JANE SEES THE WORLD

Interesting architecture

Albania

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by

Jane
in

After an extremely early flight (although today’s 3:20 AM pickup beat it by an hour), I arrived in Tirana. I had a huge layover in Istanbul so I didn’t get there until 8 PM or so. Since B wasn’t going to arrive until 11, we decided to get a hotel next to the airport and deal with going to the city the next day. It was a good decision and way less stressful.

Interesting architecture
I feel like any architect should want to come to Albania. It seems like anything goes with design.

Tirana

I didn’t have the highest expectations for Tirana, but I really enjoyed the city. During our week there, I went on several day trips to outlying areas, but my time in the city itself was very enjoyable. I like the interesting architecture of the buildings, the tree lined roads that provided nice shade away from the heat, and the vibe that felt foreign, but not too foreign. Most people spake English and the food was tasty. 

No smoking sign
The caption says stop smoking. It implies that it was perfectly acceptable to smoke, but once you get to the sign you must stop. That tracks for this part of the world.

I was nervous about the nightly protests that have been going on here after douche-canoe Americans did a deal with Albanian’s leadership to buy some islands. However, as our host told us, these are peaceful protests that kids go to. We did end up at one yesterday, day 42 of their protest, and she was right. It was peaceful. No burning of American flags or anything, but sadly, I saw 0 flamingos.

People with Albania flags
Most protesters had these flags. Made me wonder if enterprising individuals saw the demand and had a bunch made to sell?

Sights

On the days we didn’t have tours, we hit up some main areas of town. Here are a couple things of note.

  • Skanderberg Square: the main square in Tirana. It is really pretty with checkerboard like squares with pink shades of local granite. It is named after an Albanian hero in the 1500s and while we were there it had a big World Cup section right next to it where folks could watch the matches.
large square in a city with marble squares
Check out the cool building in the background.
  • New bazaar: this is an outdoor, covered market. We bought some olives to munch on while we shopped and I got a wooden spoon, sold by a really cute old man who pointed at our olives and then the wood of the spoons. Apparently they are made of olive wood. 
Table selling wood spoons
Look at that variety! As a child who obeyed because of the threat of a wooden spoon on the bum, this table was a little scary.
  • BunkArt 2: the leader of Albanian in the 70s, 80s, 90s was a real jerk who basically shut the country off from the world and made everyone live in terror of being killed. He was paranoid and had  thousands and thousands of bunkers built all over the country. Several remain, and in one they installed a museum of the secret police. We went down the stairs and visited the different rooms of the bunker, of which there were 30 or 40. Albania had a really hard time in these years and fortunately after the dictator died they were able to form a democracy. 
Cement bunker in the middle of a city
My brother said, “awww, isn’t that just the cutest little bunker you ever saw.”
  • Castle: this wasn’t much of a castle, TBH. It consisted on one remaining wall with two nutcracker looking fellas bordering a walkway with shops. Didn’t take long to visit but it was pretty.
This is the castle…or so the map said.

Berat

We took a tour to a town a couple of hours from Tirana. We wanted to visit one of the smaller towns and went with Berat so we could see the Berat castle and the town named ‘city of 1000 windows.’ Our guide was funny but not super good so I didn’t get a really good grasp of what all happened at the castle, but we did visit a museum full of iconography. This was interesting because when Soviets took over in the 1960s, this country became the world’s first atheist state. They killed off a lot of religious people and the people had to hide a lot of their stuff.

Plaque on church.
I think I want to make this into a sign to hang on my front door. “If you are a friend, enter in joy, if you are an enemy and full of evil, go far away, far from this gate.”

After the castle we went into town. The houses and buildings here are white and they have rectangular windows. Since they all look like that, it made it very picturesque. The town straddles a river and we stayed in the old town part of it. The hills were steep and it was hot, so we spent most of our time enjoying a tasty meal of Albanian dishes like stew and potato puffs. We saw pomegranates growing on trees, so that was pretty cool. 

Hillside with white buildings with many windows
I didn’t count, but there were a lot of windows.

Lake Bovilla

B took a hard pass on this tour (the description had hike in the title) so only I went to the lake. Lake Bovilla is Tirana’s water source and the landscape is made primarlily of limestone. Put that together and you get a beautiful and pristine mountain lake. Our ‘hike’ was pretty short, maybe only 20 minutes ascent. We got up to a couple lookouts with grated metal, so anyone who was afraid of heights definitely would not have liked this. (I was more afraid of the spider webs I saw.) The views were impressive and it actually reminded me of the Sawtooths and alpine lakes.

Woman standing on metal gate over blue lake
Just don’t look down!

Albania overview

We didn’t get to the Accursed Mountains (Albanian Alps) but someday I want to go there. Sounds like it belongs in Princess Bride. I would definitely come back to this. It’s kind of funny, the beaches are supposed to be great, but we didn’t even bother with them. Maybe next time!

cars parked in the street
People just park on the road here. It’s wild! There are no signs, it is just tribal knowledge and people just go around. The car on the left is parked.

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