My First 24 Hours in Tirana

Article by: Tom Masters, November 2006

'Sorry I'm very late,' he said 'the bloody police needed a tip for me to come through…'

So explained Arber, a friend I'd worked with a few years beforehand and who is now a well-known news anchor in Albania. He had repeatedly invited me to his homeland and I had harboured a fascination with this strange, remote, Communist country since my teens, so I packed my bags. Before I knew it I was in a Tupolev, flying over the criss-crossing canals of the verdant Durres plain.

We touched down on the runway of Tirana's Rinas Airport, situated alongside a graveyard of aged and rusting planes. An old Paris city bus, still apparently destined for Gare St Lazare, lumbered us to the terminal building. The chaos of passport control spat me out into a completely empty arrivals hall and I wondered where all the people could be. I wandered out of the airport into the hot Tirana afternoon, and then I saw them: a medieval-looking scrum being sternly held back by armed guards. Passengers from the plane were stealing across the concourse gingerly, as if the police line was about to break and a flood of beggars, hawkers and swindlers was about to descend on them mercilessly. I followed uneasily. The guards didn't seem too concerned with protecting us from the waiting swarm of rip-off taxi drivers though. Several of my erstwhile travelling companions got into cabs with looks of submissive resignation on their faces and I would have had to do the same, were it not for Arber.

Safely in a pre-booked car, we sped through the unpredictably hilly landscape, on bumpy, pot-holed roads towards Tirana. True to the guidebooks' word, the area is riddled with Albania's famous bunkers - concrete, sci-fi igloos former dictator Enver Hoxha littered throughout the countryside to help defend Albania from invasion. They hover on the landscape, slowly decaying. They are sometimes painted, sometimes inhabited, always unattractive.

As we drove into the capital proper, the brightly painted Tirana buildings were a surprise. 'The mayor used to be an artist,' explained Arber with some pride. Even though there were still plenty of communist-era blocks that looked a mere breeze away from collapse, new buildings were painted in garish yellows and glowing reds. This is a city rebuilding afresh, full of potential and excitement for the future.

We cruised across huge, modernist Skanderbeg Square, the central piazza of the city, then down King Zog Avenue, named after Albania's deposed king (all kings should have such wonderful names), to my accommodation - a tiny one-bedroom flat in a ramshackle block, right in the centre of town. I looked out from my grapevine-entwined balcony and watched stray dogs roaming a litter-strewn demolition site. 'Welcome to Albania,' Arber said sardonically, producing a bottle of warm raki he insisted we damage immediately.

The sweet smell of rubbish rotting in the heat filled the air. Families sat out on the streets watching their children play, beggars wandered in gangs, their faces swollen and aged by exposure.

A short time later I landed on the street for a tipsy stroll and a bit of exploration. The sweet smell of rubbish rotting in the heat filled the air. Families sat out on the streets watching their children play, beggars wandered in gangs, their faces swollen and aged by exposure. Milling groups of money changers congregated on Skanderbeg Square clutching fat wads of Lekë for exchange as if it were Monopoly money while a grand socialist realist mosaic of triumphant peasants and workers surveyed the scene from the facade of the National Museum.

That evening Arber picked me up by motorcycle with his friend Bledi. 'He presents the Albanian national lottery,' Arber told me knowingly before we all sped off. I was grabbing on to Arber for dear life as he wove his way through Tirana's choked traffic at breakneck speed. After a fantastic meal with half of Albania's showbiz elite and a wander through the thriving restaurants and pumping bars of the Blloku area - once the sole preserve of the Communist elite - Arber and I parted company in the quiet of Mother Theresa Square outside Tirana University. I stayed a while in the peaceful square named after Albania's most famous daughter; the silence of the still summer night punctuated by the hum of Albania's nouveau-riche speeding by in huge foreign cars.

I was grabbing on to Arber for dear life as he wove his way through Tirana's choked traffic at breakneck speed.

I looked back at the university. There was still a very real communist austerity to it, but lit up with blue lights and presiding over a square named after a nun, it was safe to say that it too was moving with the times. I walked down the massive Avenue of Martyrs and Heroes wondering just how much more Tirana would change in the coming decade. As I did, a power cut descended on the city. The darkness swallowed me up, leaving the distant headlights of a Mercedes jeep to guide me back home.