Albania

September 25–28, 2009

Albania is currently somewhere halfway down the path from communist stupor to peaceful and quiet Balkan provincialism.

They’ve already built a sea-green glass airport here, but still drive old Soviet vans jokingly referred to as «bread loaves».

Then again, when it comes to the number of written-off Mercedes on the roads, Albania could easily compete with Lebanon.

I expected to see terrible devastation.

People in dingy rags with missing teeth.

I mentally prepared myself for rivers of sludge. But I saw none of these things. Ok, so it’s still very Soviet in some parts. So what.

Albania is looking to the future with hope.

Some of the curbstones are shaped like puzzle pieces (like in Amsterdam or Rome).

An interesting urban navigation idea in Tirana: shopping and factory to the left; stadium, university and hospital straight ahead. This only exists in one spot, though.

The dumpsters in the capital have holes in the lids (which are always open).

The dumpsters in other cities are simpler, but they all have missing wheels.

A trash can.

A different trash can.

By the way, concrete stumps are immensely popular as a measure for preventing illegal parking.

And for separating bike baths from the main roadway.

The post box in Albania harks from Italy.

A payphone booth.

Manholes.

There are diesel generators in the street outside the more prosperous establishments (the power goes out from time to time).

Car washing services («lavazh») are offered on every corner in Albania. No other country in the world has such a large number of car washes.

Almost all the monuments are busts.

A 60 km/h speed limit sign is accompanied by a second sign with a line through the previous speed limit of 80 km/h. The reasoning behind this redundancy is unclear.

The country has its own sign for bridges: a white bracket on a blue background.

Roadside memorials tend to be very imposing here. The gravestones in Ukraine pale in comparison.

Enver Hoxha (the Albanian Stalin or, more precisely, the Albanian Kim Il-sung) built a bunch of bunkers all over the country at one point. The idea was that the entire adult population could lie in ambush with rifles in these concrete mushrooms. Today they sit unused in the middle of the fields.

There are very few old buildings left. They can be identified by their tiled roofs, and they sort of resemble the shanties of North Korea.

By the way, the park clearly illustrates the difference between a city planner’s fantasies and people’s actual walking preferences.

Practically all the buildings are new or under construction.

The buildings being constructed are predominantly three stories tall, but not all the floors are habitable. A typical scene: walls have been put up on the first floor (the commercial space) and, for instance, the third floor (the residence). I guess they finish building the rest of the floors as more money comes in.

The commercial space is usually the first priority—it’ll help make money for the rest.

Those with fewer means wait until they’ve earned enough for a few bricks and then put up a wall in their little nest. That’s why the walls are all different in poor neighborhoods.

And those with money to spare pull out all the stops from the get-go.