Advertisement
Published: February 17th 2024
Communist-Era Mosaic
National Historical Museum, TiranaDear All
Greetings from Tirana! I'm actually really quite excited to be here! After five days in the peaceful and traditional Albanian hinterlands, it was really quite exciting arriving in the country's Big Smoke. The city is buzzing and alive, full of energy - not just from the zippy traffic all around, but also from the vibrant people filling its streets. I believe few places will have seen such a rapid transformation in the last 30 years, from the capital of a completely isolated communist country akin to the likes of North Korea today, to this energetic and happening hub of activity. I felt excited to be there, and excited to explore.
On the morning of my arrival, I took a four-and-a-half hour bus from Sarandë in the country's deep south, not far from the border with Greece, to this very central Albanian capital. I almost didn't though. Until that morning, my two public transport experiences in the country involved the furgon "fill-up-and-go" types, where you just turn up, bags a seat on the minibus, and head off when it's full. This was not so for the Sarandë to Tirana bus though, which was more like a coach really.
I had learned the day before that there were hourly buses to Tirana throughout the morning, and aimed for the 9.30amn one. I didn't realise that you needed to buy a ticket for this one though, and arriving in what I thought was good time at 9.10am, I found out that this bus was fully booked. I was offered a little board-type of sitting apparatus that would be placed on the bus steps once the door was closed, but politely declined for the sake of my back on a four-and-a-half-hour journey. Fortunately there were still a few tickets for the next bus at 10.45am, with the one after that not being until 4pm...! I quickly bought one of these, and thanked my lucky stars I was still heading as planned to Tirana. It was also rather fortuitous as, without going into too much detail, I was experiencing a few tummy troubles during my week in Albania, and needed just one more quick visit to the loo to be ok for the next few hours just after 9.30am. This would not have been pleasant had I been sitting on that board on the steps for four hours...! It seemed that this
day was a particularly busy day for travelling. New Year is apparently Albania's biggest festival, more so than Christmas or either of the Eids due to the reduced religion in the country following the anti-religion communist years. Both the 1st and 2nd of January are bank holidays in the country. With this day being the 2nd, it seemed many people were heading home again after spending the holidays with their families. The 10.45am bus was also fully booked, but of course this time I had a seat, and enjoyed the journey back again to pretty much where I started my journey - Tirana. Though I had yet to step foot in the city as I'd immediately headed to Durrës after landing at Tirana Airport the previous Thursday.
Arriving in the busy city, I took a taxi from the bus station to the delightful Hotel Kruja, not far from the centre of town near Skanderberg Square, named after national Albanian hero Skanderberg (1405-1468), also known as Gjergj Kastrioti, famous for resisting the Ottomon Empire. I especially chose this hotel as it looked like the typical former communist-era hotels I've grown so fond of since my time in Russia 22 years
ago. Whenever I travel in Eastern Europe, I always aim for these hotels, I just love them. They are cosy and quaint, with ancient carpets and bedspreads, often with long echoey corridors, and sometimes quite abrupt staff. Call me a nutter, but I just love these places. The Hotel Kruja did not fail to please, and the carpet and bedspreads really hit the spot. It was originally founded in 1920 by the current owner's father, but in fact was closed during the communist era - the current owner rebuilt it and re-opened it again in the 1990s after the fall of the Iron Curtain. Technically it wasn't really a communist-era hotel, but it sure felt like one. It is run by a lovely mature couple, and in America would be called a "Mom and Pop" hotel I think. Yes, I was very pleased with my accommodation there!
After a short heads down and rest, I was ready to explore the place, which I could already hear was buzzing from right outside my third-floor room window. Although only 5pm, the sun had already set and my first foray into the city was an evening exploration. This worked out really well,
as the city's huge central focal point, Skanderberg Square, possibly styled on the similarly grandiose style of Red Square in Moscow, was filled with a fairground during this New Year season. Apparently Albanians are not too religious, thanks to The Dictator's brutal crackdown on religion as being "backward", and as mentioned New Year is a bigger celebration in the country than Christmas. The people were seriously having a good time that evening, with plenty of screams coming from all sorts of spinning rides. I headed to the very posh five-star Tirana International Hotel as I could see it had a quiet restaurant with a great view over all the action below, and enjoyed a wonderful traditional Albanian meal of lamb casserole and a Tirana beer, while just enjoying being in the middle of such a happening place after more rural experiences of late.
After dinner, I enjoyed a couple of hours walking around, taking in the beautiful communist-era mosaic on the front of the National Historical Museum overlooking Skanderberg Square, the beautiful early 19th-century Et'hem Bej Mosque which miraculously survived the communist destruction of religious buildings as it was considered a historical monument, and the very unusual Pyramid of
Tirana. This was built in 1988, three years after the death of The Dictator, and was originally planned as the Enver Hoxha Museum, sometimes jokingly referred to as the Enver Hoxha Mausoleum although it was never intended for this use. Following the 1991 collapse of communism, the structure converted into a conference centre. It is built vaguely in the shape of a pyramid, and as well as the large spaces inside, you can climb its 120 steps to the top for excellent views over the city from above. It seems this is a favourite past time of locals out for an evening stroll, and the place had a very jovial atmosphere. After walking back to my cosy hotel again, I was ready to call it a night on my first day in Tirana. I felt very excited to explore more the next day.
I really enjoyed my full day in Tirana. I must admit, I knew little of Albania's history, particularly of its dark communist days from 1946 to 1991. On this day I learned more about this one extremely secretive nation, it was if the country opened itself up to me about what life was like in the
country when it closed itself off to the rest of the world in a paranoid hissy-fit. Unlike what I have seen in former Soviet and former Yugoslavian countries, there is no sentimental value attached to Albania's communist experience, no rose-tinted lens which evades the darker sides of the political system and focuses on a traditional bygone era when people lived in solidarity and harmony. I have not seen Albania or Albanians proud in any way, shape or form, of their communist past, and with the rapid development of the country over the last thirty years, it seems the country couldn't move on fast enough from such troubled times. I can't say I blame them.
My first stop for the day was the lovely-sounding museum called the "House of Leaves". Apart from the now-peaceful atmosphere of the grand building and surrounding gardens, the place was anything but lovely not so long ago. It was the country's communist-era headquarters for the "Sigurimi", the country's "state security, intelligence and secret police service": read "torture, interrogation and bugging". I found it interesting how straight away, the museum compared such a form of totalitarian governance to J.S.Mill's concept of the Panopticon, the perfect prison,
created in a shape by which any prisoner at any one time could be viewed by both the prison guards and his fellow prisoners. This indeed sounds very similar to the totalitarian communist state, as well as the controlling and power-hungry way in which the UK government dealt with the c-word fiasco. The rooms which were formerly used for Sigurimi purposes now house artefacts from this era, and countless harrowing testimonies of survivors and survivors' families. What seemed particularly disturbing was how families of suspected "saboteurs" (or rather political opponents) were treated, being constantly monitored, harassed and ostracised over generations, and how The Dictator grouped all such opponents and agitators, both internally and externally from other countries, as "The Enemy", who all shared a common goal in the destruction of Albania. The statistics during this period were sobering - out of a current population of nearly three million people, 520,000 claim to have relatives who were politically sentenced or executed, while 350,000 claim to have relatives who were deported or confined. There is only one word to describe such leadership, and that is "paranoid".
Speaking of paranoia, I also visited later in the day the utterly mesmerising and intriguing
museum called "Bunk'Art 1". This place is on the outskirts of the city, and is a complete underground settlement built into a hillside, with the intention of safely housing the entire Albanian communist government in the much-feared event of an invasion, including with either nuclear or chemical weaponry. The bunker has eight entrances in total, through each of which you have to pass through two huge concrete doors followed by three steel doors, designed to keep the effects of nuclear and chemical weapons out. The Dictator conceived this idea during a 1964 visit to North Korea, who apparently have similar systems of tunnels and underground bunkers for similar purposes.
Within the bunker were three relatively luxurious living quarters, for The Dictator, his Prime Minister, and his Chief of Staff. There were many photos of Enver Hoxha himself, a strikingly good-looking man I thought, particularly in his youth. On the one hand I did feel a certain admiration for the man, who must, as with a number of dictators, have had good initial intentions. And as with other communist countries, the earlier successes in achieving rapid economic growth and social improvement were tangible and indisputable. On the other hand, I
think when such regimes cling onto power for too long, and start to oppress any form of opposition, that things go awry. As with the former Soviet Union, Lenin is admired while Stalin is reviled, while Tito doesn't seem to be too hated back in the former Yugoslavia. Hoxha appeared to be more of a Stalin in Albania though, and I wonder how much of a Lenin he may have been in his younger days. His particular type of communism is referred to as "Hoxhaism", and appears to hark back to a purer form of communism as initially proposed by Marx and Lenin. Thus as both the Soviet Union and China began to revise their original communist visions as they sought greater relations with the wider world, Hoxha cut off ties with them in 1961 and 1979 respectively, in order to pursue his more traditional path of anti-revisionist Marxism-Leninism.
The bunker held countless other rooms, probably numbering in their hundreds, and even included a large auditorium called the Assembly Hall - the place was a fascination to explore! One particular room was a highlight for me, telling the heroic and miraculous, yet disturbingly tragic, story of 26 American army
Communist-Era Mosaic
National Historical Museum, Tirana nurses and medics who crash-landed in Albania during World War Two, when the country had succumbed to the Nazis. The story involved the daring escape by this group, walking 63 days from the snowy mountains where they crash landed near Belsh Lake in the Albanian interior, to the coast at Vlorë where they could escape to Italy. While in western media, in books such as "The Secret Rescue" and "Savage Will", the emphasis is rightly-so on the bravery of the Americans dodging bullets and braving freezing winter temperatures, and the courage of the local Albanian villagers who risked everything to help them along the way, I was more struck by the tragic end of local Albanian Kostaq Stefa, whose story was well-told in the display. 39-year-old resident of nearby Berat, Stefa housed some of the group in his house along with other townsfolk, before leading them on their treacherous journey to Vlorë, dropping them off, and then heading back again, returning home three months later. While this all had to be kept quiet during the Nazi occupation of Albania, when the communists led by Hoxha liberated the country in 1944, Stefa and his compatriots were initially and justly hailed as
heroes. Shortly after, as the country descended into paranoid communism, Stefa was arrested in 1947, tortured, and then sentenced to death by firing squad the following year. His "crime" was to have "conspired" with the Anglo-American enemy during the War. Just before his death, his mother and 14-year-old eldest son were told they could visit him as his sentence was commuted instead to 101 years in prison - shortly after arrival at the prison, they were then told that he had been executed that morning. This tragic end to such a hero hit me hard, and I feel more should be known in the west about this poor man and his suffering, after such a heroic story. Hence, my writing up of it here in my Travel Blog.
Something else that struck me was a room which detailed the barbed-wire fence that was constructed to completely surround Albania, so that its border with its neighbours was completely sealed off. Attempting to escape the country during communist times was considered treason, and punishable by death. Apparently, 13,692 people escaped the country between 1946 and 1990, of whom 988 had died - the display did not say how these people had
passed away.
Hoxha himself only set foot in the Bunker twice during emergency drills, and as we all know, the anticipated full-scale invasion never took place, so the place was never put to its original intended use. I do wonder if such an invasion was ever going to take place, and how much of it was an ageing dictator's growing paranoia. I wonder if the west, and east for that matter, knew that such a regime would never last, and just left it to implode along with the rest of the former-communist East European bloc. Hoxha died in 1985, and there seemed to be a particularly strong outpouring of grief from the many pictures of his funeral and lying-in-state. Just as with Tito's Yugoslavia though, the communist regime in the country did not last long after his passing. Both countries overthrew the shackles of communism with the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. The Bunker was fascinating, I have never experienced anything quite like it, and it was certainly my highlight in Tirana.
In between these two sobering places to visit, I fitted in a much more fun one! This was a ride on the Dajti Express
View over Skanderberg Square
From the Tirana International Hotel cable car to the top of Mount Dajti, the 1613m high mountain overlooking Tirana to its east. It was a 20-minute journey each way, 4670m long, and involved a seriously steep climb at the end which is certainly not for the vertigo sufferer. Unfortunately Mt Dajti was covered in a cloud during my time up there, so there were no awesome views to be had from the top, just a thick pea souper all around. The rides up and down were exhilarating though, and these did have impressive views over Albania's capital. The top was also interesting to wander around, with some very interesting attractions involving air rifle target practising, horse-riding, buggy riding, and a miniature golf course. There was also a system of hiking trails leading to such attractions as viewpoints, caves and ruins. However, I really didn't trust Albanian hiking trails when not many locals enjoy such a hobby, with little or no signage, and with visibility down to around 20m or so. So after an agreeable walk around up there, I headed back down the cable car again for some milder temperatures, and onto the afore-mentioned and nearby Bunk'Art 1 museum.
After another wander through happening
Skanderberg Square, with a stop off this time for some comfort food for dinner at KFC, I headed back to my hotel for a lovely evening in after a really educational and enjoyable day learning about this country's recent history, the depravities of human nature in its quest for power and control, and some mountainous and cloudy natural beauty.
My final day on this brilliant Albanian adventure was just a trip to the airport for my flight home again. I loved how Tirana's airport is called "Mother Teresa International Airport", due to Mother Teresa's Albanian background. In actual fact she was born in Skopje in Macedonia in 1910, when the country was actually a part of the Ottoman Empire before joining the Former Yugoslavia, but that hasn't stopped the Albanians calling her their own. In fact, there were hints during my time there of what I understand to be calls for Kosovo and Macedonia to join the country to create a "Greater Albania", but with Serbia's existence and Russia's support of her, I doubt this will come to fruition any time soon. Mother Teresa International Airport is also interestingly enough the country's only functioning commercial airport, though I heard
there are plans to open another international airport at Vlorë in the south, to make southern Albania more accessible to the outside world - not a bad thing I would say!
The flight home was a breeze. There were no knucklehead nutcases being kicked off the plane, and the flight was completely on time - yay! I soon began the post-trip contemplation of what was a really fascinating and eye-opening adventure in a country that after such a long period of self-isolation, is beginning to open itself to the world. And to anyone reading this who is interested in going, I'd go, the sooner the better, before the rest of the world finds out about this stunning gem with such welcoming and hospitable people, and such an intriguing culture and history.
Thank you for reading, and until the next time! I have a six-day trip through Portugal planned in February - yay!
All the best for now 😊
Alex
Advertisement
Tot: 0.076s; Tpl: 0.02s; cc: 14; qc: 29; dbt: 0.0439s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
John Miranda
John & Miranda
Tirana
As ever, a great blog full of memories. I would endorse the encouragement to visit now ... never has a city surprised in reality versus the myth.