2022 in Albania (Tirana)

On October 7, 2022, the Balkan bus tour brought me to Albania (Albanian: Shqiperi), which resulted in the visit of my 26th unique country!

I first entered the country via Shkodër, in the northern part of the country. The bus then drove south to the capital city of Tirana:

This also made it my:

• 2nd Albanian-speaking country (out of 2 [or 3]!)
  • after Montenegro

I first heard of Albania in the 1990s while reading a children's atlas as a kid. It described how Albania was a "closed country" and was "very difficult for foreigners to get in". I also once saw an episode of The Simpsons (from 1990) that featured an Albanian character! At the time, Albania was still a communist country!

So, a few decades later, here I was, crossing the border from Montenegro to Albania. Hints of a Cold War past still lingered, as many gray, concrete bunkers would appear beside the highways. However, upon arrival in Tirana, I noticed how "up-and-coming" it looked, with new buildings springing up like beanstalks. I even got the see one of them downtown!

Visit

Key places visited in Tirana included:

• Skanderbeg Square
  • the must-see public square forming the city centre
  • floor tiles cover a huge surface area
  • a large mural at the National History Museum
    • under restoration in 2022
• Resurrection of Christ Orthodox Cathedral
  • a newly constructed cathedral
• 4ever Green Tower
  • a curvy, bright green concrete tower
    • built in 2022 just a few weeks before my visit
    • across the street from the cathedral
• Independence Memorial
  • a statue of two tablets
• Bunk'Art 2
  • an underground art museum in a Cold War era concrete dome bunker
• The Cloud
  • a work of geometric abstract art
• Friendship Monument
  • another work of geometric abstract art
  • commemorating a friendship between Albania and Kuwait

After a brief walking tour, we had a couple of hours of free time to wander around the city. I got my local cash and some magnets as souvenirs.

Currency

I did manage to withdraw some Albanian lek (for whatever price I paid in stupid bank fees) as cash becomes second fiddle to card in a more digital southeastern Europe.

Language

Surprisingly, the Albanian language has distant relations to both English and Serbo-Croatian (as part of a large Indo-European family). However, their common ancestor lived so long ago that Albanian has develop its own distinct grammatical features. Vocabulary would come from various angles, making a foreigner only able to grasp the simplest words, if anything.

Some words I learned in my short time there (not to demonstrate any relatedness with or difference from any language):

• hyrje = "entrance"
• dalje = "exit"
• rruga = "street"
• harroje = "forget it"

I gathered the first two from signs of a bus (in Tirana, you have to enter from the front and exit from the back). I also saw many streets that began with "rruga" so I looked this up and found out it meant "street".

Friday afternoon here meant traffic jams. It shocked me that people here could still talk on the mobile phones while driving (which probably resulted in such traffic jams!). While holding her phone and driving, one woman yelled something like "harroje" (pronounced "har-roy-eh") which I later found out meant "forget it!"

(I figure if I stayed in Tirana for a few years, I'd pick up Albanian fast enough!)

Soon enough, we had to go on our way to [North] Macedonia. The bus tour went southeast, through the city of Elbasan, as we saw some tall bridges (such as Ura e Bushtricës), trying to master some steep valleys. These bridges would eventually take us to Lake Ohrid, split between Albania and [North] Macedonia.