a 100 watt bulb. Depressing. Better to light a candle than to curse the Russians... or something like that. As we tucked ourselves under a large pile of blankets and drifted off to sleep my wife snuggled close and whispered in my ear, "We are SO leaving tomorrow morning!" I agreed but crossed my fingers, hoping for a bright sunny day to lift the gloom and change her mind.

Not so much. Morning came in exactly as night fell. A pale dawn and persistent rain. Quick showers, stuff packed back in the car, and down to breakfast. The fresh bread, yogurt, and jam warmed us up a little but was not enough to counter the negative effects of the rain and overcast clouds. We paid our hosts and promised to return when the weather was better.

So, what is the proper reaction when your optimistic forecast for pastoral bliss turns into a nightmare ordeal of disappointment, discomfort, and gloom? Apologize? Lick your wounds and retreat tail between legs? Hell, no! Double down on the crazy!

"You see," I explained, "the road leading south out of the valley is shorter and stays open all winter. It's only 40 kilometers and couldn't possibly be worse than the one we came in on. Plus we'll get to see the storied Shala river valley, the canyons of the Kir river, and the famous bridge at Mesi." I truly believed these statements (or had talked myself into believing them) and did my best to convince my companions in misery that this route would redeem what was until now a sub-par outing. You know the old saying, "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me?" We've now replaced that with "I will never travel with you again, idiot!"

Thethi - Not So Bad When It Doesn't Rain

I must say things started out OK. The rain let up as we visited the church in Theth. We had nice views of the tower of refuge, one of the finest examples of the defensive architecture used to harbor men who were at risk of revenge killings. Th road out of town followed the river and was better than the one we arrived on. The narrow gorge of Grunas was dramatic with the Shala river roaring below and the waterfall of Grunas putting on quite a display due to last night's downpour.

We continued without incident down the valley, green fields on each side set against rocky hillsides which rose to meet the still-snowcovered peaks which disappeared into the clouds. As we passed the turn-off for Nderlysa, I mentioned there was a guesthouse there which might be a nice place to spend our second night..... aaaand so we continued.

Nderlysa - Maybe Next Time

The Shala river valley is a gem. Isolated, clean, green, dotted with occasional small farmsteads. We continued along and spirits rose as we began to enjoy the pleasant drive through this majestic scenery. OK, it would have been better if we could have seen the tops of the mountains instead of just clouds, but so far, so good.

Shala River In Spate

Just as our spirits began to rise, so did the road. We crossed the river for the last time and started to climb. It was as if they countryside had heard my interior dialogue about not seeing the tops of the peaks and decided to remedy the situation. Evidently, you can see the tops of the peaks, you just have to get above the clouds. We did that by scrambling up one of the most rugged roads I've crossed since... well since my last trip to Qafe Shtama. Endless rocky switchbacks led to more switchbacks which led us into the clouds. At times the views of the cloud draped mountains were fantastic with valleys below shrouded in mist.

This Is One Of Those Times

So Is This

At other times, the fog wrapped our vehicles in a shroud of thick cotton, limiting visibility to a few feet. This may have been a good thing as on the few occasions when the cloud parted, the view of the road and the sheer drop to the left was terrifying. When we crossed a bridge over a waterfall as the road clung to the cliffside, I quietly chanted, "Bring back the cloud. Bring back the cloud!" Eventually we dragged the bottom of the car over enough boulders to satisfy the road's bloodlust and it brought us down to the Kir river valley where we passed a small group of neatly attired children walking along the road. We stared at them wondering what they could be doing all dressed up in this place while they stared at us wondering who could be so clueless as to take this road from Thethi to the outside world. "That would be me."

Kir River In Grykemadhe

We continued punishing our vehicles and kidneys as the road wound through the big gorge known as Grykemadhe. It means 'Big Gorge" in Albanian. By now my fellow travellers were seriously doubting this trip would end. A lapidari on the side of the road graphically demonstrated this gorge had seen the end of many journeys, but not in the good way. The large slab of polished marble was inscribed with the names of 19 unfortunates whose journey ended prematurely in the 1950's when their vehicle plunged into the river. We kept our speed down and our attention up to avoid a similar fate.
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Finally the rocky road gave way to new asphalt as we reached Prekal. What relief to be back in civilization! The village center was playing host to a political rally of sorts with a huge speaker blasting out the Democratic Party's theme song "Shqiperia Po Ndryshon" or Albania Is Changing. We smiled and were glad of the change which included asphalted roads..... until it ended at the other side of the village. Seems the pavement only lasted as long as the population density of registered voters! Back to the non-stop vehicular shiatsu massage.
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I have vague memories of the rest of the trip as the road paralleled the river which cut a narrow canyon through the white rocks around Ura e Shtrejnte. I think I tried to comment on the unusal nature of these little slot canyons and their resemblance to similar features of southern Utah. The response? Let's just say it can only be described in polite company as "One finger, two words." The bridge at Mesi was as beautiful as the tourist brochures described, but seeing it from the upriver side was a letdown as you could also see the modern bridge just downstream. Or maybe it was a result of having all my motivation beaten from my skull by the road and the oppressive glares of my passengers who just wanted to go home. Still, it's a cool bridge worth seeing.

Please? That's My Bad Side!

Forty kilometers in six hours! Would I do it again? Of course, but we've already established I'm a glutton for punishment. The real question you should be asking is, "Should I go?" And I think you already know my answer!

Frugal Travel

2011-07-10T21:49:00.001+02:00

Frugal travel? Albania? Enough said.

Enjoy!

The Indians Are Coming ...?

2011-06-17T11:17:00.000+02:00

No, this won't be a rude "Custer's Last Stand" joke. It's just the first time I've come across an article in the Hindu press extolling the benefits of visiting Albania. Not only does the article point out some nice aspects of Tirana, it highlights some of the continued economic growth occuring throughout Albania. It also gives us hope that we may get an authentic Irish Pub in the near future.

After reading the article, I started to wonder: "What is an Indian businessman doing in Tirana in the first place?" Please let his business be the beginning of a wave of Southwest Asian exchange that results in an authentic Indian restaurant opening. That would be progress!
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A Teutonic "Tsk, Tsk" With A Little Hope At The End

2011-06-08T14:31:00.000+02:00

I like to read Der Spiegel to get a German perspective on the problems plaguing the EU and the rest of the world. Having lived in Germany, and being of German descent, I am acutely aware of their superiority complex and their need to lecture other nations. Granted, they've earned some credibility through fiscal discipline, civic-mindedness, and work ethic. I guess it's natural they would wag their fingers at the lazy French, cringe at the antics of Berlusconi, and threaten to cut off the allowance of the profligate Greeks.

Today was Albania's turn.
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Sympathy Pains?

2011-05-26T14:30:00.000+02:00

I've heard it said that Albanian's would like to have their country become the 51st state in the U.S. I've also heard statistics bandied about claiming that nearly 1/3 of the Albanian population has or is on the way to getting U.S. citizenship. True or not, it is a fact that Albanians have an affinity for America and Americans. As the video below shows, maybe it even extends to the weather. While Joplin, Missouri was being ravaged by tornados, the town of Kavaje experienced the meterological equivalent of "sympathy pains."

Screw You, Google Earth!

2011-04-26T20:44:00.000+02:00

There is always one in the crowd. Not the leader, but an enabler. The inconspicuous rabble-rouser who goads you into action, whispering in your ear, "Go, on. Do it! It's easy. How could such a little thing cause any problems?" Then there are those like me who succumb to the siren song and routinely bite off more than we can chew. At some point in every adventure I pause, take stock of my discomfort, and wonder, "How did I convince myself to do this?" I usually end up briefly cursing the enabler before buckling down and getting on with the task at hand. This explains why recently I could be found battering my kidneys as I coaxed my trusty X-Terra up the last hundred meters of cobbled hell that passes for a road over Qafe Shtame muttering, "Screw you, Google Earth!"

In the air-conditioned comfort of my apartment in Tirana it looked so easy. Gliding effortlessly through the virtual canyons and forests of the wilderness behind Skanderbeg mountain piqued my interest. A quick day-trip to the National Park of Qafe Shtame seemed just the ticket to shake off the winter lethargy and kick off another summer of exploring the nooks and crannies of Albania. Some quick internet research, a perfunctory virtual overflight of the route, and loading up the backpack with survival supplies (water and GORP*) saw me out the door with kids in tow.

Of course, nothing in Albania goes that smoothly. As news of the trip leaked out, the number of travellers increased and I got requests to bring back some 5-liter jugs of water from the famous Qafe Shtame springs. Political rallies had the center of Tirana plugged up tighter than a Japanese subway at rush hour so I had to take the back road around the lake to avoid the congestion. There is a 400-meter unpaved, bumpy section which I felt was a good warm-up for the conditions we might face later. Forty-five minutes and a lot of well-paved kilometers later, we left the asphalt on the outskirts of Kruje and entered the "Gorge of Death." OK, I don't really know if that's its official name, but I have to call it something.

One feature of Albanian geography results from the African tectonic plate snuggling under the Eurasian plate, rumpling it like a frisky puppy looking for his chew toy under the hallway carpet. The carpet, in this case Albania, gets messily folded up in a series of parallel ridges. The mountain ranges of Albania run roughly north-south and get progressively higher as you get farther from the coast. As the ridges were lifted up, the rivers coming off the mountains to the east carved canyons that deepened as the ridge rose. The mountain range behind Tirana is cut by several of these impressive gorges on the Erzen and Tirana rivers and the streams which feed the Ishem river including the Perroit i Zallit te Brrares, the Perroit i Zezes, and the one we followed which has no name on my map. Hence, Gorge of Death.

As the road drove deeper into the chasm, it was carved into the cliffside with a drop of hundreds of meters in places. There were several memorial plaques erected on the spots where unlucky travellers had met their end. These are a common sight along mountain routes throughout the country. At one particularly impressive dropoff there was a large, concrete marker detailing an even more gruesome event.

The spot is known as the "Shkembi i Vajes" (Stone of Mourning) and the inscription reads (I'm paraphrasing here):

Here ninety women from Kruje bravely threw themselves to their deaths to avoid capture by the invading Turkish forces. They preferred to remain clean, untouched, and free. Their heroism is passed on through their daughters and grand-daughters to the glory of xxxxxxx and the motherland.

I was informed the word which had been chiseled off the of this marker was "socialism." Evidently no legendary act of bravery was exempt from Enver Hoxha's desire to tie the communist party to every aspect of Albanian history. Neither is any area of natural beauty is immune to the Albanian desire to get rid of household trash without too much effort. Just a hundred meters from Stone of Mourning was the "Gully of Burning Garbage" whose smoke reduced visibility to zero, making the hazardous road even more thrilling!

Once through the Gorge, the road climbed south to the saddle above the village of Noje where the landscape spread out in all directions. You could actually see over Bovilla reservoir, past Mount Dajti, to Tirana. The road twisted upwards as we wound our way around the flanks of the 1300-meter peak of Maja i Liqenit to reach the national park of Qafe Shtame. It was about now that I began to wonder if I had been fooled by the deceptive visual display of Google's excellent mapping tool. The road twisted and doubled back on itself turning a 10 kilometer virtual flight into 40 minutes off butt-numbing punishment.

When we reached the modern water-bottling plant of the Qafe Shtame Company I had two simultaneous thoughts: "We must be almost to the park." and "How do they get truckloads of bottled water down that road?" I was left to ponder the second question as the road got exponentially worse, disproving my first statement. Narrower, steeper, and more rutted by heavily-laden logging trucks, the road continued up through a dense forest of pine and birch. The richer, softer soil was great for the flora, but made for a muddy road when wet. The solution? Cobblestones. More precisely, a bunch of rocks heaved onto the roadbed to provide traction and prevent you getting stuck. Just when I was certain I was about to spit out a filling, we arrived at the fabled spring of Qafe Shtame. The water gushed crystal clear from the pipes set in the wall below the spring. I filled the bottles, drank deep of the clean, cold stream, and started to get hungry.

The hotel a few meters down the road provided the answer. The owner was cleaning the place up and getting ready for the tourist season when we drove up looking for food. He prepared a basic lunch of grilled beef, fried potatoes, and salad with local feta cheese. Washed down with the local water, it did the trick. Fully fed, we had to decide on a course of action. According to the hotelier, it was equal distance back to Kruje or onward to Burrel and paved roads. His description of "a few hundred meters of really bad road and then it gets better" convinced us to continue on instead of backtracking over roads we knew were pretty brutal. Plus, my time on Google Earth made it clear that it couldn't be that bad.

Screw you, Google Earth.

Suffice it to say the road did get worse. And worse. The better part didn't come until we hit pavement 25 kilometers later outside of Burrel, shortly after passing the derelict chrome processing factory. The trip down the east side of the pass was notable only for its duration and level of suffering. Snaking down the side of the mountains denuded of trees, the road gave a ride quality which gives new meaning to the word "juddering." There was only one notable sight to relieve the incessant pounding the road dished out to our vital organs and suspension - and it involved death. Another roadside monument, known as lapidari, carried the inscription:

Sul A. Sula

Ketu pushoi Sula dhe u bej legende

jo se e lodhi rruga

por nje aksident

Here Sula stopped and he became legend

not because the road tired him

but an accident

In America, you die in a traffic accident and you become a statistic. Here you become a legend. I love it!

Now that we reached paved road, things were more comfortable. The Mati river valley stretched for miles and the road wound through the scenes of pastoral beauty. We moved along at a good clip to make up for the time we spent on the pass and because we had a new goal: the dam at Ulza.

This dam was the next on my list of hydro-electric facilities to "bag." I may have mentioned earlier that visiting Hoover Dam in my youth left me with a weird fixation with dams and water diversion systems. Anyway, a part of my wanderlust is geared to checking out these facilities in Albania, which has the second greatest hydroelectric potential in Europe behind Norway. Damn those fjords! We had coffee at a roadside locale just below the dam complete with some delicious revani provided compliments of the owner who regaled us with stories of German campers who had recently stayed on the lakeside just below his establishment. Wait. Lake below his place? But we were downstream of the dam....

Turns out we were in for a double play. Below Ulza, the Mati river enters a narrow gorge and, sure enough, it was dammed. The structure at Shkopet was even cooler than Ulza. A concrete plug in a very narrow gorge produced a long lake that stretched upriver for kilometers. Green forests reached down to the lakeside and several promising fish restaurants advertised their prowess at cooking up the bounty of the lake.

After Shkopet, we quickly reached the new road and were as good as home. I settled into the nearly automatic mode of driving, knowing that reality would be much closer to Google's version than it had previously. I reconsidered my harsh judgement of the enabler. If I hadn't fallen prey to its simplified view of this crinkled country, I may have missed out on a beautiful part of the country and two magnificient engineering feats. Plus, while we were transiting Burrel, I could see to the east the jagged mountains that marked the western boundary of the Lura Lakes National Park. That could be the next adventure. Just let me check it out on Google Earth....!

(*Good old raisins and peanuts)

When I Can't Write ...

2011-03-03T10:17:00.000+01:00

I read. I found this article which, while dated, is well written and helps rekindle my urge to go tramping around Albania again. Thethi in springtime? Hmmmmm....?
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Commitment

2011-01-31T11:12:00.000+01:00

I've heard it often from friends and strangers, "You sure are taking a big risk living in Albania!" The can't imagine giving up the comforts of American society with all its law and order and cleanliness. Sometimes I take the time to give them a more realistic idea of what my life is really like here. Other times I let them persist in their perception of me as a modern-day Byron or a cross-dressing Edith Durham, braving the hardships and insecurity of inscrutable Albania.

The truth is I live in central Tirana, have a decent apartment, drive a nice car, and have the luxury of choosing when to expose myself to the more remote areas of the country. I'm firmly connected to the expat community and am financially secure. Living in Albania requires no more heroic commitment from me than living in Albany might. I would probably suffer more in upstate NY as it is a heck of a lot colder there.

There are occasionally people here who demonstrate real commitment to immersing themselves in Albanian culture and society. The Peace Corps volunteers, for example. Granted, they are supported by the U.S. government and have a "bail-out" lifeline if things get too tough. Former Peace Corps volunteers who stick around after their assignment is over form the next level of commitment. They liked it so much and became so attached to the people or places they served that they choose to stay. I've met them in Tirana, Elbasan, and even Gjirokaster with no official lifeline, only their informal contacts with the Embassy and their own initiative.

Then there are people like Catherine Bohne. I came across her article today and was floored by what she was doing. Read the whole article because my account will not do justice to her writing. She's ditched everything to live in the Tropoja region, starting in the middle of winter:

I have given away my business, sold my apartment for break-even, and moved with a few suitcases of random possessions to Albania -- specifically to Northern Albania, the District of Tropoja, to this point possibly one of the most backwards, impoverished and forgotten regions of Europe. To absolutely damn the impracticality of my decision, I should add that I have no income, no plans for any income and no clear thoughts about what my future looks like.

I'm caught between scoffing at her recklessness and jumping up and applauding her willingness to jump in at the deep end. This, I will tell my friends, is what commitment looks like. Comparing my commitment to hers reminds me of the old saw, "The chicken is involved with making omelets; the egg is committed."

I hope she continues to write with such keen observations and moving prose. I'll risk tiptoeing over the line into copyright violation to entice you to read the whole article, in case you have clicked the link yet:

On the television, we watch as a handful of men mill around the side gate to the Kryeministri. Suddenly -- the video has no distinguishable sound -- one man falls silently to the ground. He has been shot by one of the snipers on the roof of the government building. The old man nearest him looks down, as if to say, "What are you playing at?" Then realizes. He moves to stand over the body, his arms thrown out at his sides as he cries and calls for help. Others rush in to carry the body to safety. Do you see what I see? Nobody ran away. They didn't run from bullets. They ran in, to help.

Just before we leave Kamenica, I am sitting in the snow on the edge of the wall surrounding the entrance to the house. One of the daughters of the house crouches beside me. Together we gaze out at the snow-covered hills, absolutely silent and gloriously empty. An enormous mockingbird plays in a frozen fruit tree, knocking lumps of snow to the ground. "You like Albania?" she asks. "Oh yes," I say, "I love it." I turn and we look into each others eyes, smiling happily "You?" I ask. I watch her as she returns watching the mountains. "Oh yes," she says, still smiling. "Yes."

Ashton?

2011-01-26T10:56:00.000+01:00

In high school I used to hang out with a guy who thought he was quite the comedian. Let's call him Lenny. We took turns doing what Ashton Kutcher would later term "punking" one another for our own amusement and the entertainment of those around us. What the nuns would have referred to as "acting the fool." I was reminded of one of his stunts after posting the previous article.

Lenny and his co-conspirators stood clumped in the hallway when I arrived. Their furtive glances and subdued chortles piqued my interest so I took the bait.

"What's up?"

"Oh, man! We just heard about Tony's brother!"

"What about him?" I should add that Tony was a jock. Varsity football, wrestled, thought of himself as an all around tough guy.

"We heard his older brother has been taking ballet lessons! Can you believe it? "Super stud's brother in a tutu! We've been giving him grief about it all morning."

After a few minutes of chuckling over the rumored sissy-link to Tony I decided to join in the tormenting. I walked over to his locker and smirked, "Hey, man! How's your brother's ballet lessons going?"

Tony turned with tears in his eyes and his lower lip trembling as he choked out the words, "My brother lost both his legs in Vietnam."

I stood gaping, caught between my sophomoric effort to embarrass him and the enormity of the tragedy that clearly was breaking his heart. The best I could manage was, "Uh.... mmm...uuuuh" as all the smart-assery melted away and I edged closer to tears myself. Lenny's shrieks of laughter were the first clue that I'd been had. Tony soon joined in and I knew I'd been set up as the whole hallway showed their appreciation for my discomfort with chuckles and jeers.

"Good one, guys. Ha,ha, very funny. Eat me!"

I never forgot that feeling of realizing I had violated a solemn taboo in search of a cheap laugh. Last Friday, after publishing my entry about the unrest in Tirana I got the same feeling. Three of the protesters had been shot dead and many more had been injured, both protesters and police. My jokes didn't seem so clever any more. Unlike the high school prank, there's no laughter from the crowd, only the grief for wasted lives and the dread of worse to come.
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A Wake-Up Call

2011-01-21T17:32:00.001+01:00

More than half a year has passed since I last felt motivated to pen an entry about the goings on in my temporary homeland. The routine of work to home to work sets in and gets hold of you. August holidays, school starting in September, the bi-cultural holiday season captures you: Thanksgiving, Independence Day, Liberation Day, Bajram, Christmas, New Years, MLK Day... sometimes the burden of celebrating two countries significant dates can be overwhelming. A quick trip to Italy for Burger King on a miltary installation kept me focused on things other than writing. I needed something exciting to kick me out of my doldrums.

Enter, stage left, Albanian political protests! You can always rely on them to shake things up every now and then. To tell the truth, the last couple of rounds of protesting left me vaguely unsatisified. A hunger strike in which most of the participants looked suspiciously well-fed folded peacefully. Later there were huge, organized marches demanding opening of the ballot boxes from June 2009. Thousands of people in the street peacefully petitioning their government for change. Boringly similar to the Tea Party in the States, except with fewer mis-spelled signs and better fashion sense.

Pro-government rallies followed to celebrate visa-free travel, Mother Teresa Day, and the anniversary of the founding of one of the political parties. Nothing more upsetting than hideously loud, inappropriate music occured. Really? Who decided that the best way to commemorate the life and charitable works of "The Angel of Calcutta" was blaring Sir Mix-A-Lot's "Baby Got Back" in Mother Teresa Square? Tacky, annoying, and poorly attended but not much excitement to be found. When will they realize the sidewalks in front of the Prime Minister's Office are cobbled with fist-sized stones for a reason?

Today is my lucky day. After accusations of corruption were aired on a TV news broadcast, the opposition scheduled protests that lived up to the reputation Albanians have established through the long years of turmoil. Police lined up around the Prime Minister's office. Protesters met at 8 points around the city and slowly wended there way to Skenderbeg Square to get fired up. Once their confrontational juices were flowing, the mass surged down the main boulevard to confront their nemesis.

Now I was expecting more of the same lame shouting, speeches, and then off to the coffee bar to rehash the day's events. When the first police officer got beaned in the noggin with a brick-sized missile I sat up. "What's this? Could it be? A real Albanian protest?" Six injured cops and ten or more torched cars later I had to admit that this was not your run-of-the-mill shout-fest.

They're still out there as I type. Police shooting in the air... tear gas... several square meters of sidewalk cobbles fulfilling their prime directive... That's what I call protest! OK, I walked my son home from school and passed within two blocks of the melee and heard and saw nothing. Life in Tirana proceeding apace with less traffic chaos than normal, but the TV never lies: they are a-protestin'.

The long hiatus between 1997 and now seems to have taken its toll on the protesters skills. I could swear I saw several of the cobble tossers nursing torn rotator cuffs after just a few half-hearted heaves. The police behaved magnificiently, refraining from opening fire after their comrades went down. They formed up in a group with interlocked riot shields creating a multi-legged plexiglass turtle. Hey, that's going to be the name of my next indie grunge band... The Plexiglass Turtles.

The saddest moment came when the protesters broke open the vehicle entrance gates to the PM's office block. A clapped-out Mercedes was brought up to ram its way through the vehicle barrier. With the assistance of several enthusiastic orc-wannabes this modern day Grond accelerated toward it's target. As the protesters pushed from behind, the driver gunned it and crashed into the barrier. Didn't try to knock over a section of fence on the side or open a hole in the low wall around the garden. Oh, no. No half-measures for this guy. Rammed straight into the hydraulically-activated vehicle barrier (which, incidentally, is designed to stop a vehicle intent on ramming something more vulnerable). The impact of the car with barrier was mildly amusing. The impact of frenzied pusher's noses with the back of the car was much more satisifying. You go, guys!

The protesting goes on. I hope no one gets badly hurt as none of the issues are worth shedding blood over. The forecast is for heavy rain which I hope will dampen the protester's ardor like hosepipe directed at a pair of furiously mating dogs. Regardless, I have to thank these dedicated protesters for breaking me out of my stupor and reminding me there is magic out there if you only listen.

How Does It Feel?

2010-06-14T22:09:00.000+02:00

I get a lot of questions about living in Albania. People ask me "Is it safe?" "What do you eat?" "How does it feel?" There's a question. How does it feel? I never thought of that. Smells. Tastes. Sounds. All of those lend themselves to description and we Westerners deal largely in the visual and provide a little variety by focusing on the tastes every now and then. Albania is half Western, half Eastern. The sensual Orient intrudes despite Western logic and perception. How does it feel?

My eyes were opened recently by a talented photographer who travelled around with me shooting the sights of this fascinating, ancient land. He took the mandatory scenery shots and historical shots and quirky "only in Albania" shots. It was his fascination with texture that opened my eyes to the "feel" of the country. I'll let his photos answer the question: "How does Albania feel?"

It feels ancient. Layer upon layer of stone. Rough cut at first; later more refined. Touch the strength, the permanence and ponder your own fleeting presence. Time has a texture when measured in stone.

It feels of geology and erosion and tectonics. The land shapes the civilization, the people, the culture....

... and the people return the favor. They shape the land, the stone. First by their mastery of masonry to build the cobbled way. Then by their ceaseless passage. The feet of traders, hooves of mules, wheels of Gypsy carts whittle away at geometric shapes. How many toiling laborers bore their burdens over these stones? What small changes wrought by courting couples' tentative footfalls?

Albania feels like forests. In the hinterlands it needs only a blessed winter of ceaseless rainfall to dress the hills in a cloak of greens.

It feels like olives. The dusty grey of groves plaster terraced hillsides. From a distance they feel ethereal, ghostly...

Up close you feel something else. Wisdom, telling of the vital link between man and nature. The intertwining of a culture and a tree; each comes to depend on the other and the condition of one gives clues to the health of the other. Scarred by time, conflict, neglect - you feel the history of Albania as you explore the twisted trunks of centuries-old groves.

The sensation of intertwining of man and nature extends to the table, in the velvety smoothness of a traditional breakfast of pace koke in Leskovik. The olive oil, the rice, and the earthy flavor of lamb meat. Earlier a frolicking part of the landscape, now sustenance, shared family joy.

No mistake.. Albania feels hard. Like stones on a wave-tossed beach. Demanding, but rewarding if you can steel yourself to its elemental side. Albania rewards with textures as clear-cut as diamonds and as soft as...

... morning sheep. Bathed in the forgiving light of a new dawn, they feel new, shaggy, and resilient. Alive with possiblity. They feel like Albania...

and I feel privileged to cling to these timeless textures, struggling to survive and comprehend. And I feel alive.

Contradictions

2010-05-21T23:45:00.002+02:00

In the early 1960's, David McNeil Doren penned a line in his book The Winds of Crete that resonates with me today in Albania:

"I believe that all human beings are inconsistent, that contradiction and paradox are inherent in our nature. In reality you find generosity and meanness in the same person; brutality and tenderness cheek by jowl; bravery and cowardice commingled."

This inconsistency, this condradictariness, is evident not just in individuals, but in the culture itself. It surfaces in the language, the traditions, and in the very fabric of Albanian life. On one hand the language allows for tactful conversation about subjects which may cause embarrassment. On the other, it provides no alternative other than an expression we Westerners would consider forward or insulting. The American concept of "political correctness" does not translate into Albanian.

Where an American would refer to a disabled person as 'hearing impaired" or as having a "speech impediment," Albanians call a spade a spade. Someone who can't hear is shurdh, deaf. Someone who stutters or stammers is memec. This term in particular grates on my American sensibilities as it is the onomatopoetic rendition of the sound made by someone with this condition. "Mm..mm..mm... ts..ts..ts..ts..m.m.m ...ts..ts..ts." And it's not just the ignorant masses who use the term and find it funny to mock a disability. The satellite TV provider Albsat produced a TV commercial where a guy halts before entering the Albsat shop and rehearses his order; "Albsat Gold Card, please." He enters the shop and draws up short in front of the very attractive salesgirl and starts stuttering and stammering before dashing back outside to rehearse again. He re-enters and goes through the whole routine once more, "Aaaa.....mm...mm. ..ts.ts.ts....gu..gu..gu" and dashes out again. The whole time the salesgirl smiles and laughs like he's the funniest thing she has ever seen.

The same goes for someone who has a handicap which makes walking difficult. Whether the result of an accident, birth defect, or disease, one who has an irregular gait is topall - a gimp. Visually disadvantaged people are corr - blind. The sensitive Western phrase "learning diabled" is rendered as me te meta mendore, literally "missing something mentally." To add insult to injury it is considered bad luck to see a topall as you walk down the street. If you do, you must swipe your hand on your friend's shoulder and say "pas topallin" to take away the bad luck. If you're alone, you make the same swiping motion to the pavement.

The best jokes in Albania are always about sex, handicapped people, or policemen. While Americans are on board with the first and last categories, the cultural disconnect on the second category is immense. Not so long ago in Washington, D.C., a well-known Albanian comedian launched into a famous joke about a topall, a memec, and a shurdh. The Albanians in the audience howled with laughter while the Americans reacted as if Hitler had just told his favorite Jewish joke.

Yet the same culture that accepts these comments has strict taboos on things most Americans will laugh at. Just try to make a fart joke in Albania. Goes over like a lead balloon. Any discussion of bathroom activity is rigorously avoided. Even in the confines of all-male environments there is no mention of bodily functions or crude bathroom humor. If, heaven forbid, an Albanian must relate the details of their medical condition and it requires describing any emission or secretion from the body, they will talk around it or beg your forgiveness before saying the offending term: "The trip over Qafe Krrabe was so twisty that I eventually.. pardon me for saying this .. vomited." The sense of shame in having to enunciate the word "vomit" is palpable. Americans readily relate this activity in graphic detail and the language has a multitude of terms which we use with abandon. "Hurl", "ralph," "blow chow," "yak" and many more carry no social penalty. Try describing Stephen Hawking as a "gimp" however, and it's a whole different ball game.

There is no such restriction in Albania on addressing the medical condition of others, particularly in the area of weight. Complete strangers will remark on it. The plumber who comes to your house to fix the plumbing will eye you up and down and suggest you need to hit the gym before getting to work on your faucet. Everyone feels entitled to comment on your weight and give advice. "Drink lots of vinegar in the morning." "Buy that Chinese tea that gives you hear palipitations and insomnia." "Start smoking."

In other instances, the linguistic and cultural norms swing to the other extreme. An Albanian won't come straight out and ask for something they need. If you hear them say "I'm thirsty," they really mean "Bring me some water." The rhetorical question, "I wonder what time it is?" means "Tell me the time." These indirect expression call for immediate action on your part and if you don't deliver, you are being rude and selfish.

This contradiction between hyper-sensitivity to giving offense in some areas and being so blunt in other areas continues to amuse and amaze me. We truly are a mass of contradictions. I've learned to temper my reaction to "offensive" remarks by trying to understand what the term used means to them, not what my culture judges it to mean. I've also cut back drastically on my fart jokes.
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Hirushja

2010-05-16T14:07:00.002+02:00

Great news today! The road to Thethi has finally been opened. An unbelievable winter of snow has kept the village and valley of Thethi blocked up tighter than a ham sandwich in Mama Cass' windpipe. Newspapers across Albania have heralded the tidings that the valley is now open for tourists to explore this pristine corner of the Albanian Alps. Yes! We can finally gain access to all those Alpine peaks of unparalleld grandeur and Heidi-ish beauty. Joy overwhelms the adventurous mountaineers of southeast Europe.

Yet, further south, small tears trickle down the faces of the "other" peaks of Albania. How sad. Remember how you felt when your big brother or sister monopolized the familial limelight with their superlatives? "Oh look, Johnny has his first adult tooth!" "Jenny got straight A's this semester!" All the while your younger heart thought "Whoop-de-doo... what about me?"

I imagine that's the same way the mountains of southern Albania must feel about now. The local press trumpets the opening of the Accursed Mountains like the second coming of Christ, but the southern peaks have been there all along. Just as rugged. Just as awe-inspiring. But somehow neglected.

In an effort to correct this monstrous injustice, I present the "Hirushjat (Cinderellas)" of Albanian peaks. Often overshadowed by their more renowned siblings up north, these proud mountains deserve a little more respect and investigation.

We begin with Tomorri. How could anyone overlook this majestic massif? It sits in central Albania, to the east of Berat. Rising out of the foothills and plateaus in glorious solitude. No other peaks nearby to distract the eye. Not part of a chain or a lesser peak on a sprawling ridge. Tomorri stands proud more than 2000 meters higher than any other hill in the visible vicinity. Majestic is the only way to describe it.

"Yes, I am all that."

Not only is Tomorri an impressive pile of dirt, it is a holy mountain. A Bektashi teqqe sits on the southern shoulder of the massif which is the site of a pilgrimage at the end of August. When I say pilgrimage, you probably have visions of the Hajj with devout Muslims circling the Kaaba or Lourdes with droves of crippled believers struggling up to find salvation and a cure. On Tomorri, not so much. During a one-week period, over 50,000 Bektashi believers ascend to the teqqe of Helvetive and conduct the proscribed rituals. I've never been, but I have seen pictures and heard stories and as far as I know, these rituals involve killing and roasting a huge flock of lambs while drinking every last drop of raki in the vicinity.

Like this, only in vast quantities.

So it's tall, holy, easy on the eyes. What else? Well, it has its own myth. Seems that eons ago, there were two giants who lived in the area: Tomorr and Shpirag. They both fell desperately in love with a local maiden from Berat and began to quarrel over her. (As you do) Shpirag plucked boulders from the earth and heaved them at Tomorri while Tomorri slashed at Shpirag with his sword.

You want some of this, Shpirag?

Tomorri's wounds were huge holes and Shpirag sustained deep slashes along his flanks. The two killed one another, fell to the ground and became the mountains that bear their names. The maiden, slightly upset that her suitors were now dead, cried herself to death and her tears became the river Osumi which flows to this day between Tomorri and Shpirag. Ah, what a typically Albanian tale. Love, conflict, and eventually everyone dies.

Damn! Shpirag, you been cut!

To add insult to injury, Enver Hoxha decided to have his name emblazoned on the hillside above Berat and chose Shpirag as the likely place as the "sword cuts" divided the mountain into equally spaced sections.

Like salt in the wounds.

The mayor of Berat pointed this graffiti out to the American Ambassador in 2000 and lamented that the government had tried everything to erase the hated name of Enver. They covered the whitewashed stones with dirt, planted grass over the area, and even bombed the hillside with napalm. To no avail. Sadly, the mayor concluded, "We thought about changing the name of our city and adding a 'D' to the mountain so we could explain that the sign was the name of our town ... Denver!"

Further south, there is a peak which not only has to live under the shadow of its famous relative up north, it has to suffer the indignity of being overshadowed by a mere road. Mali Cikes is nearly 2000 meters tall, rising on one side directly from the Ionian sea. Its imposing ramparts were the first sight to greet Julius Caeser when he landed at Palassa in pursuit of Pompey during the Roman civil war.

You WILL remember me!

Does anyone care today? No, they are too busy marvelling at the road which ascends Qafe Llogara and trying not to blow chow from the twisty ascent of this remarkable pass. They remember the five switchbacks. They remember the flag pine. They remember the paidhaqe. The peak above? What peak?

Hey! Up here! I'm up here!

Finally, tucked away in the deep south of Albania is Mali Nemercke. South of Permet and just north of the border with Greece, you can find the third highest peak in the country. And what a peak it is! From the west, it seems to be just another bump in the range of mountains across the valley from Gjirokaster - tall and snowcapped, but nothing special.

What a cute, tiny, snowcapped mountain.

Only when you travel to the other side in the valley of Permet do you realize what a treasure the peak is. Why waste words when a picture says it all.

Climb me. You know you want to.

So, when you find your road to the Dinaric Alps blocked by snow, or if you want to get off the beaten track and see a little more of Albania, give pause to the neglected little sisters of Mali Jerzeces. These peaks are easier to get to, are surrounded by history and architecture that spans the ages, and are just as impressive as their more famous elder siblings. Like all younger brothers and sisters, they'll appreciate the unexpected attention and reward you with unforgettable memories.

Health Care Reform

2010-04-09T13:33:00.001+02:00

From the perspective of an expat, the current furore in the U.S. over health care reform has a somewhat surreal appearance. I've lived in lots of countries, all of them democratic (more or less) allies (to one extent or another) of the United States. All of them had one thing in common: a public health system intended to provide some level of access to health care. Sometimes the services on offer stretched the definiton of "health care" like matter being sucked into a black hole, but there was always something.

Albania is no different. There is universal state-funded health care. Everyone pays. Everyone can benefit. This system was introduced by the communist regime in the 1940s as one element of their plan to drag the country kicking and screaming into the 19th century. Education, medicine, and electricity were made available to nearly every village in the country, regardless how remote. Imagine the impact those efforts must have had! In a village where sunset dictated the end of all productive activity and literacy was virtually unknown, suddenly the pine torch was replaced by electric lights which made it a whole lot easier to learn to read and write. Modern medicine arrived to displace traditional folk cures.

It's still trying to this day.

Just as the Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Serbs, Venetians, Turks, Italians, and Germans all learned, you can impose change on Albania fairly easily. Getting Albanians to accept the change is a whole other tenxhere of grosh. No matter how much the people seem to have adopted the poltics, science, or religion brought in from foreign lands, they still cling tightly to their cultural heritage. A cautionary tale for today's health care providers, environmentalists, and evangelical missionaries. Mormons, I'm looking at you!

Really, how can modern medicine win against raki? According to many a gyshja, this fiery distillation can cure so many ailments. Teething pain? Upper respiratory infection? Angina? Just rub a little raki on the area in question and let the healing begin. You don't necessarily have to rub it on the affected area. Heart problems call for a dab on the inside of the left wrist. Usually followed with a stiff belt of internal oral application. Just to be sure, of course!

"Raki - The cure for, and cause of, most of Albania's ills."

Influenza also calls for the raki cure, among others. Nowhere in the world have I seen such a level of concern as flu season approaches. Right about the end of August the paranoia starts to build and every discussion is laced with apprehension about the coming gripe pandemic. Heaven forbid you sneeze in late August or early September. Each "achoo!" is met with concern, advice, admonition for not dressing warmly enough, and the offer of a shot of raki. It's but a short journey from allergies to alcoholism here!

Cold and flu sometimes requires more drastic intervention. If the raki isn't working and no amount of wrapping up in endless layers does the trick, you gotta bring out the kupa (cups). More precisely, glasses. The patient lies on his stomach, bare back exposed. A series of small drinking glasses are heated by flaming balls of cotton dipped in rubbing alcohol (or even better, flaming raki!). The hot glasses are placed strategically on the "patient's" back. While he writhes in agony, the sickness is drawn out. Once he has enough red circles branded on his back, he's wrapped up, given a shot of raki, and sent to bed. Another successful operation is done.

Garlic and olive oil have their own curative powers, especially in the company of raki. Drinking a glass of milk with a heaping teaspoon of baking soda stirred in cures coughs and blood pressure issues. Mixing lule basani (St. John's Wort) with olive oil (or raki!) is a general cure-all for skin conditions, scalp problems, ulcers, and hemorrhoids. Rubbing salt and onion on a contusion prevents bruising. Yogurt and olive oil will calm a bad sunburn and prevent peeling. Medical treatments sound so much like recipes for marinating meat I suspect the doctors and chefs attended the same college!

Not all of the cures fall into the category of ancient homeopathic treatment. Albanians have embraced modern pharmaceuticals with gusto: The formal medical system of prescriptions and quality control? Not so much. Pharmacies spring up in Tirana almost as fast as electronic gaming bars pompously calling themselves "casinos."

"It was either this or a casino."

You can buy antibiotics, statins, analgesics, mild narcotics, and just about any other pill, potion, or pomade with no prescription. Pharmacists will listen to symptoms and offer their solution and Albanians will take them at their word. "If this helped your cousin get over a headache, then it's going to help me," they reason. "Anyway, the pharmacist is burre i mire (a good man) so I trust him." Never mind that he has no medical training and learned everything he knows about drugs from watching dubbed episodes of House and from reading the pamphlets that come with the cheap samples his distributor is pushing on him. Oh, and he may neglect to tell you his cousin had a headache from falling down the steps which may or may not be relevant to your migrane.

Such blind trust is nowhere to be found when it comes to doctors. State doctors and nurses are overworked, short of supplies, and very poorly paid. The inevitably bribery that springs from these conditions does nothing to improve the doctor-patient rapport. The doctor eyes the patient as a sheep to be fleeced. The patient just wants to get through the process with the malfunctioning organ removed and all the others left intact. The quality of care you receive depends entirely on who you know, how much you are willing to slip under the table, and how diligently you watch every step of the way. If you don't demand to see the appendix, how do you know it was really taken out?

Doctors in private practice aren't necessarily any better. Their facilities are newer and they showcase some of the most modern equipment to be found. Unfortunately, what is often lacking is the ability to interpret the results of the tests or use those results to come up with a reasonable diagnosis. The TV show Fiks Fare recently did a segment where their journalist took a jar of "urine" in for private lab testing. The yellow stuff in the cup was actually a soft drink, but that didn't stop the vast majority from returning the results of the "urine" test complete with data and graphs. That says something... either about the competence of the lab technicians or the recipe for a certain popular fizzy drink! Only one lab returned the sample and admitted they didn't know what the hell it was.

"Is that pronounced 'Ivi' or "Wee Wee'?"

Despite the drawbacks of conditions here, people still have babies, get sick, have surgery, get in accidents, and recover. The state health clinics provide cheap preventive care even after you factor in the baksheesh. Children register with a primary care center and they get reminders to come in for vaccinations like clockwork. Costs of medecine is much lower here than in the U.S. and most of those drugs are subsidised by the national health plan. A course of antibiotics that would cost $100-300 in the States goes for about $50 here. Before subsidy. Dental care? Cheap. Doctors still make housecalls and that costs you about $30, including two follow-up visits. I was chargd $100 for an MRI of my spine and probably paid more because I am a foreigner. If you did the same thing in the States you'd be out almost a grand.

So the argument goes on. Socialized medicine or private care? Cost versus service availability? Recission? Medicare donought holes? Pre-existing conditions? Mandates? Death panels? Bending the cost curve? Who's right? What's best?

Who am I to say. I'm tempted to cast my vote with the school of medical thought that suggests curing colic in babies through the application of hashish, follwed by a stiff shot of raki for the parents!
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...Not That There Is Anything Wrong With It.

2010-03-27T22:40:00.000+01:00

I'm always pleased to see Albania crop up in the news, especially when the coverage is positive and highlights either a unique aspect of the country or shows how the situation in the country is progressing. New roads, increased tourism, less crime, upgrades at the airport, you get the idea. Even if I don't have a great personal interest in the latest improvement, I like to take time to highlight the event and comment on its uniquely Albanian aspects.

Today, I'm a little challenged. The news is full of the latest advance in Albania's development: the adoption of a law protecting the rights of the LGBT community. That's lesbian, gay, bisexual, and trans-gendered for those of you who thought it might be a distant relative of the bacon-lettuce-and-tomato sandwich. Not only has the parliament passed a law prohibiting discrimination against anyone based on sexual orientation, but a participant on an extremely popular reality show has come out.

In the States, coming out has an impact on family, friends, and those who share a vested interest in the LGBT agenda. On a national scale, it's not that big of a deal unless you are a Hollywood personality or a Republican congresscritter. It's not that rare.

Here, it is that rare. There has been exactly.... one. As you can imagine, there has been quite a reaction. A hundred or so young men from Lezhe have protested on several occasions. They aren't protesting against a gay guy coming out. They are protesting against the fact that he identifies with their city and is gay. In truth, the gentleman in question left Albania years ago, lived in Italy, and has returned for the TV show. In Albanian fashion, he refers to himself as being from Lezhe. The protesters don't like that. "Don't associate Skanderbeg's final resting place with ..... that!"

I'm tempted to try to find some historically relevant causal relationship that explains this deep-seated homophobia, but I just don't have the energy. So, I'll close with snark. I think it's part of the whole effort to differentiate themselves from the Greeks!

"We hate the most in others what we fear the most in ourselves."
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Chaos

2010-03-27T20:39:00.002+01:00

When people ask me what it is that draws me to the disorderly chaos that is life in Albania, I normally end up falling back on my favorite catch-phrase: "In chaos lies opportunity." Usually, that's true. Sometimes, chaos holds nothing but chaos and the very real possibility of death or dismemberment. I was reminded of this fact today as I sat on the terrace with a cold Birra Korca and was witness to the spectacle of Albanian tree-doctoring.

The tree in question is a 70-year old eucalyptus that towers over the former Bank of Rome apartment building. Originally built by the Italians to house the employees of - you guessed it - the Bank of Rome in the early 1930's, the building suffers from lack of maintenance and uncontrolled home improvements. One of the less attractive additions was the little bar built in the former front garden. The owner decided he needed to build a sidewalk raki/beer/qofte joint and was not about to let the presence of a massive tree deter him. His establishment was built around the trunk of the tree. The tree has suffered for almost 20 years, putting up with nails driven into its bark, a continuous cloud of cigarette smoke, and endless discussions of politics and soccer. It's no wonder it has developed problems.

The topmost portion had started to deform and lean menacingly over the street. Normally this is no cause for concern as Albanians are accustomed to living under the sword of Damocles; one eyeblink from catastrophe. However, last year another old eucalyptus dropped a branch from far above down on a new Mercedes SL. The trendy showoffs who park along this particular section of the Blloku were not about to let their precious rides suffer the same fate. The end result was a classic example of civic planning, risk mitigation, and hazard abatement as understood in this little corner of the Balkans. I imagine the planning session went a little like this:

"When's the best time to cut this sucker down?"
"How about Saturday evening on the day of the first decent weather in months?
"Done!"
"What about all the cars parked (nay, double-parked) on the street?"
"Eh, once we start dropping branches, they'll move!"
"Cool!"
"What about traffic control?"
"Shut up! Let's ride!"

Just about the time the nightly cruise kicks off on the Blloku, the tree doctors moved in. The "cherry-picker" truck double parked in front of the ramshackle bar and the shouting commenced. The owner, who evidently anticipated the event, started tearing down his umbrellas and suggesting his clients might want to move someplace less prone to cranial fractures from falling logs. One by one the owners of the Mercedes, Audis, and a Hummer arrived to swear at anyone within swearing distance before reluctantly moving off to find another place to flaunt their mobile status symbols. Those few who weren't sitting in local bars were less fortunate. The city cops arrived with a flatbed tow truck and proceed to yank the last few cars out of harms way. There's no sound like a Mercedes being winched sideways onto a truck with its alarm blaring and its tires protesting every centimeter of the way.

As the preliminaries were underway, the cast of primary actors assembled. Cherry-picker operator guy, chainsaw guy, city cops, national cops, drunk guy with very impressive beer belly, gypsy beggar kids. All present and accounted for. To ensure success, the owner of the bar offered most of the players a tumbler of raki and most of them accepted. Nothing like a stiff belt before firing up the old McCulloch. More like a Shanghai Industries Super Power Arm Render, but a chainsaw is a chainsaw.

Sufficiently lubricated, chainsaw and operator mount the cherry-picker basket and ascend treeward. Before the main cut is made, underbrush must be cleared. Brrrrrappp! Brrrrraaap! The saw is coaxed to life and the obstacles to ascension are cleared. "Farewell linden branches!" "Be gone, dangling wisteria vine!" "Oops, you didn't need internet anway!"

Once they reached the prime target, the limb-lopping begins in earnest. As each severed branch falls, the crowd of onlookers grows. The "Vogue Lounge" crowd has stopped admiring themselves in their own sunglasses and anxiously awaits a crushed car or amputated limb. The cops eventually decide they should divert traffic around the area instead of trying to sychronize circulation with chainsaw guy's cigarette breaks. The Blloku become eerily empty of cars.

Where once the slow parade of luxury vehicles ruled, the shouting kibbitzer now holds sway. Chainsaw guy is pelted with advice from amateur forestry experts. "Oh Petrit! Cut that one over that way first." "What are you doing? Don't worry, it will fall like I say it will." I gotta admit the pressure on chainsaw guy was unrelenting. How did he deal with it? Smoking, of course. During refeuling of the saw! "What? Dying in a gasoline vapor explosion can't be any worse than falling 60 feet from the wobbly cherry-picker. It'll all work out, inshallah."

In the end it was magnificent. A groaning crack. The swish of descending branches. The percussive crash of many tons of eucalyptus wood on the pavement elicited some polite applause and little pang of guilt from me. How many koalas could have been fed from that branch?

Once the threat of impending doom was neutralized, attitudes changed. Bystanders who "oohed" and "aahed" at each buzzing cut of the saw now started to complain about the dust. The police, who minutes before were the heroic guardians of the lives of unsuspecting pedestrians, began to harass the cleanup crew. "Get this stuff out of the way. We got cars that want to drive in circles around the Blloku to show off!" Chainsaw guy realized his 15 minutes were up and zipped up the top his jumpsuit, which previously flaunted his copious chest hair in a testosterone-fueled dispaly of derring-do. Only drunken beer-belly guy continued to revel in the moment, gazing vacantly skyward in hopes of another epic branch fall.

This time we were lucky. Chaos claimed no victims, unless you count koalas with rumbly tummies. Indeed, this little drama gave me the opportunity to enjoy a few cold Korca beers. "In chaos there is opportunity!"
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Saranda Again?

2010-02-10T20:48:00.000+01:00

I suppose it's only natural that the resort town closest to Corfu has become the "it" destination for brave foreigners venturing into Albania for the first time. Only 30-90 minutes away by ferry. Marketed to bored Brits lounging on the beaches, looking for something to break up the routine. "Day trip to Saranda and Butrint in the lawless wilds of Albania, mate?" Hell, I'd plunk down a few bucks for that myself.

So it continues. More and more tourists are plucking up their courage and taking the plunge. The latest item to crop up on my screen came from the good folks at the LA Times. A very nice article. If folks from LA like your beaches, you must be doing something right!

The government seems to have gotten the message here and is in the process of moving all the commercial shipping traffic away from the tourist ferry terminal to the former Navy base on the north side of the peninsula. Once that's gone, the pier will be extended 100 meters and the harbor dredged to allow cruise ships to dock directly on the quay. Not soon enough! I look forward to reading more articles from folks who have discovered this southern gateway to Albania.
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Surprise!

2010-02-01T21:00:00.001+01:00

One nice thing about living in a country that has a history of isolation and a geography that makes exploration problematic is the frequency of "new stuff." Just when you think you are beginning to transition from outsider to seasoned local, somebody or something comes along to expose a new facet of the country that makes you do a mental double-take. Discovering Byllis was the first of many of these moments for me. It happened again last week.

Cruising, as I do, through the digital back alleys of Google-dom, I came across a story on sea turtle research that has been ongoing for a few years here. Not only did I not know the research was in progress, I didn't know sea turtles even took the time to wander ashore in Albania. Turns out over 250 of the little amphibians (reptile!) have been captured, tagged, and logged. Three of our lucky contestants were named and tracked via GPS. Shpresa (Hope) stayed local. The same goes for Guximtari (The Brave One) who couldn't muster the courage to paddle more than a few kilometers from his capture site. The only turtle with real cojones was little Patok (named after the place he was tagged) who is currently kicking it in Corfu. Probably talking smack to some Scandanavian tourist-turtle: "You are schweeeet! Turtally, dude."

The other revelation from Albanian news was the discovery of some slightly slower-moving residents. Glacially slow, in fact. A team of persistent "mountainologists" found four undiscovered glaciers in the northern reaches of the country. None were named or tagged as you really don't need GPS to keep track of their wanderings. The group from the University of Manchester was surprised to find these glaciers so far south in Europe and were quoted as saying, "I got your global warming right here, Al Gore!"

Seriously. Turtles. Glaciers. What next? A missing link? A Japanese solider who never got the message that WWII is over? Lately, I wouldn't be surprised at all. The more you unfold the creases of this country, the more it keeps suprising you. I can hardly wait!
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Animal Rights?

2010-01-22T21:09:00.000+01:00

The recent flooding in Northern Albania has sparked a lot of thought and discussion. "Did the government cause the disaster unintentionally as a consequence of a scheme to skim money on the import of electricy?" "Why has the drainage infrastructure been allowed to decay so badly?" "Is it an act of god or man?" For me, the burning question is: "Would they eat a hippo?" You might think this doesn't make much sense, but be patient. We'll get there. But first I have to do some backing up.

I confess I am not much of an animal rights activist. Raised in the western U.S. among ranchers, I grew up in an environment that clearly defined "Us" and "Them." People and Animals, that is. We loved our dogs but didn't shy away from giving them the "Old Yeller" treatment if they needed it. We took care of cattle or sheep because of their economic value and had no qualms about plinking at jack-rabbits for fun. Hunting deer or antelope was a sacred rite which warranted a school holiday. Seriously, if you scored a buck tag, no teacher would think about penalizing you for unauthorized absence as you spent the better part of a school week freezing your ass off in the slim hope of actually getting to plug Bambi.

From this background I ventured out into the world to discover there were lots of people who never "met their meat," so to speak. Those who ate meat got it from the grocery store wrapped in plastic with little evidence that it was once a living animal. Then there were the vegetarians, vegans, ovo-lacto-vegetarians, cat-lovers, dog-lovers, PETA members, and many more who held a starkly different view on the Us/Them relationship. I listened, learned, and generally held my tongue among these folks.

When I came to Albania, I was back in my element. The luxury of imbuing animals with human characteristics was not affordable here. Animals had their work to do or their place on the table. Period. In fact, Albanians challenged my comfort level. It's a common sight here to see a kasapi in a kiosk on the side of the road hacking away at the carcass of a lamb while three more line up for their turn. Blood runs into the gutter while customers haggle over the choicest morsels. Absolutely no squeamishness.

As I learned more about Albania, I heard stories about families who kept a turkey in the bathroom in the run-up to New Years Eve. That's like Thanksgiving here. A real turkey bloodbath. Family members would fend off the turkey while taking their morning constitutional, knowing it was a small price to pay for the feast of gjell deti and pershesh which awaited them. The slaughtering also occured in the bathroom.

And it wasn't just food animals. At three in the morning on a cold January night I awoke to the sounds of a pitched battle outside my apartment in Tirana. The sounds of gunfire were unmistakable and prolonged. "What they hell are they shooting at," I wondered. Turns out, it was dogs. The mayor's office had a bounty of 500 lek for every tail collected in order to control the stray dog population. The local hunter's clubs joined the game with gusto. The most disturbing thing is this hunt was repeated every six month with no shortage of targets. Where are the spay and neuter folks when you need them?

The purest distillation of this experience happened when I went to a distant cousin's 40th birthday celebration in their ancestral village.  Twenty-six kilometers and two hours from the paved road landed me 200 years back in time. The village of Zhej lies hard in the mountains of southern Albania. Normal vehicles stop a few klicks out of town to let mules take over. The stoutest of 4x4's get you within 500 meters of the village. Once there, the hospitality is unequaled. Despite the fact that they just met me and I was only very distantly related to them by marriage, I was welcomed into the family and pampered. The culmination of the celebration was the roasting of a young goat.

A farmer from the neighboring village arrived with the kid slung over his mule. Pleasantries were exchanged and the serious haggling began. The goat was weighed, prodded, examined and assessed. An elderly gentleman delighted in pointing out the subterfuge of the farmer. "Look at his stomach," the old man whispered. "It's full of water.  This mashtruese has been forcing it to drink water all morning so it weighs more at sale." A counter-tactic of delay was employed until the kid answered the call of nature in a huge way and resumed a more reasonable weight! Once bought, the goat stayed in the garden with a crowd of children feeding it choice leaves until its final appointment with the cook.

The end came quickly and without much ceremony. The kid was led out behind the cookshed and dispatched swiftly with a sharp knife. As I watched I gained a new appreciation of the rituals adopted by Islam or American Indians to offer up a prayer of thanks to the animal. Despite ones outlook on the carnivore lifestyle, you can't deny that while we are "interested" in the process, the animal is "committed." The cook quickly got to work preparing the carcass.   He started with the upper lip and began to peel the skin back until the entire head was bare. Then he switched his attention to the rear legs and made a small incision near what would be the Achilles tendon on a person. Into this cut, he rammed a stick, separating the hide from the meat. Once the initial opening was made, he pressed his lips to the hole and blew furiously. The hide came away cleanly and the rest was simple butchery.

Nothing was wasted. The whole kid, including the head, was rubbed with salt and oregano and roasted over an open fire. All of the men took turns keeping the spit rotating between sessions of raki drinking and story telling. The innards were cleaned, spiced, and impaled on a long skewer. The whole thing was wrapped with small intestine and roasted over the coals to make an incomparable kukurec. As I licked the grease off my fingers I wondered, "What would PETA think of this?" Then I thought, "Who cares.. this is delicious!"

With this in mind, I had to chuckle when I read this article from the Southeastern European Times about a hippopotamus in Montenegro that escaped from its pen during the recent flooding. The locals worried it was a dangerous beast threatening their children. The owner swore it was a gentle lady who wouldn't hurt anyone because "she loves mud more than life itself." According to him, the only danger was standing too close when she thrashed her tail while defecating to spread her scent around. Local officials worried about creating an international incident if the hippo swam across Shkoder Lake into Albania. Knowing what I do about Albanians and their relationship with animals, I know the real potential for a diplomatic brouhaha lies in the very real possibility of the Montenegrins being offered a steaming dish of hippo kukurec.
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Bikes And A Brush

2009-12-13T18:52:00.002+01:00

It really is a small world thanks to the Inter-Tubes. I once had a job which involved reviewing lots and lots and lots of reporting on political topics of the day. During this job I came to know of the reporting done by Heba Aly for Bloomberg and the Christian Science Monitor on the situation in Darfur.

Fast forward a few years and I'm in Tirana trying to stay up with the growing numbers of foreign travellers who visit this country. Google Blogs gives a hit on a pair of cyclists who are in Dubrovnik trying to assess the possibility of biking through Albania on their way from Portugal to Jordan. Yeah, I know. Long ride.

Anyway, I drop a comment on their blog and encourage them to come on down. A few days later, I'm sitting in a restaurant chatting with Heba Aly and Richard as they enjoy the experience of coming to Albania. Well, I think they were enjoying it. You'll have to keep up with their blogging to see how they feel. I hope to hear good things from them as they experience the ride over Qafe Llogara in December.

The title of this post? It comes from a former co-worker who once enlightened me on the facts of meeting celebrities in LA. He divided referred to a fleeting contact with a famous person as "a brush." As in "a brush with fame." There are two kinds: direct brushes where you meet a celebrity, and the indirect brush where you meet someone associated with a famous person. Like meeting Cher's stylist or Tiger Woods' marriage counselor.... What? Too soon?

Anyway, I had a direct brush with Heba Aly. I hope she invites me to her Pulitzer Prize ceremony. If she survives Llogara!
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'This Road Don't Go To Aintree'

2009-11-03T11:29:00.001+01:00

Several writers have described the incredible hospitality of Albanians who have taken a disoriented foreigner under their wing and led them to their destination, often going well out of their way and losing hours of time in the process. I admire and respect this generosity, but I suspect their is another force at work. Albanians are so poor at giving directions that it's easier just to take the lost soul directly to his destination than it is to give directions.

Hence the title of this entry.

Remember? Burt Reynolds? Deliverance? Trying to get directions from the hillbillies? I often feel his pain when I try to get directions here in Albania. Even with my ability to communicate in Albanian, I end up being led like a kurban lamb through the narrow maze of streets. Albanians just can not give directions.

I suspect many factors have combined to create this effect. The first is the tribal nature of the people. In the tightly-knit isolated communities of ancient Albania, everyone knew everyone who was within travelling distance. No need to describe how to get to Uncle Genci's house because anyone who needed to go there had already been taken there once for a wedding, birth, death, birthday, engagement, or holiday celebration. The only directions needed were, "Go to Uncle Genci's house". Second, this clannish-ness and isolation made any travellers immediately suspect. If they asked for directions, it might not be wise to be too precise. Who knows what this travelling foreigner has in mind? Much safer to say a lot and tell nothing. On top of this insularity, the Communist regime spread a creamy frosting of paranoia and secrecy. Accurate maps were state secrets. If you need to go somewhere, the party will send a driver. No need for you to clutter your mind with accurate directions.

So today a simple question such as' "How do I get to the Post Office?" will be answered with:
"I'll take your letter for you." (This avoids the need to give directions and provides an opportunity to display hospitality. Bonus!)
"Come with me. I'll take you." (Ditto)
"Don't make yourself tired. Get a cab." (Shows concern for your tiredness and allows you to impress with your wealth.)
"Post Office? Don't send things through the post. They're all thieves and cheaters. The lines are so long because the workers are lazy. Oh, god! The Post Office? I tried to pay my phone bill last week and I waited for two hours in line and my knees were killing me... you know how bad my knees are?... Anyway, I wait two hours and this idiot behind the counter tries to tell me ...". Ad infinitum.

If you can pin someone down and insist they provide directions, you run up against linguistics and urban planning. An American will tell you to go two blocks north, left on Main Street, and then 200 yards along to the Post Office on the right. This simple procedure will fail here because Albanians don't think in terms of cardinal directions. They grew up without detailed maps. Speaking about north,south, east, or west gets you a "stunned mullet" look.

Tirana's layout also makes the term "block" useless. No regular grid pattern here, thank you very much. A block is the distance between two streets, but what counts as a street? Do alleyways wide enough for a donkey but not a car count? Street names? Forget it. They've been renamed more times than Prince! In a single lifetime a street will have changed from it's original name based on what town it led to, to an Italian name, to the name of a partisan, to Kruschev Street, then to an Albanian Communist's name after the split with the Soviets, then to it's original name, and then finally to Rruga Xhorxh Bushi in a fit of subservience to the only sitting U.S. President to ever visit Albania. Street names don't mean shit. So what do you get?

First, they will establish a mutually understood landmark near your destination. "Do you know the theater/museum/shoe factory?" Of course you will say "No" because you don't recall ever seeing any of those structures in this part of town despite ten years of wandering around Tirana. This is because they are referring to what the building used to be under Communism.

For example, "te eksposita Shqiperia sot" refers to the building that used to house the Albania Today exposition. It's a warehouse/gas station now. "Te pesembidhjete katesh" literally translates to "to the fifteen-story (building)" which everyone knows is the Tirana International Hotel because it was the only building over ten floors in the country for a very long time. Now it's one of fifty. Likewise, "te xhamlliku" translates as "to the place of glass" meaning a building which was notable for it's modern all-glass facade .... in 1972! Today there's no glass at Xhamlliku but a hundred other modern buildings sport glass facades. Guess which building they still call Xhamlliku? The ultimate insider's landmark is "te qimi" which refers to building which once housed a restaurant. Was the restaurant called Qimi? No, the name of the restaurant is forgotten, but what lingers is the memory of the woolen upholstery on the seats which were long and hairy. Te qimi means "to the hair".

Once the landmark is clarified and agreed, directions are given from there and language fails. Commonly used directions are:
me poshte - lower down
me lart - higher up
me tutje - more this way
matane - more on that side
me afer - closer
me larg - farther

A rough translation of the ensuing directions goes like this:
"How do I get to the Post Office?"
"Go to the hair."
"Near the madrassa?"
"Yes. Then continue higher up."
"Up the hill?"
"No, it's flat. Continue 'up' away from the center of town about ten minutes."
"How far?"
"What do I know? Ten minutes... on the bus."
"All the way to the porcelain factory?"
"No, more this way."
"Which way?"
"Pass the chimney but don't pass the police station."
"Which side of the road is it on?"
"Next to the bakery."
"What bakery?"
"Do you want me to take your letter for you?"
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Another Intrepid Blogger

2009-11-02T10:56:00.000+01:00

I came across yet another well-written chronicle of travel in Albania to share. It gives an idea of what things can be like here in the off season. His name is Mykel Board and his tale of (mis)adventure begins here. Happy reading!
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Valbona

2009-09-24T11:44:00.000+02:00

My feeble attempts to describe the beauty of the Valbona Valley would only get in the way. My thoughts as I stared around me echoed the awe of Jodie Foster's character in Contact: "There are no words..."

Still No Will To Write

2009-09-08T13:37:00.000+02:00

I can't seem to shake the lethargy of August and start writing again. Fortunately there are more industrious writers out there who have discovered Albania and are taking up the slack. Check out this series of articles by Nathan Thrall on Slate. Good writing and good links here, here, and here. Enjoy.
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I'm Detecting a Trend

2009-07-24T12:49:00.002+02:00

Another two-wheeled, human-powered adventure through Albania shows up on the net. This one special for a couple of reasons. This guy is travelling on a fold-able bike. Second he was "brave" enough to attempt to tackle the Shkoder-Kukes road. Finally, he stayed overnight in Puke, a town whose very name sounds like regurgitation in English and while it's not the middle of nowhere, you can see it from there. Enjoy!
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More Bicycle Tales

2009-06-26T16:32:00.001+02:00

Another intrepid cyclist discovers the hidden secrets of Albania. Great photography and a nice pair of figs! Seriously, figs. Check it out.
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Two Wheels Good

2009-06-21T16:52:00.004+02:00

I've spent the past month cooped up in an office or zipping around the country in a car, chasing whatever duty the day brings. Not much time to really take a good look around and notice the little things that make this country special. Fortunately, there are others who have the time, the mode of transport, and the writing skills to do so. With no further ado, I yield my time to John Coyle who came here to ride a bicycle through the stunning scenery and challenging geography of Albania.

His prologue sets you up nicely to understand the whys and wherefores of his trip. His narrative of travel in Albania is tied neatly into one of the dominant features of his ride, the switchbacks of Qafe Llogara. His first entry leads from an unlucky breakfast of pace in Saranda to the base of the pass before starting up. As he starts up the pass, he weaves his tale of travel in with the hardships of riding up that incredibly steep incline. While tackling switchback #2, he describes the travails of getting himself and his bike into Tirana. Laboring up switchback #3 gives him time to describe the experience of Albanian hospitality in Korca and the surrounding environs.

The bad news is we have to wait for more of his fantastic writing. The good news is Llogara has five huge switchbacks so we can anticipate two more helpings of his unique insight into life here in Albania.

Te lumte, John!
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Independently Speaking

2009-05-28T11:25:00.002+02:00

I read the Independent newspaper a lot and have always liked it. Thanks to this recent article, I like it even more. It's a shame most British travel writers continue to focus on Saranda and Butrint only, but it's to be expected. Lord Sainsbury has put a lot of money into the Butrint Foundation which means their marketing probably focuses on his countrymen. No worries. You know the old saying, "Once you go Shqiperia, you'll never go ...." Oh forget it. I can't make that rhyme.

Wait, it works in Albanian, "Ose Shqiptare, ose hic fare!"
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Where's Waldo?

2009-05-27T13:13:00.002+02:00

Finally got a chance to do some travelling a few weeks ago and the photos just got back from the developers. OK, I lied. I finally got around to downloading them from the camera which was buried under a tarp, spare tire, a decrepit first aid kit, and a misplaced bag of red Easter eggs in the back of my car. If it hadn't been for the stench wafting around, these pictures may have waited forever to see the light of day.

So can you guess where I went?

Looks kind of Alpine, right?

Do you feel a little yodel coming on?

Heidi's meadow, anyone?

Socialist-realist bas relief depicting the glorious Swiss triumph over the forces of capitalist... Whaaa?

Hey .... This isn't Zurich!

A gold star and case of rough village wine goes to those of you who correctly guessed I made a tour of the southern part of Albania near the Greek border. The first picture is of the Pindos range in Northern Greece as seen from Sarandapor. The weather was more wintry than springlike with a lot of new snow up in the heights. Just gorgeous.

The next two pictures were taken between Leskovik and Permet. The memorial is in the town square in Leskovik. I couldn't find anything else worth photographing in Leskovik. The surrounding countryside is phenomenal, but the town itself is sad and grey. It suffers from depopulation outward migration. The streets were full of idle old men and some women with children whose fathers were presumably working in Greece.

The last photo is Permet. A small, clean town on the banks of rushing river. Great food, great wine, and beautiful scenery. Another corner of Albania has opened to me and I look forward to more discoveries.

Travellers Tales

2009-05-07T10:57:00.002+02:00

I continue to stumble across blog entries written by travellers as they pass through Albania. Here's the latest that caught my eye. Some only come to my attention because they peripherally mention this country in passing. There are a couple of Peace Corps youngsters documenting their integration into life here and here. Folks from as far away as New Zealand are getting in on the act.
The more the merrier!
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The Secret Is Out

2009-04-27T13:20:00.002+02:00

As we creep closer to summer, I get the sense that things are changing here. I hear more non-Albanian voices everywhere. In the restaurants, at the beach, sitting at the "Balcony of Dajti" watching the endless parade of ski-lift gondolas shuttle up from Tirana and back down again I hear German, French, ... and English. Lots of English. More people are getting clued in to the hidden tourist potential of the country and I'm glad to see it.

To confirm my impressions, The Guardian newspaper has published its #1 backpacker destination for 2009 and the winner is ... (may I have the envelope, please?) ... Albania! The article is well written and gives some hint of the increased level of interest in holidays here due to the combination of daily flights from London and the financial crisis making travellers look closer to home for exotic holiday destinations. I only have a few quibbles with the author.

First, he refers to the beach at Dhermi as "Drymades" which is the Greek name for the village. This could make it tough for a traveller to find the place as all the maps and road signs list it by the Albanian name, naturally. Second, he raves about buying a mojito for "only" 3 pounds Sterling. For that you could get 2 liters of fantastic red wine or more raki than you can possibly drink. You want cheap mojitos? Go to Cuba.

Now that the secret is out, I expect it will be harder to find a deserted stretch of beach this year. Oh well, I'll just have to look a little harder. I can hardly wait!
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I Speak For The Trees

2009-04-21T15:25:00.007+02:00

I like Edi Rama.

Not because I am politically aligned with him. (I'm not.)

Not because he's such a snappy dresser. (He's not.)

Not because he featured in a pretty cool rap song. (He did.)

I like Edi Rama because he's a Lorax.

Like our little yellow friend, Edi speaks for the trees. Or more precisely Edi has been doing a lot of speaking about trees. Not just speaking. The Tirana mayor's office has been planting trees like crazy all around the city. The latest report I saw said the Bashkia had planted over 8,000 trees along the roads in Tirana as part of the "Nje qytetar,nje peme" project. "One citizen, one tree." I hope he reaches that goal. There are few cities on earth that need the healing, cleansing presence of greenery more than Tirana.

On a late winter walk the sun sets low at the end of the road and it's hard not to get a little depressed at the bare concrete and skeletal limbs of the trees.

A few weeks later and what a difference! By the end of May the canopy will stretch across the road keeping the temperatures in the tolerable range.

The little trees lining these stretches of street were planted in February and are just starting to green. It will be years before they come close to fulfilling their potential, but it's a wonderful beginning.

One day every street in Tirana will be as lush and shade-dappled as this one with an overhead view like the one below.

For these things I like Edi. I also like the good folks at Raiffiesen Bank, BKT, Tirana Bank, and many others who are co-sponsoring this effort. They are taking the small steps necessary to lift the quality of life for everyone who lives (and breathes) in Tirana. They may not have been raised on Dr. Seuss like I was, but they must understand the sentiments of the last lines of the "The Lorax:"

And all that the Lorax left here in this mess

was a small pile of rocks, with one word... "UNLESS."

Whatever that meant, well, I just couldn't guess.

"But now," says the Once-ler, "Now that you're here,

the word of the Lorax seems perfectly clear.

UNLESS someone like you cares a whole awful lot,

nothing is going to get better. It's not."

All Roads Lead Through Albania

2009-04-07T13:20:00.003+02:00

I know the quote actually is, "All roads lead to Rome." The Roman Empire can be justifiably proud of building the network of transportation arteries which tied the Mediterranean world together. Even in that time the land that eventually would become known as Albania was key to transit and trade. The Via Egnatia bisects Albania and was the key link between the Eastern and Western halves of the Roman Empire. The road from Rome to Istanbul leads through Albania.

Evidently, so does the modern road from Wales to Kamchatka. I had the great pleasure of making the acquaintance of Walter Colebatch and his fellow adventurers, Marcin and Jon, as they passed through Albania on the first stage of the Sibirsky Extreme Challenge. They are at the beginning of a ten-month effort to ride to the northern-most and eastern-most point of Asia ever attained on two wheels. To warm up for the effort, they plotted a route through 20 countries in 15 days. Albania was country number 11. The three of them are great guys with boundless appetite for adventure.

They were extremely impressed by Albania and Tirana. It helped that they stayed overnight when the government was throwing its big "Whoo-hoo-we-just-got-into-NATO-take-that-Enver-Hoxha" party. The streets were mobbed. UB-40 was playing in the square. And hordes of enthusiastic NATO cheerleaders were racing around, hanging out the windows of their cars waving Albanian and NATO flags. I played it off like a normal Sunday night in Tirana, which, now that I think of it, wasn't far off!
If you like bikes, travel, adventure, and an unshaven Polish biker just hop over to their blog and follow them on the journey of a lifetime. If you're in the Albanian tourism industry, pay attention. It's people like this who will be the fastest growing segment of the Western tourism market. Albania still has the cachet of being unexplored country full of adventure. As the physical infrastructure improvements bring the title of this post closer to reality, I sure hope the entrepreneurs here will entice a few more thrill seekers like Walter and his compadres.
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Slip Slidin' Away

2009-03-27T08:23:00.003+01:00

Sure, getting snowed in can be unpleasant. Cold temperatures can threaten frostbite or death if you aren't properly dressed. But what do you do if your the land beneath your home slides downhill taking you and all your worldly possesions with you? Sometimes you die, as many of the articles in this blog attest to. Fortunately things haven't become that bad here, but the potential for disaster still looms.

Albania has all the ingredients necessary for life-threatening landslides. To call the terrain mountainous is a slight understatement. From the air, the country looks like it was crumpled up and tossed aside by the forces of nature. The geology of the area also contributes to the landslide risks. Sedimentary layers of varying materials, some volcanic deposits, and silt buildups are inherently unstable. Factor in the human elements of deforestation, neglect of infrastructure maintenance, and shoddy construction and the recipe for disaster is nearly complete. Just add rain.

Add rain we did. As I write, we enter the fifth month in a row where we've had more rainy days than not. Great for the trees and flower. Not so great for soil stability. Full reservoirs have a way of pointing out weakness in the dams that hold them back. Near Kryevidh local authorities rushed to drain a lake that was threatening to collapse the earthen dam that held it back. Today there was word of another reservoir under threat because of a "karstic sinkhole" developing below the dam. I don't know the difference between a karstic or non-karstic sinkhole, but I have seen pictures of sinkholes swallowing neighborhoods in Florida so I know it ain't good.

Those dams have held so far. Hillsides are another story. The most serious was a landslide at Synej near Kavaje. At last count, eight houses were destroyed or uninhabitable due to the movement of the earth. Looking at the video, you can see how all of the factors for landsliding are present. No ground cover, construction in obviously unstable terrain, loose soil, and buckets of rain. The same story is being played out across the country. Trebinje, near Pogradec, has seen the "reactivation" of a previous landslide that now threatens to destroy some homes. The mountain passes of Qafe Mali and Qafe Shllak have each been repeatedly blocked as mud and rocks cascade over the roadway.

Can we make the rain stop now? Please.
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When It Rains, It Pours

2009-03-26T08:22:00.006+01:00

Since my arrival in Albania I have developed an unusual interest in rainfall, river levels, and snowpack. Some of my friends would classify my "interest" as an unhealthy obsession. To me it seems reasonable. Almost 90% of the electricity generated in Albania comes from hydropower. My ability to have lights, hot water, and elevator service depends greatly on how much precipitation lands in the Drin Valley watershed.

Over the years I've seen both ends of the spectrum. My first trip to Kukes let me glimpse the bottom of the nearly empty Fierze reservoir with the old house foundations of Old Kukes poking up out of the mud more than 50 meters below the high water mark on the mountainside. I suffered through several Augusts with no AC due to brownouts and shivered through dark February nights with only a candle and flashlights for light (and heat!).

Then again, I also saw the flooding of Lezhe during 2002. Water everywhere, reservoirs full to capacity with all turbines spinning flat out and still they were dumping excess water over the spillways. That year Fierze filled up to the top and excess electricity was sold to Kosova.

Once again, the pendulum of precipitation has swung to the wet side. In fact, this is one of the wettest winters I can recall here in Albania. It's been raining more or less daily since late December. You would think this would make me, and all 3 million water-obsessed Albanians happy as clams at high tide. You would be wrong.

With this bounty of water comes a price. The first price was snow... a lot of it. The high mountain villages here are no strangers to snowbound winters and the Army has experience heli-dropping food and medicines to stranded people and forage for isolated farm animals. This year it started the same with news reports of villages near Has snowed in. Shishtavec made it's usual appearance in the list of places blocked by snow. Other places had their first snow in decades. Some people even managed make the snow in March around Kukes look attractive through the addition of music.

When major passes like Qafe Thane closed, people started to take notice. For weeks it was on again, off again with closures and mandatory tire chain orders creeping lower and closer to Tirana. Qafe Llogara made the list in January and then Himare actually woke up to snow on the beach.

This was not going to be a normal year! And so it continues. Today, the news talks of villages still isolated by snow. Some of these places have recieved over two meters of snow in the past two months. Last week we got hammered by a late season storm that inundated Tirana and brought snow to the outskirts. Qafe Krrabe, between Tirana and Elbasan, was blocked, re-opening after three days to the delight of these folks:

The government had to call out the heavy equipment to clear this road.

Farther north, Kolin in Shkoder reported snow on the ground in this northern city which is nearly at sea level. I shudder at the though of what driving conditions were like. Oh, wait! Who needs to imagine when, through the magic of YouTube, you can experience the insanity of Albanian driving in the snow first-hand. It's guys like this who don't have the sense to stay home that lead to things like the 200-car traffic jam on Qafe Mali between Kukes and Puke last week. Four buses with women and children ended up spending two nights stranded in the snow. Over 100 other cars were trapped on the remote Qafe Buall pass when the front-end loader sent to clear the pass ran out of gas in the middle of the road. Classic!

Despite these travails, those who paid the price for precipitation in the form of snow got off lightly. The heavy rains brought more serious problems in the form of landslides.

To be continued......

The Joke Is Only Funny When It's Not True

2009-03-06T12:06:00.003+01:00

A while ago I wrote about some of my Albanian friends giving me a hard time about the emerging financial crisis in the U.S. They had jokingly offered to send "experts" from Albania to advise America on what happens when a pyramid scheme goes bust. We all had a good laugh. I never thought I would live to see the day when a serious analyst would look back to Albania in 1997 for insight into the U.S. condition.

That day has come. This blog post entitled "Albania's 1996 Ponzi scheme frenzy: So, what's America's excuse? is an interesting look back at what happened here and how the Western Capitalist World "tut-tutted" at the naivete of Albanians. Who's laughing now?
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Now I'm Jealous!

2009-02-17T10:35:00.002+01:00

Don't you hate it when someone else is living your dream? I've always been an avid motorcycle fan and want to start a motorcycle adventure touring company here in Albania. The geography is great, the sights are amazing, and the law is just lassez faire enough to let you get away with some two-wheeled hijinks that would have you in a U.S. jail in no time.

As I travel around I alway assess each new trip with a motorcyclists' eye. The road from Vlora to Sarande is twisty enough to keep you on your toes. The mountains between Gjirokaster and Permet have great off-road potential. Imagine the thrill of riding to Theth ... Oh wait! Someone else has done it. Damn!

An adventurous Czech company has organized a tour which includes Albania and I have to find out about it through a Google Search? Bummer. Check out part one and part two of their adventure. Even if you aren't a biker, you'll love the pictures of Northern Albania.

I really need to get to work on setting this up before I;m too old to heave a leg over a bike and head off into the hills!

Living Vicariously

2009-02-10T10:54:00.003+01:00

All this month I've been tied down at work (figuratively) and unable to travel and unmotivated to write. Fortunately there are others out there doing the good work and I will shamelessly piggyback on their talents and adventures. The latest work I found is by a real vagabond (not an insult, he calls himself that in his blog) who is currently winding his way through Albania. Head over there and check out this latest post as well as his previous entries about Albania. Good stuff.
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National Geographic, No Less

2009-02-03T10:45:00.002+01:00

A good omen for the start of the next tourist season. "Untouched Mediterranean" may be a little hyperbole, but the article is good. Enjoy!
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Very Superstitious

2009-01-23T07:51:00.006+01:00

We all have our little superstitions, our lucky charms. Knock on wood. Cross your fingers for luck. We've inherited these from long ago and most of us don't give much thought as to why our ancestors started doing these things. Modern life has insulated us from the immediate effects of our environment which gave rise to these practices.

Albanians are a little closer to the source. The threats to their lives and existence aren't all that far in the past. Plus they have a huge number of cultural sources which contributed to their arsenal of superstitious rituals. I suppose if I lived in a land that was continually invaded by neighboring powers; attacked by pirates; ruled by despots; plundered by empires; subject to flooding, earthquakes, wildfires, landslides; and burdened with a traditon of revenge killing, I would hoard and employ every talisman possible.

Any visitor to Albania will be familiar with the dordolec. The term roughly translates to "scarecrow" and is used to ward off the evil eye. The phenomenon is so common it gave rise to a scholarly tract by Kirstin Petersen-Bidoshi. Kolin in Shkoder has an excellent entry in his blog about this practice. I was prodded to add my two cents to the discussion when I saw the latest version of this totem.

At first I thought I was witnessing the aftermath of a suicide. Hanging by the neck from the third floor balcony of a newly built villa near student city was a young girl. Dressed in red, shoes still on, a string of fake pearls dangling below the cord that bit into her neck. Her hands missing, replaced by three-inch screws .... wait a minute! Thats a mannequin! Evidently the concept of outdoing your neighbor even extends to protecting your new house from the covetous gaze of passers by.

The theory behind the practice is based on the belief that the gaze of certain people has the power to curse an object. Some people believe the power is only resident in certain classes of people. The Roma, are often suspected of having this power. Blue-eyed people are also more likely to be credited with the ability to curse with their gaze. Others believe the power comes from the intention of the person looking. If they look with envy or jealousy, those emotions are the source of the curse. Hence the dorodolec. If the eyes of the onlooker are distracted to the talisman, the curse is misdirected and the object being protected is spared the inevitable misfortune.

The Egyptians held similar beliefs. Also the Greeks, Romans, Hindu's, and nearly every Mediterranean culture. They each countered the threat in different ways. Turks use the nazar, a symbol resembling an eye. You see it on boats, airplanes, and on charms worn around the neck. Vehicles also sport the modern version of the nazar in the form of a compact disc dangling from the rear view mirror. It's shimmering presence quickly draws your eye, saving the car from the curse of your envy. Afghan and Pakistani "jingle trucks" are the apotheosis of this practice. Covered in all manner of garish, sparkly doodads, they afford little chance for you to covet the truck since you can hardly recognized its form under all the junk!

Yes, the dordolec is alive and well in Albania. I've seen Mickey Mouse, Winnie-the-Pooh, Raggedy Ann, and all four of the Teletubbies dangling from the top of houses. I must admit I think the Teletubbies deserve it. "Where's your hat now, Dipsy?" The talisman isn't limited to dolls. Garlic is often used as are horse shoes. It's all part of the constant battle against misfortune which crops up again and again in daily life here.

You hear it in the loving babble of grandparents who coo "O te keqen!" at every child. It's short for "Te marrsha te keqen" which loosley translates to "May I take the evil." It's a compliment that implies the child is so innocent and beautiful that the adult wishes to suffer all misfortune in the child's place.

Other verbal talismans include "Larg qoft!" which you hear in relation to expressed fears about illness or misfortune: "I'm worried little Flutura might catch cold at school."
"Larg qoft!" ("May it stay far away!")
The first time I tried to use this phrase I said "Larg qofte" meaning "distant meatballs!"

Marshallah is also very common as it is the only really safe way to compliment a child without the risk of calling misfortune on the child. Spitting evidently helps too. I suppose a child covered in spittle is less likely to draw an envious gaze and susequent curse. OK, they don't really spit. The practice has evolved from expectoration to just making a vocalized noise reminiscent of spitting. It sounds like "pu-pu-pu-pu-pu" and is used in conjunction with marshallah and te keqen.

There's a lot of superstitions that I am only just learning about. For instance, if you inadvertantly point a knife at someone, you must quickly tap the point of the knife three times on the ground. As strange as this seems, it pales in comparison with the latest custom I stumbled on.

While talking with co-workers about these practices, two females whispered something between themselves, giggled, and looked away. Of course I had to ask what was up. It took a lot of coaxing and cajoling to get them to speak up. Evidently, the only sure-fire protection from evil is for a woman to briefly touch herself. Yes, there! It can done through the clothing, but to ensure the strongest protection the touch must be skin-to-skin.

I was skeptical at first, but the all-knowing Wikipedia convinced me it could be a very ancient practice. The power of the "evil eye" was thought to bring a curse of withering in ancient times. The evil eye could bring drought, shrivelling, dessication, and infertility. To protect male children, an amulet shaped like a phallus was tied around their neck. Further protection was provided by a female presence. Proximity to the source of reproduction and fertility countered the dessicating effects of the curse. To this day, Albanian women invoke the mystic power of their reproductive organs in defense of themselves and their loved ones.

Distant meatballs, indeed.
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Pettifer Writes Again

2009-01-09T10:10:00.004+01:00

Just in time for the beginning of the New Year and all the potential it brings, James Pettifer published a very interesting piece on Albania in light of Kosovar independence and the NATO invitaiton. It's a good read for those of you who have an interest in Albanian politics without getting too in-depth on the byzantine intricacies of the subject. The article was published in PDF format under the website of the UK Defence Academy. Enjoy!
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Always the Same Problem

2009-01-08T15:20:00.003+01:00

The holidays have come and gone here in Tirana and once again we find ourselves suffering from the same problem this country has had every holiday season:

THERE'S ......

NEVER .......

EVER.......

ENOUGH .......

ELECTRICITY!

Maybe it's just a case of "the more you have, the more you need!" Seriously, Tirana was lit up like never before this year. A lot more of the shops and homes got into the act with beautiful displays as some very garish lights. Gezuar Vitin i Ri!

Good News

2009-01-05T14:01:00.005+01:00

I was wrong and I'm glad. A few posts down I wrote about the upcoming holiday season and how bad the traffic would be. I predicted chaos on the roads and a surging casualty count. I'm pleased to report Albania and it's drivers didn't live up (or down) to my expectations.

Oh, the traffic was bad enough this year. The head of the border police, Pellumb Nako, reported over 100,000 vehicles had crossed into Albania for the New Year holiday. That seems like a lot, but the streets of Tirana were teeming with Greek and Italian license-plated cars and I'm sure the situation was the same in all the major cities of Albania. Despite this deluge, there were relatively few reported traffic accidents. The weather was also very bad for driving, with up to a meter of snow in the mountains.

There were some crashes, including a few fatalities, mostly on the Highways of Death listed below. One unusual accident did grab my attention. Seems a late-night reveler got a little frisky with the throttle in the rain while heading down the boulevard next to the Lana river and went off the road. I imagine the internal dialogue went something like this:

"I can probably go just a little faster here..... Ooops, starting to slide left, better hit the brakes! Damn, where'd that curb come from. This is gonna suck! OK, a rollover. Not too bad. Car skidding along the grass on its roof .... Oh crap! Not the river, not the river. Get ready to roll again. What? Upside down IN the river. OK, it's not so bad. It's not too deep.... But it's the Lana!"

No doubt this driver headed home quickly for a long, hot shower. For those of you who haven't had the pleasure of strolling along the Lana, let me illuminate you. The river serves as informal sewer for a good part of Tirana and is populated only by the elusive "Lana Brown Trout," if you get my meaning.

It's Not Just Me

2008-12-28T20:31:00.003+01:00

I keep in touch with many travellers in Albania, and they all have something good to say about the country. OK, they also have some not-so-good things to say. To pretend otherwise would be less than truthful. The latest story that touched me is here. Enjoy!
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Highways of Death

2008-12-22T11:54:00.006+01:00

It's that time of year again. Temperatures drop, shops are decorated, and the nation's attention will once again be drawn to one thing: highway fatalities. The holiday season last year was marred by a spike in accidents and deaths on Albania's roads. This happens in the U.S. too and I wouldn't be surprised if it's the same in many other countries. Holiday travel, alcohol, and bad weather can combine to create a darker Christmas tradition anywhere in the world. Here in Albania, as with everything else, things are a little different.

The first factor is the state of the roads. No, they're not in such disrepair that they are deadly. On the contrary, the rise in fatalities becomes most noticeable just after a new section of road opens up. The routine goes something like this:

The PM announces a road improvement project.

Five years later the roadwork is completed.

Just prior to the next election, the PM (usually not the one who initiated the project) holds a ribbon cutting ceremony to show his/her governments efforts toward development.

Within three months, the new section of road is proclaimed a "Highway of Death" by the media as the carnage begins.

The next stretch of road opens up and the cycle repeats.

The first iteration of this cycle happened on the Tirana-Durres "autostrade." It took nearly 7 years to build the first seven kilometers from the city limits almost to the airport turn-off. As a superhighway, it lacked a few finishing touches. Limited access, for one. The road was not fenced and drivers entered where they liked. Pedestrians had unlimited crossing points. U-turns were possible just about anywhere. In reality, it wasn't a super-highway, just a 4-lane country road. But you could drive real fast!

Progress came and eventually the road became truly divided. Concrete barriers solved the U-turn problem, but created difficulty for pedestrians and their livestock. With no overpasses or underpasses, the only way to get across was a 25-meter dash with a wall-vaulting halfway across. Easy if you're a 20-year-old lavazh worker. Not so easy if you're a 60-year-old villager with a cow.

While the government answered this need by slowly building pedestrian overpass bridges, the local made the wall-vault portion easier by piling rocks at each side of the barrier in the fast lanes! Each time I headed for the airport, I quivered in anticipation of what kind of lunacy I would witness. The road never failed to exceed my expectations. Once it was four farmers trying valiantly to boost a reluctant heifer over the Jersey barriers while angry drives whizzed by on each side, honking like crazy. Another time it was an old lady coaxing her cow over the pedestrian overpass whose spindly steel superstructure trembled with each bovine step. The cow didn't seem keen on the idea despite the determined motivational lecture being administered with a stick by the old crone in black!

This stretch of road was the first I ever heard termed "Highway of Death" in the newspaper. It seems the villagers who crossed it had grown used to crossing the old, potholed excuse for a highway which the autostrade replaced. Since the new road went in, they had not recalibrated their time/speed/distance estimators to deal with the increased traffic speed. The result was predictable. Dead pedestrians, wrecked cars, lurid headlines, and calls for action. This attention soon faded away, either because the press got bored or Darwin's laws culled out those who couldn't survive in this new traffic environment.

Fortunately for the press, the autostrade from Durres to Rrogozhine was inaugurated and soon won the coveted "H.O.D." title. This heavily-travelled two-lane road passes through more rural, isolated country than the Tirana-Durres road and soon racked up fatalilties among villagers who had only ever had to dodge cars travelling 1/8 of the new speed limit. Again the calls for traffic calming measures came and again the government did ... nothing. The locals then took things into their hands.

Americans call them speed bumps. The Brits call them "sleeping policmen." Albanians call them "dead policemen", presumably to avoid confusion with actual sleeping policemen. Regardless what you call them, these little humps of tarmac are very effective at slowing traffic. These villagers, obviously not professional highway engineers, took them to a new level. They made them about 40cm tall, from concrete, in the middle of the night. Come the morning rush hour and the police found themselves responding to accidents on the H.O.D. not involving squished pedestrians, but a $60,000 Mercedes with it's undercarrige destroyed by a 80mph collision with a miniature bunker laid across the road.

Time passed and the "slow pedestrian" gene got weeded out of the Kavaja gene pool. Accidents rates fell, and a new H.O.D. opened, one which reigns to this day. It's the stretch from Fushe Kruje to Lezhe. This one was perfectly situated to claim the title with arrow straight stretches of two-lane blacktop cutting across farmland dotted with villages and farms. The road had been started in the late 1990's, but was delayed for many reasons. This delay gave the locals a chance to get used to using the road sections as they were completed. A few entrepreneurs even managed to build their business directly on the side of the road before traffic started flowing. Today, the road is busy, crowded, and narrow in places where junkyards, gas stations, or pork butchers' kiosks stand inches from the traffic lanes.

But it's not just unwary villagers who die on these roads. Just a few days ago this road was the site of a two-car head-on collision that left two people dead. The press claimed the H.O.D. was the cause while the police blamed the pile-up on excessive speed, bad weather, and lack of lighting. Anyone who drives this road knows the real reason. It's the unique relationship between Albanians, their cars, and history.

It's only been 17 years since private citizens were allowed to drive and own cars here. Given the liberty to do so, Albanians went car crazy. Driving became a status symbol which they adopted with the same passion they have for football and the same lack of attention they pay to rules in general. Driver training was minimal or non-existent. In 1993, ten bucks got you a valid license regardless of driving skill. The stage was set. Lot's of inexperienced drivers, a passionate love for cars, construction of better (read: faster) roads, and more cars on the road. Stir these ingredients into the macho Mediterranean culture and, voila, chaos.

They think they are great drivers. They yield to no one. They drive drunk, or distracted, or both. They die in large numbers. Tragically, it's usually after a celebration when the odds catch up with them. Even more tragic, they take people with them. Families, pedestrians, children. I'm keeping my fingers crossed this year and hoping to see signs of improvement over previous years.

And I'm staying off the roads.
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The Highway

2008-12-11T11:00:00.005+01:00

I love to travel to the remote corners of Albania and have done my fair share of complaining about the quality of the roads. By far the trip that brings out the whiner in me more than any other has been the trip to Kukes. I've done that slog seven times now. Yes, I'm counting. The first time was in 2000 during winter. The trip took 12.5 hours to cover 250 kilometers. This despite being driven by a midly insane Albanian in a vehicle with a huge engine and diplomatic plates! The road was bad as we left Tirana and things went downhill from there.

The last time I went to Kukes, things were looking up. The total trip time was down to 6 hours even though I was driving a badly overloaded Chevy Suburban. The modern highway from Tirana to Milot had been opened by then which accounted for most of the reduction in travel time. The rest of the road was still a twisty, bumpy mess but had been improved somewhat. I swore I would never think of going up there again. Until now.

The new 4-lane highway which is causing so much uproar in political circles is getting close to completion. Say what you will about it being a white elephant project draining badly needed funds from other sectors. That's true, but I can't wait until it's done just for the sheer pleasure on making it up to Kukes without getting carsick. This video, released by Bechtel/Enka gives a little glimpse into the project and the area it passes through. I can hardly wait. Anyone up for an August road trip to Shistavec?
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In the interest of journalistic integrity, I must confess these are not my pictures. I grabbed them off of "skyscrapercity.com". I was just going to link to this forum, but it was full of "my tunnel is bigger than yours" flame wars between Greeks, Albanians, Croats, and Serbs.

A New Sensation

2008-12-09T13:12:00.012+01:00

The good thing about life is it's so unpredictable. You never know when something good is going to come along. Or something bad. So little of what happens to you is under your control. No matter how much you plan and work toward an outcome, there's really no guarantee you'll get what you want. Most of the time we don't even realize how small things add up to something truly terrible, or supremely sublime.

For the last year or so I have been reading (and re-reading)"The Great War For Civilization" by Robert Fisk. Fisk is a newspaper correspondent currently working for the Independent in the UK. The book is an epic chronicle of his observations during a long career in reporting on war and its aftermath in the Middle East. I don't agree with all his political views or overall philosophy, but I was impressed with his in-depth research and historical perspective.

Among other things, the book discusses the impact of Western actions during and after WWI and how they contributed to the Armenian Genocide under the dying Ottoman Empire. The subject matter seemed relevant as I now living in a country which was part of the Ottoman Empire. I also live close by the former home of Enver Hoxha who was named in honor of Enver Pasha, one of the Young Turks most responsible for the Armenian Genocide.

Six degrees, Kevin. Only six degrees.

On Sunday, Christiane Amanpour hosted the CNN International special event "Scream Bloody Murder." Another dose of genocide reporting on Armenia, Germany, Rwanda, and Bosnia. Lest you think I am some sort of mass murder fetishist, I must confess I only watched because of Christiane. I first saw her reporting on the fall of the Berlin Wall and was fascinated by her exotic looks. Later I came to admire her intelligence and journalistic integrity as much as the bottomless pools of her eyes and the cling of her sweater. Anyway, it was an excellent, if depressing, documentary.

Monday morning I was up early taking a friend out to the airport. Cold morning, still dark, head full of sleep and no shot of coffee yet to focus my mind. Heavy fog hung over the fields along the new airport access road, particularly soupy in the vale of the Tirana River. My mind was full of dark thoughts courtesy of Fisk and Christiane.

Yeah, the Turks had been here. The Germans too. No doubt these fields have seen their share of blood spilt. Greeks and Romans. Illyrians. Serb, Venetian, Italian. Each era sends a new wave of blood, setting the stage for the next atrocity. The misty acres around me brought to mind Fisk's reference to Carl Sandburg's poem Grass:

Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo.

Shovel them under and let me work -
I am the grass;

I cover all.
And pile them high at Gettysburg

And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun.

Shovel them under and let me work.

Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor:
What place is this?

Where are we now?
I am the grass.

Let me work.

On the CD player INXS provided the perfect soundtrack to my pessimistic mood:

The devil inside

Every single one of us the devil inside

Here come the world

With the look in its eye

Future uncertain but certainly slight

Look at the faces

Listen to the bells

Its hard to believe we need a place called hell

After a quick turnaround at the airport I headed back to town in the same frame of mind, contemplating man's ceaseless cruelty to his fellow man. Blood feuds, internments, firing squads...

But as I crossed the fields, things looked different. The sky in the east was lightening and the misty fields seemed less funereal. The impending dawn changed the mood from death and mourning to one of anticipation. No matter what terrible secrets the grass concealed, it's dewy lushness also held the promise of life. The mist no longer a shroud, but the cottony wrapping of a brand new day.

Just as the sun peeked over the crest of Mount Dajti, flooding the flats with sharp clear light, INXS added their voice:

Sleep baby sleep

Now that the night is over

And the sun comes like a god

Into our room

All perfect light and promises

That quickly life changes. I dropped the windows and let the cold wind blast my head clear. Cranked the volume up and sucked in lungfuls of crisp morning air. Mssrs. Farris and Hutchence wailed on about "a new sensation" while I reveled in my new frame of mind. Tirana glowed fresh in the morning light. Quiet, lying motionless in a brief calm before the day's business begins. I parked and dashed into the local bakery for a fresh-from-the-oven loaf of bread. I ate it as I ambled down the sidewalk, senses awash in bread smell, chilly air, and all the anticipation of what may come next.

Guilty Until Proven Innocent

2008-11-25T09:56:00.002+01:00

The international press can't seem to let go of the story of Serbian prisoners/mental patients who were allegedly transported from Kosova to Albania for organ harvesting. Since Carla Del Ponte published these allegations, there has been periodic pressure to continue investigating this dubious claim. The latest report is a print/video piece in the Guardian.

I included this not because I want to push a particular viewpoint relative to the claims, but because of the footage of a remote part of Albania. Burrel, the town in question, was the location of a labor camp/prison during the communist regime. Even today the phrase "sent to Burrel" is used to signify someone is completely cut off and isolated by society.

Check out the pictures and imagine how much more difficult life must have been there 10 years ago or in the 1960's when the prison was at it's worst.
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Still Here

2008-11-20T08:31:00.005+01:00

Despite the lack of activity on this blog, I am still around. I finally got kicked in the backside by some recent reporting that caught my eye. A good read here. Winter may finally be coming to Albania, but articles like that one keep us warm and looking forward to next summer's tourist deluge. Come on down! If it's good enough for Jim Belushi, it's good enough for us.

To make your visit even easier, another el-cheapo connection is now available from Zagreb on Belle Air.

For those of you who speak German, here is an interesting travelogue by a charming, adventurous couple who travelled through Albania with their darling 1-year-old daughter. If you don't spreche any Deutsch, there's lots of cool pictures. Enjoy.
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Touched

2008-10-19T20:38:00.006+02:00

I started writing this blog only to get a few of my impressions in print and stay connected to the wider world of Albania, Albanians, and Albanophiles. I never expected to get much notice. I was surprised and extremely honored when Traveler One at Stepping Stones listed me as one of her choices for a Proximidade award. I've read her blog and Simon Varwell's and am pleased to be in such company.

I guess this means I have to shake off the October doldrums and write something. Until then, check out Stepping Stones for your taste of Albania expat life.

Shoe? Meet Other Foot.

2008-10-07T18:04:00.003+02:00

In early 2000 I volunteered to be an election monitor for the OSCE in Albania as part of the international effort to help the Albanian government ensure a free and fair democratic election. It was an interesting job, took me to some remote places in the North, and allowed me a glimpse into some of the cultural factors which influence development and governance here.

An example?

In one voting center, I commented on the chaotic method of matching a voter's ID with the list of registered voters. Why should it take several minutes of argument and searching to look up a name on a list, match it to the ID document, and check the voter off? The local election commission member smiled when he heard the translation, and waved me over to show me.

In this small village south of Kukes, almost 75% of the voters have the same last name. To add to the confusion, the sons of "Bob Smith" take their father's first name as a middle name. This leads to Jim Bob Smith, Tim Bob Smith, Tom Bob Smith, and Joe Bob Smith all showing up to vote on the same day. Times ten! What a goatrope. Anyway, the OSCE rated the elections somewhat fair and Albania continued down the road to democracy.

(Cultural note: technically it's not a "middle" name. It's literally "father's name". It applies to girls too, so the birth certificate or ID document will read Jane Bob Smith!)

Flash forward four years and it's election time again in the U.S. of A. After the Florida fiasco in 2000, the shoe was on the other foot. Many countries actually sent observers to monitor voting in the States. I met a few who had come in from Albania and were going down to Florida to see if the insanity would repeat. They joked about how turnabout is fair play and how they never imagined it would come to this. Albania helping the U.S. ensure transparent elections!

I thought I had forgotten all that until today. I was at lunch with some Albanian friends and the talk turned to the economic meltdown in the U.S. We engaged in good-natured debate and inevitably the comparison was made between the U.S. now and Albania in 1997. Can you say "pyramid scheme?" One Albanian smart-aleck at the table turned and asked, "When the rioting starts, where should we send our peacekeepers?"

We all laughed and I made a mental note to check my ammunition supply when I go home next month.

Byllis

2008-09-29T08:14:00.010+02:00

At the risk of sounding like just another tour guide, I want to tell you about Byllis. I had heard of it in passing and no one really seemed to rave about it. There's no "Byllis Foundation" like the fund started by British gazillionaires to protect and promote Butrint. There should be. The site is phenomenal.

The first thing you notice about the place is, it's up on top of a hill. Make that a mountain. The views are spectacular, even on a hazy day like this. Stand at the highest point of the site on the ruins of a watchtower and you can see for miles in all directions. The view to the west is dramatic with the Vjosa River winding between the hills 500 meters below.The walls are clearly visible around the entire perimeter. You immediately get the feeling of purpose which drove the inhabitants to create this secure citadel. When I came across the sign explaining the origin and history of the walls, I was amazed to find that almost two-thirds of the city was left outside the walls when they were constructed to guard agains Vandal attacks in the 3rd century. Two-thirds? The one-third inside the walls is almost 8 acres. Imagine what lies under the brush outside the walls.
It's not crowded in the least. On a warm September day I was the only visitor, other than a bridal party who had bounced their way along the road to take photos among the ruins before scooting back to the reception.
The place compares favorably to Butrint because it's dry. You can walk in among the ruins and never have to worry about slipping in the mud.
Imagine watching a performance in this theater. It must have been tough for the performers to compete with the view from the seats out over the valley.

Informative signs posted at all the major ruins clearly describe the purpose of the building, when it was built, and any unique aspects of the construction.

Mosaics. Lots of them. Several were uncovered for visitors to see which beats the heck out of having to buy a guidebook and then imagine what lies under the protective plastic sheeting and sand.

A shopping mall with a view!

Another endless view over the mountains of Mallakaster. .

If you want a second opinion on Byllis, here's a great article.

Lonely Planet Slideshow

2008-09-26T14:02:00.002+02:00

I came across this today and thought I would share it. Not because it is a particularly good piece of journalistic reportage, but because it's from the biggest "alternative" tourist guide company in the world. Having said that, you would think that the CEO of said organization could make a video showing more of his subject city and less of himself.

With no further ado, "The Lonely Planet Does Tirana."

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Anticipation

2008-09-25T08:32:00.009+02:00

One of the reasons I enjoy living in Albania is the sheer unpredictability of the place. You never really know what awaits you when you wake up in the morning. Sometimes it's as pleasant as a soft rain shower that makes the morning stroll envigorating. Other times it's unpleasant like the incessant screeching of some death-metal wannabe band in Mother Theresa square at midnight. (Rally Albania, I'm talking about you!) Other times it just weird. Like bicycle boy a few posts down.

The same sense of anticipation applies to driving around the country. You never know what will be around the next corner. Usually, it's just a clapped-out Mercedes straddling the center line while its driver chats on the cell phone. Every now and then it's entertaining like this gaggle of well-mannered turkeys being herded across the road.

This always brings a smile to my face. Herding turkeys. I ws raised with the conventional wisdom that turkeys are so dumb that if you leave them out in the rain, they will look up to see what is happening and drown because they aren't smart enough to shut their mouths. Turns out these little geniuses are more clever than I thought. Not only do they herd well, but they can be made to sit peacefully at the roadside as the locals haggle over price. I now have a new respect for turkeys; mildly intelligent and very tasty too!

Other surprises around the corner are less amusing, yet not entirely unwelcome despite the delay and inconvenience they bring. This sight greeted me last weekend on my way down south between Qeparo and Borshi.

I was a little annoyed that these intrepid workers couldn't find a way to route traffic around the worksite. My annoyance was counterbalanced by the knowledge that each rock chipped off the side brought this road one step closer to completion. Overall, almost 60% of the road between Vlora and Saranda has been improved. Still lots of work to do, but it's going to be a super drive once it's done. I may have to buy a motorcycle so I can appreciate its winding, smooth pavement and stunning views the way it should be enjoyed.

I also had grudging respect for these guys who were doing the job with a hand-held jackhammer. Although, during the 20-minute wait for the truck to fill up, I did wonder why a country that has thousands of tons of excess ammuniton can't spare a few kilos of TNT for something constructive.

Once past this roadblock, I rounded another curve and there was a second crew, hammering away at the rock. This time I spent 15 minutes listening to the "Saranda Seranade" of the backhoe-mounted super jackhammer as it chunka-chunka-chunka-ed a pile of rock onto the road and an old bulldozer pushed the rubble off the side of the road. I drove past I waved and wished them 'Pune te mbare' as I accelerated down the road. From here to Saranda it's an hour of winding road. I can't wait to see what's around the next corner!

Reuters Gets In on the Act

2008-09-25T07:54:00.001+02:00

Oh look, a bandwagon! Let's jump on it!

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Road Warrior

2008-09-24T13:05:00.003+02:00

So, how many little kids do you have to run over to amass a collection of bikes like this?

Bashtova

2008-09-23T10:43:00.007+02:00

My first overseas trip took me to Greece where I had my initial brush with historical ruins. Venetian castles, Turkish fortresses, German bunkers, and the Minoan palace at Knossos. It was a new experience and created an awareness of the vast continuum of history that I didn't have growing up in the American West. In Greece, goats grazed on the ramparts where Venetians fended off attacks 300 years ago and local residents treated the site as nothing special, just "our castle."

The same thing exists in Albania today. People go about their lives in the midst of antiquities. Castles, tombs, forts, basilicas, amphitheaters are scattered throughout the countryside and woven into the fabric of life. In Kruja, Berat, and Tepelena, people live inside the walled ramparts of castles as people have for hundreds of years. Some sites have faded from national consciousness due to their isolation. One is Bashtova Castle. A Venetian fortress built at the mouth of the Shkumbin River as part of the chain of strong points that secured their mastery of the maritime trade throughout the Mediterranean.

Today, the castle sits in solitude, another landscape feature for the farmers to plow around. Time has chipped away at the massive walls, but enough remains for a visitor to appreciate the size and layout of the bastion. Walk the walls and hear the wind whispering across the fields, carrying the scent of the nearby sea. The Shkumbin has changed course over the centuries, depositing its load of silt on the flatlands so the castle no longer commands a view of the harbor.

It's not hard, though, to imagine the place full of the bustle of trade. Goods from inland brought down the ancient trade routes that follow the river through the mountains. The Romans built their Via Egnatia along this route, connecting Rome to Constantinople and the Venetians followed suit.

The arches which line the inner periphery of the wall served as storage for goods awaiting transport out by ship as well as magazines for supplies and weaponry for the soldiers who kept the area secure for trade.

From atop the guard towers at each corner and above each gateway you can feel the strength and sense of security that those defenders must have felt. No doubt they felt a sense of supreme confidence not knowing that, like all the things man makes, even the ramparts of Bashtova Castle fall in the face of the ceaseless march of time. Albania has seen them rise, prosper, and fall into ruin. At the peak of their power, they shaped the society and to a lesser extent still do. Even if their presence no longer command respect and awe, these citadels draw the interest of travellers and the annoyance of farmers.
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Times They Are A-Changin'

2008-09-23T07:52:00.003+02:00

Was it only two years since A.A. Gill penned his sarcastic, snide criticism of Tirana?

Now this article comes along to join the chorus of voices extolling the unique attractions of the city and Albania. You gotta love it!

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A Day at Butrint

2008-09-22T08:23:00.002+02:00

As I stood in line at the entry to Butrint on Saturday, the words of William Butler Yeats came to mind:

"Now I know that twenty centuries of stony sleep were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, and what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?"

Granted, I've never actually read Yeats. I only remember this quote because it was included by Stephen King in his ultra-long novel of dark horror, The Stand. Pretty grim stuff. Why would I be thinking of this line at Butrint?

I took some friends down there to give them a chance to see some of the southern parts of Albania. One was a history buff who I had convinced to travel to Butrint. No place in this country has more history stacked layer on layer than this archeological marvel. I explained how the road south is much better than it used to be, that I could find a nice hotel to stay in, and that he would be practically alone in Butrint as the tourist season was over and the crowds had gone home.

As we left Saranda and headed south toward Ksamil, I knew I would soon be eating my words. There were buses on the road in front of us. Liberal use of the horn and some creative throttle work saw us past the buses and at Butrint in no time. As we loaded up our gear to enter the park, three buses pulled up and disgorged their cargo. British, French, and German tourists followed their guides like so many ducklings. We ended up in line behind them, queuing for tickets. That's when I had my Yeats moment.

The "rough beast" of mass tourism has awakened and is slowly slouching into Albania. I was on the verge of getting depressed until I started listening to the comments from some of the folks in line.
To a one they were enthusiastic about being in Albania. Several remarked on how different reality was compared to the image of Albania they got from the news. These were the same things I had been saying for years. How could I be critical when this is what I'd been advocating all along. This country is great! Come on over and see for yourself.

So, come visit Albania. Definitely go to Butrint. If there is a glut of tourists when you get there, don't despair. You can still have your quiet ramble through history. When you get to the fork in the path and all the tours go right to the theater, you go left and up the stairs. This clockwise circuit of the site has several advantages. One is that all the guides take people around counterclockwise so you won't have to follow them, just pass them halfway around. Second, you get to see the museum at the top first. This wonderful display puts everything in context and prepares you to better understand the ruins you will see on the rest of the walk. Finally, you finish at the theater, which is the highlight of the site.

And to cap things off, an article in the London Times was in my inbox this Monday morning which added to the chorus of positive reviews of travel in Albania. Even better, the author made it to Gjirokaster as well. Check here for the story.

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Moccasins

2008-09-08T07:48:00.003+02:00

Sorry for not posting in such a long time. I was out trying on moccasins. You've heard the Native American expression "Don't judge another man until you have walked a mile in his moccasins," right? I had the chance recently.

The longer I stay here, the more I notice I am starting to have a harder time identifying with new arrivals and visitors. Their observations and complaints start to sound trivial and inane to me. I find myself listening while they talk and thinking, "What do you mean you can't find decent meat here? There's at least five good butchers in the Blloku area alone. Not another expat rant about how hard it is to communicate with the Albanians! OK, OK, I get it - you don't like the whole "shake your head no for yes and nod once for no." It really isn't that hard.

Secure in my smug sense of superiority, I went on vaction for a few days recently and found myself squarely in their shoes. That's another of the joys of living in the Balkans. Travel a few hours and you are in an entirely new culture. New language, new alphabet, new food. My role quickly changed from savvy local inhabitant to helpless foreigner.

At the border post there was an issue with my vehicle. After trying Italian, German, and his native Serbo-Croat, the officer resorted to monosyllables of pseudo-Esperanto. "Problem!" "Problem!" I did too. Flapping my hands around and talking louder in English and Albanian didn't help at all.

Somehow I managed to get through the border and head on up the road. Then it struck again. I couldn't read the road signs. The sensation of complete helplessness threatened to overwhelm me. "Can't these people mark the roads clearly?" Through sheer luck and repeated driving around in circles in town centers I made it to my destination, checked in to the hotel, and got some rest.

A few hours later I hopped in the shower and was blessed by a rain of freezing droplets. "Shit, no hot water!" After a much-shortened and thouroughly unenjoyable shower, I marched down to reception and played indignant customer. The clerk was unfazed because be didn't understand a word I said. Or I should say he did understand the problem, I just couldn't understand the solution he was trying to explain. We trooped up to the room and he showed me the switch on the wall with all the other light switches which turned on the water heater. As he left, I recognized the look in his eyes. "Silly foreigner, stop bothering me with your inane problems. Everyone knows enough to turn on the water heater when they arrive."

To be fair, I actually had a great time. Lounging on the beach. Exploring the old cities and new attractions. Getting the feel of a new culture. Listening to music which, while different, still carried the influence of past Ottoman domination of this part of the world. There were other moments when the sense of foreigness intruded and I reacted like a true tourist: internal panic followed by avoidance then a diatribe against the local practice. As I returned to Albania, I had a sly little smile on my face.

I had learned again the meaning of "culture shock" and how strongly it can affect a traveler. I reminded myself how every traveller, no matter how experienced or jaded, is susceptible. I also learned again how it doesn't help when the locals (native or expat) pooh-pooh your reaction. After a short time wearing the moccasins of a new arrival, I promised myself I would remember how it feels to be in that position and refrain from criticizing. I'll work on my patience and my Esperanto.

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Life in a Muslim Country? Part II

2008-08-22T11:35:00.004+02:00

Thanks to Our Man in Tirana, who may be physically gone but remains engaged in Albanian issues, I can provide a link to a fantastic analysis by Miranda Vickers on the state of Islam in Albania today.

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Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?

2008-08-21T07:51:00.003+02:00

Foreign currency has always been a weak spot for me. I was never all that attentive to my spending habits in the U.S., but at least I developed a general sense of what something should cost based on how long it took me to earn that amount. A pair of jeans was $20.00, which took me about half a day to earn. Hey! Cut me some slack. This is 1976 I'm talking about!

My first experience with foreign currency was a riot. Greece, 1982. My first trip abroad and I've now turned my small stack of greenbacks into a mountain of indecipherable banknotes. Drachmas, spelled with a triangle! As I slowly woke up to the mystery of exchange rates, I had a wonderful idea. If I buy Draculas when they are cheap and sell when they are expensive, I make money. My next paycheck was converted at the incredible rate of 95 drachma to the dollar after I watched the rate soar from 75. All I had to do is hang on until the mighty dolllar fought back. Ten days later the Greek government did some financial sleight of hand and the exchange rate went to 125. Bad foreign currency! Bad!

From then on it was, "ignorance is bliss." I didn't want to know how much something cost in dollars. "An apple is 20 dracs? OK. A beer is 400 yen? OK. I just lost 200 pound and 14 shillings at the dog track? OK. A Turkish hooker is 650,000 lira? No thanks, not interested, but the price seems OK." For over 19 years all was well. The locals knew their currency, scrawled it on a piece of paper for me or pointed at the register readout and I paid. Then I landed in Albania.

I'd done my homework. A dollar was about 150 lek. On my first amble around Tirana, I passed the Rinia Park in the center of town. At that time the park was a shanty town of illegal buildings. Restaurants, clubs, pool halls, and a hotel sprawled in un-plumbed squalor. Passing by one of the forgettable restaurants, a young man sprang up from his chair and joined me on my walk. He spoke English and started peppering me with questions.

"Where you from? Where you going? What's your name? Have you seen the pyramid? Do you want to see Hoxha's villa?"

I tried to be polite yet dismissive. I'd been warned about crime and still was not comfortable in my new environment. Long story short: After pouring out his life story and offering to be my guide, friend, and confidant Genci starts telling me about his mother in the hospital and asked for financial help. In my head I'm thinking, "I wonder what the going rate for buying your way out of an uncomfortable mooch is here?" If I was still in DC I'd give the homeless guy a buck and be on my way.

I did the only civilized thing - I asked, "How much?" He immediately replied, "Two thousand."

Now my head is spinning. "How many dollars is that? Divide by .66. Or is that multiply? How much did I get from the bank today? Is that the big green one or three of the triangular bills? Oh, shit, what if he sees my wallet and tries to kill me?" I decided discretion would be the better part of valor and forked over two 1000 lek notes. Genci transformed from the misty-eyed supplicant to a Wal-Mart employee who just won the powerball jackpot and begged me to meet him again tomorrow. I declined and scuttled home trying to rationalize my generosity.

I told this story to an Albanian colleague a few days later and when the laughter stopped he said, "You got scammed. The guy saw you were a foreigner and decided to work you. There's no way he has a sick mom, he wanted 200 lek for coffee."

"So why did he ask for 2000?"

"Oh, he was talking old lek."

"What?"

"Yeah, old lek. Most people still haven't gotten used to using the new lek values after the government devalued the currency by a factor of ten. It's very common to hear people refer to 1000 lek when they are talking about 100 new lek."

"So he really wanted 200 lek (about 2 bucks) and I gave him 2000 (about 20 bucks)?" I could feel the donkey ears sprouting on my head like you see in the Bugs Bunny cartoons.

"Oh, yeah. You made his day!"

"So when did this devaluation happen?"

"1964."

I was speechless. The currency was devalued before the majority of the current population was born and they still use the old values? Unbelieveable. I could understand if there was still old currency in circulation showing the old value and people referred to it. It would seem reasonable if the change had only happened a few years before. The entire continent of Europe switched from marks, francs, piasters, lira, and good old draculas in just six months and now everyone talks in Euro and Albanians still refer to a currency which was phased out when Mick Jagger was just getting famous? What is wrong with this picture?

There are some advantages to this system. Every payday, I can be a millionaire again. All it takes is a trip to the ATM and the withdrawal of 1,000 USD. That's around 100,000 new lek, but thanks to the magic of time travel in Albania, I can call it a million. Even though the dollar is worth about the same as a wilted lettuce leaf, I can still close my eyes and imagine Regis Philbin asking me:

"Can you give me a million for my sick goat's medicine?"

.

A Dance With The Devil

2008-08-18T07:51:00.003+02:00

It has been compared with the running of the bulls in Pamplona. Survivors refer to it as "a Tango with Satan." Others refuse to speak of it, hoping that ignoring it will make it disappear. No one leaves Tirana without being touched by it. Once touched, you're changed forever. Crossing the street here is a life-altering experience!

I've lived in several countries around the Mediterranean and have come to know well the perils of crossing the street on foot. Athens, Naples, Istanbul. Each new city had traffic rules slightly different than the others yet they shared a common factor. Successfully crossing the street requires adapting your behavior. If you stood waiting for a traffic light to change and cars to stop, you could very well grow old and die in one spot. Stepping out onto the crosswalk and expecting cars to stop would have the same result, only you wouldn't have to wait so long. No, you have to play by the local rules.

In Tirana this means learning to play "Frogger." Remember the video game where you had to hop your frog across a river without getting drowned, munched, or squished by the various denizens of what looked a lot like a five-lane highway? That's the Boulevard of The Martyrs of the Nation (Bulevard e Deshmoret e Kombit). Six lanes of speeding death which occasionally turns into eight... or twelve. I cross it at least twice a day and have learned the rules.

First, try to make eye contact with drivers. It's harder for them to kill you if they have seen your eyes and recognize your basic humanity. The flip side of this rule applies to driving: Never make eye contact. You can't be held responsible for hitting something you didn't see.

Second, realize and accept that traffic will not stop for you. You are the twig tossed on the torrent. Find the space, use it, move on. Just as it won't stop, the traffic won't alter course to hit you. If you're on the center line you can remain still and read the smallest print on the bus ads as they whoosh by, confident that you're in your space and completely safe.

Third, hesitate and you're done. There's no second chance. The quick and the dead.

Fourth, ignore the policeman and the traffic signal. He's only there for decoration. In the event of an emergency such as traffic actually flowing smoothly, the police will intervene. Mostly they just observe and chat with passing friends.

The internal dialogue sounds something like this: "OK, he's turning right... three steps across the first lane, wait for Mercedes .... three quick steps ... stop, wait for the very clean Porsche ... step, step, step and we're halfway ... look right ... six steps across two lanes ... ignore the horn ... two taxis pass and then three more steps to the curb."

It's easy to spot the newbies. They look apprehensive, tense. Like a young wildebeest approaching the Mara River for the first time. They know about the crocodiles are there but don't yet know how many times the crossing can be safely made. Experienced crossers don't even break stride. Cell phone on the ear and staring straight ahead they step into the stream and glide effortlessly across. They take the same risks as everyone else but have learned to live with, and minimize, the risk. I admire them.

So, like the annual migration across the perils of the Serengeti, street crossing in Tirana has evolved and achieved balance. Then something changes and chaos ensues. I noted before that the surest way to screw up traffic is to get the police involved. Make the policeman a German and the results are even more hilarious. Unless you're a driver who actually has someplace to be.

Earlier this decade, the EU sponsored a police training program to help Albania bring their law enforcment operations up to Western standards. I would have loved to have been at the meeting where each country staked out their area of "specialization."

The Italians: "We'uh shalla teacha thema to fightuh the corrupzione!"
The French: "Mes amis! We take les customehr relacions departmahn!"
The Germans: "Ve vill brink order to zee traffik!"

OK, I could buy the first two. Barely. But, please, Hans, you have no idea...

Sure enough, August of 2000 found teams of one Albanian and one German traffic cop standing at almost every major intersection in Tirana. As I sat in the snarled mess that resulted I had a ringside seat to the spectacle. The Albanian cop knew better than to exert himself too much in the 40+ degree heat. Spent most of his time trying to stay in the shade of the German who flapped, whistled, and waved like a madman with the veins popping out in his forehead. His directions were ignored faster than he gave them and all he got for his efforts was a lot of honking and a mild case of heat stroke. The "training" program was mercifully short and by October things were back to normal.

Since then, change has slowly occured. Most of the traffic lights work most of the time and most of the drivers obey them. Most of the time. Lately I'm noticing people waiting for the walk signal and crossing when the little green man gives his consent. That's a good thing. I know it will cut down on traffic accidents and is yet another sign of the development of a culture of rule of law. Little changes in behavior build up into the solid foundation of modern society. But, every now and then I get nostalgic for the good old days.

When I approach the Boulevard and see the signals are out I am secretly pleased. I take a deep breath and smell the sulphur. My awareness peaks, my pulse pounds, and I step off the curb.

"OK, Old Scratch, let's dance!"

.

My Secret Beach

2008-08-11T08:05:00.003+02:00

Listen.

I have a secret beach.

It's not mine alone, but near enough. On an August Sunday it's just me and a few other hardy souls who venture out this far. Tirana's gone. No Durres. No traffic. Just me, the incandescent sun, and the beach. It's been strewn with the obligatory plastic bottles, some trash, and a set of quickly dissolving tire tracks testifying to someone's futile effort to drive out on the sand. The breeze is lazily erasing the tracks and pushing the refuse off into the far corner.

Here, hemmed in between shoulders of stone, I lie upon my secret beach. The sun, past its zenith, warms but does not burn. Beneath me the sand holds a reminder of midday's furnace, baking my back and melting sore, old muscles. I let go of the tension from the jolting ride in and surrender to the embrace of radiant silica. Each breath brings a slight readjustment as the sand sifts in to fill the gaps, forming an exact match to my body's form. A glove, a grave, an acceptance.

Above me the blue is marked with a few stray wisps of cloud. Cirrus? Stratus? Whatever, beach clouds. I stare into blue emptyness, anchored to Earth by the grip of the beach, and marvel at the range of colors. At first the sky looks just "blue", but after a while I notice the different shades. Deepest cobalt directly overhead. Milky blue around the fringes of the clouds. Pale, watery blue at the horizon. The moon, anxious to take the stage from the dominant sun, appears faintly as a blue-grey disc patched with dark spots. "Take your time,' I think. "You've got all night."

Across this azure expanse, a silver glint traverses, leaving a thin contrail behind. Even the vastness of the sky bears the imprint of our activities. So precise, so linear, so full of purpose. Yet, before the jet exits my field of view, the ruler-straight contrail begins to fray. Like the tire tracks on the beach, this latest mark of men begins to disappear and melt back into nature. That's how it is. The tracks, the contrail, the trash, you, me, everyone, everything. We come, we leave our mark, and we go away. A second, an hour, a year, a lifetime. Nature erases us, consumes us, re-uses us.

And that's OK. I feel best when I'm closest to nature. Closest to my eventual destination. Stay close and she reveals her secret wonders. The zephyr whispering across the water, over the sand, carrying the smell of brine. When the wind calms, the pungent tang of pine drifts over me. The stand of trees has worked its way onto the crest of the dune over the centuries and takes advantage of the lull to stake further claim if only for a brief moment. The breeze returns and carries with it the hiss of breaking waves.

I roll over and look out to sea to watch the waves break. They're not huge waves. Not North Shore monsters, curling over on themselves in a savage display of physics. But to me, raised on two-inch wind-driven wavelets lapping at the lakeside mud, these waves are fascinating. Random. Individual. Yet regular. There's a pattern that emerges from the chaos briefly to create a train of impressive little breakers before dissolving away into general waviness again.

The trick is to look far away. North. Up the beach. At the limit of my vision I can see a wave start breaking on the sand. This same crest continues south in an irregular yet unstoppable advance. As it gets closer I can hear it unzipping its way down the shore. Louder now, almost here, and then with a slap more than a crash it passes. It continues south, its sound fading. "Doppler effect?" I wonder.

Near me the water that the wave pushed up the sand is sliding back into the sea to await its next charge up the slope. I realize that the wave I watched travel over a mile down the beach was not made of water. The heaving water was just the track of the passing pulse of energy, of activity. Like the contrail. Like the tracks in the sand. It's all temporary, all impermanent.

From my warm cocoon in the beach's embrace I watch this timeless display of transient energy passing in and out of my existence and it's all good.

.

Life in a Muslim Country?

2008-08-07T10:14:00.004+02:00

"So, what's it like to live in a Muslim country?"

I hear that a lot from lots of my stateside colleagues, friends, and family members. Let me tell you, life in a Muslim country was oppressive. I was forced to always wear long pants and a collared shirt, preferably long sleeved. When the call to prayer was sounded, I had to go sit on a bench on the street and wait for the shops to open back up after prayer. I couldn't find an alcoholic drink of any kind, anywhere. When I went out in public with female co-workers, they had to cover up entirely with only their face showing. Any infraction of the religious rules risked a scolding by the religious police (muttawa) who were alway accompanied by armed civil police. The muttawa would hit you with a long stick and yell at you about your infraction and, if you didn't fix the problem immediately, the civil police were ready to use more persuasive methods. And don't get me started on the public executions. Let's just say I never, ever wanted to even think about jaywalking after I saw a few heads parted from their owners! Yeah, life in Saudi Arabia was tough.

But you meant in Albania, right? I thought you meant life in a Muslim country. Albania is not a Muslim country. It's a country with a majority of citizens who would probably identify themselves as Muslim if asked. The last time anyone asked was in the 60's or 70's so all estimates of population and religious affiliation are WAG's. (Wild Ass Guesses).

So why does everyone say Albania is a Muslim country? It's the inescapable burden of history combined with recent isolation. As in almost every aspect of Albanian life and culture, these factors play a huge part in modern perceptions of the role of religion.

Before the Ottoman conquest of Albania, the majority of the inhabitants of this land were either Catholic or Orthodox Christians due to the influences of Rome and Byzantium. Prior to that I imagine many worshipped Roman or Greek gods, depending on whose yoke they lived under. The point being that in a country that has experienced repeated invasion and occupation, religious affiliation was often a function of who is the oppressor d'jour.

The Ottomans recognized this and used their governance as a prod to conversion. Muslim families in Albania paid lower taxes, did not have to involuntarily send their children to train as soldiers in Istanbul, and were generally better treated than their non-Muslim neighbors. Surprise, surprise: 60-85% of the population converted to Islam during the 500 years of Ottoman rule in Albania.

The breadth and depth of conversion can be traced today back to the amount of control the Ottomans exerted in an area and how long they held the territory. One author I read compared it to a tide that filled the lowest areas first and remained there longest before receding. In the mountain fastness of the Northern Albanian Alps, the Ottomans never really managed to bring the people under effective control, hence they remained mostly Catholic. Ditto for the remote areas of the south where Orthodoxy held sway in the isolated villages. In central Albania, along the invasion and trade routes of the river valleys, the Ottomans came and stayed and established effective government and commercial structures and made more converts. Around Elbasan, Tirana, and Fier the majority still identifies itself as Muslim.

Fast forward to today. You ask someone, "What faith are you?" Statistics say about 60% will answer, "Muslim." If you dig a little deeper, many times you find out this means the person's family is historically Muslim, not that the individual is a practicing believer. The spectrum is wide and varied.

Some are observant Muslims who fast during Ramadan, abstain from alcohol and pork, and adhere strictly to the tenets of the religion. Other Muslims are actually Bektashi, a sect seen as heretical by other Muslims. The sect began in Turkey and was driven out to eventually make Albania the world center of Bektashism. They combine elements of Islam, Zoroastrianism, and some Christian ideas. Very tolerant, may or may not abstain from pork and alcohol, and not inclined to jihad at all. Still others will identify themselves as Muslim because their family comes from an area which was under Ottoman sway for a long time and is still identified as being a Muslim family even if they don't believe or practice any faith.

It's an oft-quoted truism that "The religion of Albanians is Albanianism." Religious tolerance between the denominations has been held up as an example of how disparate communities can live together peacefully by many educated experts... and George W. Bush. Historically it has been true. Under the Ottomans, there was no conflict between those who converted and those who didn't. The common dislike of the Ottomans united them. Albanians of all faiths united to push out Serbs, Austrians, Greeks, Italians, and Germans when they felt their nation was imperiled. Under communism this unity was brutally enforced by the regime as they tried wipe out all traces of organized religion and gather all the citizens around the nation. And by nation, they meant Party.

This worked fairly well in uniting the people, not because the regime did anything right, but because Albanians naturally unite around any power center that claims to make the Albanian nation the center of their focus. It was like trying to force all children to love ice cream by outlawing all other dessert choices. You won't get any of them to disagree with love of ice cream, but some will be disgruntled that they can't get their hands on a little custard every now and then. I mean, really, religion has never been a threat to Albanians national unity... until now.

After thousands of years of changing religious affiliations by Albanians in response to their circumstances, I claim they are in more danger than ever of being divided? Yeah. Here's why. The influx of religious influences since the fall of communism is different than ever before. This is the first era in which proselytizing and conversion is being done without an accompanying invasion and occupation. The Saudi Wahhabists who are trying to establish fundamentalist mosques and medrassas aren't doing so to increase the size of the Saudi Empire. The born-again Christians are not here trying to convert the people to support a crusading occupier. The Jehovahs' Witnesses aren't fighting for establishment of support for a Jehovan state. They're coming to build numbers for their faiths only. The successful governance of the territory and the peaceful inter-relations of the community matter not one iota to them.

Proof? For the first time in Albanian history, fundamentalists of all stripes are intentionally taking actions to antagonize one another. Christians of all ilk are planting huge crosses high above towns, symbolically indicating their dominance of that region. They seem to take great joy in doing this above historically Muslim villages and towns. Elbasan is one example. Mosques under the sway of hard-line imams are mounting bigger speakers on the minarets close to Christian churches. Jehovahs? Their biggest impact seems to be convincing lots of Albanian teenagers that life sucks so they throw themselves off the balcony or eat rat poison.

I kid! I kid the Jehovahs!

The final proof is made of concrete, right in the center of Tirana. First the Catholics erect "the biggest cathedral in the Balkans." Not to be outdone, the Orthodox Church is almost done with "the largest Orthodox cathedral in the Balkans," squeezed right in between the Ministry of Defense and the Socialist Party Headquarters. The Muslims feel left out and want the state to give them permission to build "the biggest mosque in the Balkans" in the center of town.

Don't get me wrong. As an American I understand the importance of separation of church and state and don't support any effort to outlaw a religion. I do understand the divisive nature of fundamentalist religion and support a state role in limiting the types of actions believers can take in the name of their faith. I'm just not down with this whole jihad thing, be it Christian, Muslim, or Jehovahn! Albania would be better off if they spent more time building a functional civil society and less on divisive religious displays.

.

Tourist Boom?

2008-08-06T10:11:00.008+02:00

If the local press is to be believed, Albania is experiencing a huge increase in tourism this summer. My own experience confirms that to a degree and evidently there are enough solid facts to support an article in the Southeastern European Times which makes the same claims. Forty-six percent increase over last year? This is great - or is it?

Like I said, the newspapers here are full of articles about the tourist boom. Hotels full to capacity. Durres ferry port deluged with passengers and cars. Border crossings between Kosova, Macedonia, Greece and Albania recording record levels of inbound travellers. Cruise ships calling at Sarande.

My own experience with the crush includes a 60-minute transit over a section of highway near Durres that normally takes 5-10 minutes and a quick trip to the port of Durres last night to drop off a departing passenger. I couldn't even drive within three blocks of the ferry terminal. I booted him out with his luggage in the 80 degree heat and wished him well. Geez, I hated doing that to a seventy-some year old relative, but the traffic really was bad. :-)

So it looks like the increase is real, so what's the downside? In principle, nothing. I am a great supporter of tourism as a boost to the Albanian economy. At every chance I get I tout Albania as fantastic destination to family, friends, colleagues, complete strangers. My internet pimping for this place is getting a little out of control. The only problem with the reporting of this increase is what the newspapers don't tell you.

First, much of the increase in passenger traffic is Albanian emigrants coming home for holiday. This is good for the country as these folks are bringing back money earned abroad and injecting it into the economy. They're also bringing back valuable experience and perspective on the benefits, and costs, of living abroad. It's more exposure to the Western ideas of citizenship, environmentalism, and community involvement. This is the "intangible currency" the returnees bring back along with the Euro's, dollars, and pounds. But visiting emigrants don't have the same economic impact as actual foreign tourists. They often stay with relatives or in their own houses, cook and eat at home, and generally are more frugal. Good for them, not so good for the tourism industry.

The second unreported aspect of this "surge" (with apologies to the people of Iraq) is that it happens in a very short time. From July 15 until August 30th the horde descends. Come the first week of September, it's done. The only crowds are outbound at the border crossing points, ferry terminals, and the airport. Reminds me a little of lemmings all coming and going at the same time. From October to mid-June, the country is a ghost-town, touristically speaking.

Filtered out of the background noise of emigrant returns, my impression of the tourist situation is there are improvements, just not the 46% increase cited. Two of the biggest increases come from what is known as "patriotic tourism" by ethnic Albanians living in Kosova and Macedonia. Since the declaration of independence by Kosova the political landscape has changed and these changes influence people's travel choices. Since Montenegro has not recognized the independence of Kosova, Kosovars are abandoning Budva, Kotor, and the other wonderful coastal resorts and flocking to Velipoje, Shengjin, and Durres.

Similarly the little name-related brouhaha between Macedonia and Greece has pushed a lot of the Macedonians to choose Albania as a destination vice Thessaloniki or other Greek vacation spots. The really interesting part of this is it's not just ethnic Albanians from Macedonia. A co-worker of mine owns an apartment in Vlora and has been amazed at the number of Macedonian-speaking tourists holidaying there. She quipped the other day, "Now I know what it must be like to live in Skopje." Sure, Skopje... with beaches, beautiful ocean views, wonderful fresh seafood, sailing, and lower prices. Just like Skopje .... not. Anyway, official estimates are that around 10,000 Macedonian tourists have opted for Albania this year. Bravo.

I've also noticed an increase in young foreign travellers in Tirana. More backpackers trekking along Rruga Elbasan trying to find the only youth hostel in Albania as well as a couple of Scandanavian beauties strolling along the Blloku getting stared at by all the Albanian guys. I attended a wedding with over 20 American guests in attendance, many of whom had chosen to make a vacation out of the event and had spent nearly two weeks touring around the country. All of this is anecdotal evidence of improvement in the non-emigrant sector.

What's next? Albania has to expand it's tourist window and market outside of the traditional summer beach holiday zone. Spring holidays, school breaks in winter, adventure travel, historic and cultural tours aimed at specific markets in Europe and the rest of the world. And it has to be the private sector. The ministry of tourism can assist and monitor the situation, but the real effort must be done by private enterprise and local communities. Outdoor Albania is a good example of a private company finding its niche and aggressively marketing a specialized product that is not "tourist village" oriented.

Now lets get a walking tour company to cater to the eccentric Brits who love to hike. What about the a private company partnering with the Albanian Alpinism Society to bring in climbers to the Accursed Mountains, Nemercka, or the peaks around Korabi? My personal favorite would be an adventure motorcycle outfit that arranges two-wheeled tours of the back-country. There are some roads to die for out there. (That's to die for, not to die on!) The attractions are there. The country is ripe for exploration. Build it smart and they will come.

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Road Trip!

2008-08-01T08:25:00.005+02:00

One of my favorite activities is getting out of Tirana on the weekends and driving. Don't care where, don't care why. Give me an excuse to saddle up and drive and I'm on it. You need fish from Kavaja? I'm there! A visitor needs a guide to Berat? I'm your guy. Gas costs somewhere north of six bucks a gallon? I'll put off buying a new set of shoes for a month or so. So many roads and so little time.

My most recent walkabout led me south to Korca, then to Vithkuq, and beyond. I'm not exactly sure what the reason was. Something about a little family dispute over land inheritance and use. Did I want to drive down? Let's see ..... six or more hours on the road including 25 kilometers under construction between Pogradec and Korca ..... off-road driving up past Vithkuq... and then the whole thing over again in reverse the same day. Schweet! Where do I sign up?

I'll fast-forward through the parts up to Korca. If you're interested in seeing pictures of Korca, try Google images. I want to show you how beautiful the countryside is.

Once you turn off the main road from Korca to Leskovik and head for Vithkuq, you pass by the reservoir at Gjanci. Kinda looks like Montana, doesn't it?

This was our eventual goal: the valley above Shtylla. Green, clean, and at almost 2000 meters above sea level it is cool. Bliss. Drop the windows, kill the AC and breath deep the pastoral smells of grass and flowers carried by the slight breeze. Yeah, I could live here.

Up the valley we continue on a pretty good dirt road, save for the parts that cross the wet meadows. There the passing of laden trucks has gouged gaping ruts in the mud and we tiptoe across trying to keep the wheels of our car on the high central mound of mud. Even with 4WD, it's hard going at times. The view is worth it though.

Albanian literature is full of vivid descriptions of the beauty of the country and the names given to prominent features often reflect the poetic nature of the Albanian soul...... like this soaring spire. It's called "Shkemb i Gjate" - The Tall Rock. OK, I shouldn't be sarcastic, but I asked one of the guys with us, "What do you call that?"
He replied, "Shkemb i Gjate."
I said, "I know it's a tall rock, but what's its called?"
"Shkemb i Gjate," he insisted.
"No, no! What's its name?"
Then I realized we had gotten trapped in an Abbot and Costello moment and started laughing my head off. When I calmed down long enough I was able to explain the whole "Who's on first?" routine, kind of.

This, then is the end of our journey. Mali Rungaja. The north face of this mountain is part of the land in dispute. It's currently used as pasture for sheep herded up for the summer. We need to do a little investigating to find out what's really been going on up here so we seek out the guardian of this pristine realm. Wait. There he is!

Our intrepid party finds the guardian of this natural splendor a-snooze in the shade of a few trees near the Tall Rock. Once he's satisified we are not going away without a little information, he shares what he knows about the activity on the disputed land and offers to show us what's what. So we saddle up and.... no, really, he saddled up and headed further up the valley.

Finally our new guide led us to what we feared. A little further up the creekbed we come to the place where the forest is being chopped down, burnt into charcoal, and shipped off to Bulgaria. Evidently Bulgarian goat burgers taste much better if cooked over illegally produced Albanian charcoal.

It was kind of interesting to see how they made the charcoal. A pile of wood is built, set afire, and then buried under sand and dirt. The fire burns slow and leaving a lot of unburned energy in the coals. Once cooled, it's packed in bags and trucked out.

To add insult to injury, this fella drives by loaded with pilfered wood stacked to the rafters. Going to Korca to sell it for firewood. This explains the large pastures all over the mountains and lack of forest close to the road. With our mission accomplished, we started the long drive back and allowed ourselves to indulge in a little schadenfreude when we came upon this truck stuck to the axles in one of the quagmires created in a stream crossing. "May you stay stuck for a long time." When their hands are busy digging in the muck, they're not chopping down trees.

Beauty and The Beast

2008-07-30T10:37:00.004+02:00

Albanian women are beautiful. There's just no other way to put it. I might be a tad biased as I am married to one and live in the center of Tirana. Every morning and afternoon the tide of students going to and from classes washes over my neighborhood in a surge of young men and women. Come nightfall, the area is alive with clubs, bars, and restaurants frequented by the same youth. And the ladies are dressed to kill.

(Before you condemn me as a chauvinist pig and rail against my sexism, hear me out. Just as any honest discussion of crime or pollution in Albania requires a historical and cultural understanding, so does the topic of gender. Please indulge me as you read this post and save the rage until later.)

This opinion of Albanian women is not mine alone. One visitor remarked in 2000, "Man, what was Enver Hoxha doing here for 40 years? Selectively breeding buxom women with size 4 waists? These girls are incredible!" He was a Navy sailor who had ogled his share of beauties in ports around the world, so he was qualified to comment.

As time passed, I came to understand that not only are Albanian women physically attractive, they are smart. Their evident attention to maintaining their beauty was not shallow and vapid as you might initially think. It comes from someplace deeper. It's the same thing that drives them to excel at academics and in the workplace. What is it?

Whatever the source of women's motivation, it sure doesn't apply to the men. I don't want to say Albanian men are unattractive. First off, I'm straight, which limits my ability and inclination to comment on the physical beauty of another man. Let's just say the effort put forth by women to maintain their appearance is not matched by men. Evidence?

May it please the court to examine Exhibit A: A T-shirt rolled up to just below the nipples exposing a hairy, protruding belly on a hot summer day by a middle-aged man slouched at a table swilling beer next to his immaculately dressed, made up, coiffed wife. This is an extreme example, but to a lesser degree the pattern holds true. The women strive while they guys are just phoning it in.

I got a clue to the reason for this double standard the other day when I heard a neighbor using the phrase "Nje kove uje." It means "A bucket of water." She was responding to her friends' distressed description of her youngest sons' latest indiscretion. The boy was evidently a bit mischievous and had been caught in a compromising positon with a young lady. The boys' mother was worried about damage to his reputation when my neighbor dismissed it with, "S'ka gje - Nje kove uje." It's nothing - A bucket of water. The expression encapsulates the cultural standard of forgiving boys misteps as easily as washing the stain away with a single bucket of water.

Girls, on the other hand, are held to a much higher standard. Protecting their reputation is vital. The slightest hint of impropriety threatens to rain "turp" (shame) down on a girl and her family. From the youngest age girls are admonished to behave properly; to present an attractive, civilized appearance. The daily refrain drills it into their psyche. "Don't play rough, it's shameful." "Don't talk like that, it's shameful." "Don't go outside without brushing your hair? Have you no shame?"

So the male-dominated patriarchal model has been inherited from antiquity. Even the communists couldn't completely eradicate the bias, despite their best efforts to improve the status of women. In theory, all citizens were equal under the regime, but in practice the boys still slid by while girls had to overachieve in order to compete. An average grade of 7.5 on a 10-point scale would get a guy into university or a plum position in the government. Girls needed to have an average grade of 9. The good-old-boy network is alive and well in Albania.

It's this unfair, sexist system that produced the women of today in Albania and the men who maintained and "benefitted" from it are learning about the law of unintended consequences. They've produced a generation of Beauties and Beasts. The women are generally better educated, more disciplined, harder working, and more attractive than the men. They understand the politics of power and use the tools available to them to succeed on a vastly unfair playing field. The guys may be the public faces of power in Albania, but the women are the real source of strength.

And with the opening of Albania to all the economic and educational possibilities the West offers, the men are starting to realize how badly their system has handicapped them. The girls are going off to prosper while the boys pay the price for the image they have created and perpetuate. Albanian men are unfairly sterotyped as lazy, dirty criminals by their European neighbors. However, like most stereotypes, it has some basis in truth. After growing up in an environment that spoiled them, didn't demand much of them intellectually, and forgave their transgressions so easily, what could you expect? Many of them live up to the stereotype and all Albanian men get tarred with this brush.

This would be the part where I would congratulate the girls on getting one over on the guys except for one thing: domestic violence.

A lot of men, rather than recognizing they need to get their act together, vent their frustrations on the women closest to them. The news is full of reports of women killed or brutalized at the hands of their husbands, brothers, or fathers. Here, a woman finally goes to the police after 8 years of abuse, her left eye blackened and swollen, her arms covered in bruises. There, an unemployed man wakes his wife, accuses her of infidelity, and murders her with a rock. When asked why he did it, he claims she must have been cheating on him because she went into Tirana every day - this despite the fact she was the sole breadwinner in the family, going to Tirana to sell eggs. Last year three brothers killed their sister and her lover "to protect the family honor."

In the past, much of this crime was ignored by the police as it was considered a family matter. The good news is, if anything about this can be called good, the view of the people and police is changing. More domestic violence is being reported to the police and acted on. A woman who killed her abusive husband is fighting to have her conviction overturned and public opinion is supportive. Small steps to be sure, but they lead down the right track.

I can only hope this track leads to Beauty taming The Beast.

Perspective

2008-07-25T08:23:00.006+02:00

I was sitting in the Sheraton having a drink with an old acquaintance, a journalist I first met in 1999 in Tirana. I'll call him Beni. We were going over all the changes we've seen in Albania and all the problems that still remain despite the buckets of money thrown at the country. The conversation drifted to the theme of international assistance to Albania's transition and my friend sighted wistfully and said,

"The quality of internationals who come here sure has fallen."

I choked on my drink as I tried to stifle the urge to be offended and thought, "Hey, I'm one of those internationals!" I think Beni caught on when the raki I was sipping squirted out my nose. Man, that stings!

"Please, let me explain," said Beni. "I don't mean it as an insult to you or anyone in the diplomatic or NGO community. It's just that things have changed." He continued while I dabbed my eyes with a napkin and tried to ignore the burning in my sinuses.

"When the regime fell in '91 and the first wave of foreigners came here, we were virgin. Most of us had never seen, let alone spoken to a foreigner. We were poor, really poor. The Italian troops of Operation Pelican drove around in vehicles that made our old Russian and Chinese trucks look so antiquated, primitive. We stood by the roadside and gaped, counting ourselves lucky when they threw a pack of gum. We watched in awe as they paid outrageous rents for apartments and villas without batting an eye. We were used to haggling over a few qindarkas on the price of milk and these people handed over our yearly salary for a month's rent."

Now I had to try to suppress both the urge to cry from the raki scalding my nose and the urge to giggle uncontrollably. Qindarka? Really? I had pilot friends who used to criss-cross Europe in the days before the Euro and they had given up on trying to remember what currency was used in what country. They referred to the local currency as "Gazingas." As in "A beer costs 32,500 gazingas in Turkey! What's that in real money?" Now I find out there was a country using coinage even more ridiculously named. Qindarka!

Beni continued. "It wasn't just the economic difference. These foreigners smiled. All the time. To us, a person walking down the street smiling at strangers was either up to no good or an idiot. A serious man needs to show a serious face. But they were above that. Their ambassadors smiled. Their generals smiled. Even James Baker smiled. They could afford to smile because they knew they were serious and didn't have to convince anyone."

As he talked, it thought back to my early experiences. I remembered how deferential senior leaders were to foreigners. It wasn't just the cultural value of hospitality which is a hallmark of Albanians' treatment of guests. It was more. Almost an inferiority complex. If the Italian Police Advisors had told the Minister of Public Order to replace all their batons with grissini, the roads would have been littered with crumbs in a week! Everything foreign was better. Nothing Albanian could compare.

Beni went on. "Remember in '99 how Joe Limprecht ran this country?" Mr. Limprecht was the American Ambassador at the time and I often heard Albanians end political arguments by invoking his name. According to them, everything that happened in Albanian politics originated from, or was approved by, Joe. Other internationals were held in similarly high esteem then. Now, evidently, things were different.

The truth is, things are different, but not in the way Beni expressed it. It's not that the international community here is populated with more slackers and losers. It's the level of Albanian experience and self esteem that is rising. They travel more, their economic conditions have improved, and they're seeing themselves in a different light. As the country continues to attract more visitors and relaxed visa regimes with Europe allow more Albanians to travel, the inferiorty complex will erode even more. The cure for 40 years of isolation is exposure.

Now I need to find a cure for the raki-scalded flesh inside my nose.

Tirana Holds The Air

2008-07-23T08:09:00.005+02:00

Albanians don't say that something smells. They use the phrase "Mban ere...," - "It holds the air of ...." Apt. The air indeed holds the essence of an odor. It holds the key to memories and it takes only one whiff of a familiar odor to bring back vivid recollection of people, places, and emotions. Sometimes, though, the air holds too much.

Yesterday Tirana sweltered under 35 degrees and oppressive humidity. It's been weeks since the last rain and consistently warm. Not hot in the way that July often is, but warm enough. The lack of rain leaves the dust hanging in the air along with all the smoke and smells of the city. It wraps around your head and dulls your senses. No distinct odors to trigger a memory or impress itself forever in your cortex. Just a fog. A haze. The air holds everything in general and nothing specific. Last night, it changed.

The passage of a cold front with light rain and a drop of 15 degrees swept the air clean. All the soot, smog, and smoke was stripped away leaving this mornings air clear and cool. Like a blank slate, a virgin canvas awaiting the artist. This morning Tirana did indeed "hold the air." Held each smell aloft uncluttered, making me focus on exactly what the smell was and triggering memories.

Tirana held the air of flowers. Even now in the height of summer you catch the scent of blooms. Delicate. Faint. Calling to mind the olfactory orgy of spring with the linden trees in full flower. Remember? How that smell overwhelmed every other scent with the promise of beauty and life. Forget the trash and diesel smoke. Drink deep of the peaceful, hopeful lindens.

Tirana held the air of charcoal smoke from the small kiosk serving qofte. The roasting meat laden with oregano and salt sends up an tendril of "come hither" aroma which can make all but the most committed vegetarian sacrifice their cholesterol count. How many sunny afternoons have passed in the company of family, Birra Korca, and these tasty little meatballs? Sitting beside Grandma, learning the language. Learning the history. Getting the best gossip.

Tirana still held the air of diesel exhaust. Not like the oppressive cloud of yesterday, but something different. An industrial taste like oil and effort. A reminder of the work being done and a warning of the work still to be done. It's the price the city pays for progress - the motive force behind change. A pungent reminder of sitting behind the big machines for hours near Gjirokaster cursing their pollution and inconvenience one year and then marvelling at the wide, smooth road a year later. Like the dinosaurs it sprang from, the smell of diesel hints of it's own impending extinction.

Other smells don't prompt memories, just questions:

Why does the sidewalk in front of the Italian Ambassador's residence alway smell like an open sewer? Do they not notice it every day?

What makes that bakery smell so much better than the others? Is it wood-fired? A special recipe? Or just years of daily baking layering the aroma into the the very fiber of the building?

Oh, yes. Tirana holds the air. On mornings like today she holds it right there in front of you.

More Names

2008-07-23T07:52:00.002+02:00

It seems everyone has their favorite Albanian Name Story. Some ended up in the comments sections of this blog. Others have been told to me in person. A few were just too good not to share.

One guy made a comment below about how relieved he was to discover his date, Fatlinda, was not what you might imagine, but rather "born lucky."

On the political side, my attention was drawn to a name which sprang from an excess of communist fervor. Evidently there are a few Albanians named Marenglen, a mash-up of "Marx, Engels, and Lenin." Someone please tell me there are no Americans running around named Wajeffad.

Finally, consider the name Sosa. It originates in the northern areas of Albania where the patriarchal, clan structure was, and remains, strongest. There, the announcement of the birth of a male child is greeted with the exclamation, "Edhe nje pushk!" Another rifle! Boys are lovingly referred to as the "pillar of the house."

Girls, loved and cherished in their own way, are seen through the cultural/economic lens as presenting a challenge. The males of the family must protect her honor, find a suitable husband, and pay for a wedding after which the daughter becomes part of the labor force of another family. The combination of these two factors has led to parents, upon the birth of a third or fourth daughter when a son was anticipated, naming the girl Sosa. "Enough!"

Qafe Krrabe

2008-07-17T13:17:00.012+02:00

(Editors Note: The photos were taken recently, 9 years after the events described)

Traveling in Albania is always an adventure. Part of the reason is geography, part infrastructure, part history, and part culture. All of these reason combine to produce unforgettable moments in Albanian motoring. The most impressive for me was my first time over Qafe Krrabe (Krrabe Pass). It lies on the main road from Tirana to Elbasan and I'm told it was built by the Austrians.

In Nevada, a pass is generally a point on a road where it crosses a mountain range. You go up. You cross over. You go down. So when I was offered the chance to take a quick trip over Qafe Krrabe in 1999, I thought I knew what I was getting into.

We headed south out of Tirana on the Elbasan Road. A narrow, two-lane asphalt road that generally did what roads do; stuck to the riverside, followed the line of least resistance, and passed through several small villages. Cars and trucks jockeyed for position while attempting to avoid villagers, chickens, and cows. All was well ..... at first.

I sensed something might be amiss when we parted ways with the river. It continued south and our road started sidling up the mountain. Small steps at first, then steeper. As we passed the village of Krrabe I was trying to get a picture of a communist statue commemorating some battle or local martyrs when the road went nuts.

No more sidling. This was a direct frontal assault on the mountain which threw up stone ramparts in defense. The road carved a series of switchbacks into the solid, black rock and we twisted our way up. No guardrail, no visibility, and no indication of when it might end. Back and forth. Now facing south, now north. The turns swung through 270 degrees so rapidly I swear at one point I was looking at my own backside. "Oh dear! I need to lose some weight."

We rounded the last turn, past a roadside restaurant with a lamb slowly rotating on a spit outside, into a deep pine forest. Still going up, but more gently, following the contours of the ridge. "Wow! Am I glad that's over." The driver smiled ... and then accelerated.

We were flying up the road looking off to the left down into the valley we just fought our way out of. On the right, trees whipping by in a blur of deep green. Did I really want to know what's on the other side? The driver shot me a quick glance and grinned, "We call this The Sky Road." I learned why.

One minute a comforting barrier of green on the right while the left fell away to the valley floor. Suddenly, bang! My forest is gone, replaced by thin air. At something like a million miles an hour we crested the top and traversed to the other side on a wafer thin ridge. Almost two lanes wide, no shoulder and a near-vertical drop of 300 meters on each side. Through the panic I recall thinking, "Hey, I can see the ocean!" He told me the name of that place later, but I still call it "The Place Where I Nearly Crapped in My Pants." Gross, I know, and it doesn't sound any better in Albanian.

We continued climbing, forested slope to the left now, dizzying void to the right, winding upward along the mountain contours. Where it was particularly precarious there was a guardrail of sorts consisting of a concrete wall just high enough to to trip a small toddler with a series of semi-circular concrete rails mounted on top. Painted white.

We re-crossed the ridge several times before reaching the highest point, and at each crossing the driver glanced over to watch my reaction. Evidently getting a chuckle out of my expression of fear was more important to him than us actually staying on the road. Finally we reached a small village at the highest point called Gracen. It's pronounced "Gratchen" and should be Albanian for vomit. When I got out of the car to stretch and take pictures I noticed little piles of the stuff all around on the pavement. (Have I mentioned Albanians appear to be the people most vulnerable to carsickness in the world? Is it them or the roads? Chicken or Egg?) True to form, as I was taking pictures, a mini-bus pulled off the road behind us and out tumbled four deeply nauseous travellers. We drove away with their retching in our ears: "Grraaaaaatchen."

Heading down toward Elbasan was relatively sedate compared to the ascent. Still up high. Breathtaking views over range after range of mountains marching east and west. In front, the snow-capped massif of Cuka Partizanit shone in the clear winter air. We came to the end of the ridge and dropped into hell.

The road, spiraling off the end the ridge like a coil of tattered clothesline was bad enough, but where it led was surreal. I gazed over a giant derelict industrial complex shrouded in soot and smoke, it's presence violating the natural beauty like a tumor on Angelina Jolie's inner thigh... like a ring of hickeys on a nuns neck, like.... OK, you get it. It was gross.

"Celiku i Partise." "The Steel of The Party." Built during the Hoxha era to process chrome and steel, the gigantic complex sprawled over the valley floor. A Stalinist monstrosity meant to demonstrate the industrial might of the Peoples Repulbic. Unfortunately the communists didn't give a hoot about the environment or the workers. "EPA? What's that?" It sat abandoned and rusting save for one furnace churning out thick, grey smoke. The brilliant decision to put the factory in a narrow valley prevented the wind from clearing the smoke quickly and a thick haze hovered over the plant and the people of Elbasan.

I passed on the chance to descend into the funk. That could wait for another day. I didn't want to smudge the memory of my first exposure to the wild beauty of Albania with what surely awaited me at the other end of Qafe Krrabe.

Signs of Progress

2008-07-14T11:04:00.005+02:00

My grandfather dealt with his grandchildrens' many complaints with a standard answer, "You think you have it bad? You should have seen it when I was a kid." As an impatient 7-year old, it used to infuriate me no end. Why should I care what it "used to be like?" " I'm here - I'm now." Many years later I can confidently report Albania is turning me into my grandfather.

I've been living here sporadically for over 8 years now. A lot of coming and going. I get to see the country with fresh eyes each time but still have the reference point to assess the general direction of progress. This is useful to exactly one person - me. I can't count the number of times when hearing a complaint from a "newcomer", I've channeled Grandad's ghost.

"You think the roads are bad? You should have seen it in 1999. Took me 12 hours to drive 250 kilometers to Kukes."

"Construction mess? You call this construction? You should have seen it when the "Twin Towers" were going up on the boulevard."

I know in the back of their heads they're all thinking, "Thanks, Gramps, but that doesn't fix my shock absorbers or make it any less dusty in my apartment. I'm here - I'm now." I feel their pain because I share many of their problems. I lose my temper in traffic and am revolted when I come across a large pile of uncollected trash, but something in me makes me want to try to put it in perspective. The most depressing aspect of living here is thinking people who come here will go home to report there's no hope - no progress - in Albania. It's there. You just have to look and really understand what you're looking at.

It's in the airport. The security fence that goes all the way around the runway and has no holes. That's progress from 2002 when my arriving flight got waved off at the last moment due to cows on the runway. It's in the immigration control area. Lights, AC, computers, CCTV. Nobody just strolls through without being checked. It's the 12 airlines serving the swelling ranks of travellers. It's the 0530 flight to Rome made possible by the increase in security that allows airlines to overnight their planes in Tirana. Prior to 2005 it was an "in-and-out" airport.

A huge monument to progress sits at the Kamez interchange on the Durres road. It's an overpass. No more playing "Albanian Roulette" with the southbound trucks entering the highway. Not completely done yet and drivers are still trying to puzzle out exactly how it works, but it's progress.

It's in the whole road from Elbasan to Qafe Thane. Smooth pavement, sweeping turns, modern bridges, and no "Tunnel of Death." There used to be an L-shaped tunnel on the eastbound lane, about 50 meters long. You entered from the blazing sunshine to a completely unlit, un-signposted tunnel which immediately turned 70 degrees right. No reflective arrow, just blackened stone with the scars left by unsuspecting drivers. It's gone - that's progress.

Progress is also in the faces of the successful Albanian entrepreneurs who are returning from abroad. The giant QTU - Qender Tregtare Univers (Universe Trade Center) - is owned and operated by an Albanian who returned with his family after years in Europe because he saw opportunity here. Or the naturalized U.S. citizen who got his degree in marketing in the States and came back to help expand the tourist industry in Saranda by getting visitors stay longer and see something other than Butrint.

So I continue to try to tread the fine line between being the Albanian equivalent of my grandfather and just another disgrunteld ex-pat. I'm aided in this by my sheer fascination with this place and the words of Kwai Chang Kane's* master: "He who lives in the past robs from the present. He who ignores the past robs from the future."

(*You have been watching your "Kung Fu" reruns, right?)

What's in a Name?

2008-07-11T07:44:00.003+02:00

Rember Bruce Willis in Pulp Fiction? He's changing clothes in the back of the cab with the Colombian beauty driving after having killed his opponent in the boxing ring. Their conversation goes:

BUTCH: ...Esmarelda Villalobos -- is that Mexican?
ESMARELDA: The name is Spanish, but I'm Colombian.
BUTCH: It's a very pretty name.
ESMARELDA: It means "Esmarelda of the wolves."
BUTCH: That's one hell of a name you got there, sister.
ESMARELDA: Thank you. And what is your name?
BUTCH: Butch.
ESMARELDA: Butch. What does it mean?
BUTCH: I'm an American, our names don't mean shit.

That last line always runs through my mind when I talk about names here in Albania.

When I first arrived, I noticed was how foreign so many of the names appeared. OK, Albanian is as foreign language to me, but I kept being suprised by how strange and unpronounceable the name appeared in print. "Ylli?" How the hell do you say that? What's with all the X's?

Then I started to hear people pronounce the names and was amazed again. "Your Minister of Defense is really a guy named Lou Ann? And a former president (now Prime Minister) is a dude named Sally?"

After a few months of language lessons, it starts to make more sense. And, thankfully, I learn that many of the people with hard to pronounce names go by shorter versions. I meet lots of Beni's, Tani's, Sebi's, and Dini's. I also start to get curious about where the names come from and what they mean since in my country Butch's last line is pretty much accepted truth.

Lots of names come from other cultures: Ismael, Ahmet, Sebahadin and many more were brough by the Turks. Filip, Artur, Stefan, and Gjergj share the same origin as the English Phillip, Arthur, Stephen, and George. Then there's Skender which comes from the Turkish version of the Macedonian Alexander (as in .. the Great). He was half-Albanian according to some historians and Angelina Jolie. Finally, there are those names that drifted in after the country opened up like Wendy, Max, and suprisingly, Elvis.

It's the pure Albanian names that stand out most. So many of them mean something. Mira (the good), Shpresa (hope), Besa (oath), Fatmir (good luck), Fatjon (our luck), Gezim (happiness), Besnik (loyal), Flutura (butterfly), Ilir (free), Drita (light), Lule (flower), Pranvera (spring), Agim (dawn), and Bashkim (unity). "How nice," I thought, "that Albanian parents loved their children so much as to give them names reflecting the most positive aspects of life." It turns out that parental patriotism was not the only reason so many Albanians of a certain age are named Ilir.

During the communist period, there was a list of "acceptable" names at the civil registry. If the name you wanted for your child was not on the list, you had to choose one that was. The communist leadership built up on the tradition of giving meaningful names and used it to tie the people closer to their movement. As a result you can meet today with Perparim (progress), Clirim (liberation), Fitore (victory), Flamur (flag), Lavdrim (glory), and Luftar (warrior). I've heard stories of parents in more rural areas adopting this mindset so intensely that there were children named Shkence (science) and Traktor (.... I guess you can figure that one out!).

Now, as I meet more Albanians, I keep my suprise in check when I hear a new name. I don't giggle when meeting yet another man named Luan (the lion), but it will be hard surpressing the urge to chuckle when I eventually meet Traktor!

Oh, and Ylli? It means "star".

Coffee

2008-07-10T07:56:00.002+02:00

"Let's go for coffee."

You hear it everywhere in Tirana. At first you take the statement at face value and prepare yourself to go get a cup of java, a quick pick-me-up. Then you find out things aren't always as simple as they seem.

The invitation may be simply to go sit and drink a cup of your favorite caffeinated beverage, which is an art and science of its own here. Expect to invest a little time. Unlike the Italians who often shoot down an espresso while standing at a counter, Albanians give the coffee the time it deserves. Choose a cafe bar. Pick a table. Take a seat. A waiter, usually young, usually male, come to take your order. History intrudes.

"Should I go for a classic espresso which came over with the Italians?"

"Perhaps a cafe latte in the style of the French soldiers in Korca at the beginning of the century?"

"Or maybe the original Turkish coffee, the first brew introduced to Europe at the point of the Ottoman scimitar?"

Yes, that sounds right. A good "kafe Turk" takes time to brew, fills the air with the aroma of dark, bitter coffee, and arrives at your table accompanied by a glass of water and a sweet. While you wait for the grounds to settle the conversation ebbs and flows. Just conversation - muhabet - with no aim, no pressing need to move to conclusion. A quick toast before the first sip. Cigarettes. Light 'em if you got 'em. Time passes. And that's the point of coffee here. Pass time, make conversation, relax.

But that's just when "coffee" means simply coffee. The same invitation may lead down a different trail. Going for coffee can be the gateway to a large feast, particularly if the invitation is to a private home. Coffee starts with offer of a shot of raki or a chocolate, water, maybe a sweet preserved fruit. The coffee is served, sipped, and enjoyed. More raki, an invitation to "eat a little something", and then dinner begins. Coffee is the gateway to Albanian hospitality. A hook. A teaser. A joy.

Sometimes "going for coffee" doesn't even involve coffee. It's an excuse to meet up for a drink or the first step in the courting process. Whatever the purpose, whatever the drink, going for coffee in Albania is always a pleasure for me.

In the U.S. coffee has become synonymous with Starbucks or one of their clones. Stand in line, order your pretentiously-named version of coffee, and shell out 3-5 bucks. When it's ready you go back up to the counter to retrieve your paper cup (with cardboard liner) and retire to your seat amid the cell-phone-chattering, laptop-pecking, i-pod-cocooned customers. They come together to be isolated.

Real coffee comes in a real cup. It costs between 50-150 lek ($.50-$1.50) and is served by a waiter in black pants and white shirt. With a glass of water. And a biscuit. And time to talk.

Background

2008-07-09T14:44:00.001+02:00

To understand why I’m staying in Albania, I need to look back at how I got here. I won’t bore you with all the details of the events that brought me here. I reserve that particular brand of punishment for unsuspecting people who ask me “The Question.”

I had been working for the government for quite a few years and was getting a little bored with doing the same thing over and over. I needed a change and a change I got. A little exploration brought up an opportunity to work in ….. Africa! Yes! You can’t get much more change than that. I was psyched. I read up on my future home country, prepared to start learning the language, and had one foot in the jungle when the phone rang.

“Look,” they said, “We need someone to work in Albania immediately and we reasoned that if you would volunteer to go to Africa, you would go anywhere.” True enough. Encouraged by the thought of making the change quickly and earning an additional stipend for “dangerous duty”, I signed on. Then I ran down to Borders and tried to find a travelogue with a map so I could figure out where the heck Albania was. The Kosova war had just ended and the news channels were full of reporting about the area, but I didn’t really have a clue where the country was. The sum total of my knowledge about Albania came from The Animaniacs, The Simpsons, and John Belushi.

Fully briefed to expect rampant crime, violence, gunfire, and carjacking, I slinked off the plane ready to make a “Hillary-esque” dash under sniper fire to the terminal. Turns out the only thing I had to worry about was getting a good soaking in the rain as I walked from the plane to the terminal. Reality in Albania was something entirely different from my expectations… and not for the last time.

Why?

2008-07-09T11:12:00.002+02:00

It's usually the first question.

Seems like the easiest question.

In the end, it's the one you end up asking yourself every day and finding a different answer.

"Why are you living in Albania?" I hear this question all the time from Albanians and from internationals. Depending on who is doing the asking or my mood at the moment, the answer ranges from a standard spiel to a wiseass quip; or, occasionally, a genuine attempt to explain how I ended up here and why I stay. Regardless of how I answer, I usually end up with more questions for myself.

"Is that really why you're here?"

"Do you really believe what you just said or are you just running your mouth?"

In the end, the answer is never complete. This blog is an attempt to capture for me, and share with you, the reasons why I'm here and why I stay. I hope you enjoy it and have the patience to put up with my sporadic tendencies. Like the rain in my home state, my muse visits rarely but when it does arrive, it pours.

Welcome.