NOT SUCH A JOKE
Accidentally Enjoying Albania
Experience the passion, the courage and the brutality of a newly democratic nation
Bill Fink
Sunday, October 1, 2006
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...MGFCL0FAS1.DTL
Do we look like prostitutes to you?" the two women asked, giggling. One was a TV producer, the other the anchor of Albania's top news show.
They were interviewing me for that evening's program, wanting to know what I, a visiting journalist, thought of Albania and its people. The London Times had just run a story portraying Albania as a cesspool of gangsters, whores and medieval farmers, a ruined Balkan nation full of trash heaps, stolen cars and burned-out communist factories. What did I think? They sat expectantly, camera running.
I was too embarrassed to admit I had come to Albania as a joke. I arrived as a car-wreck-tourist visiting to experience the lingering disaster of Europe's last Stalinist regime. Fittingly, when my trip began a week before, the beat-up Subaru that picked me up had a bullet hole in its hood.
When I entered the country at its northern border with Montenegro, we passed a dozen abandoned gas stations, remnants of black market trade during the Yugoslav wars. Nearby we saw fortified luxury homes owned by people my guide euphemistically called "day traders." I rubbed my hands together -- smugglers and guns, let the troubles begin!
The approach to the northern city of Shkodra was as I expected: a winding rutted road dotted with trash. Elaborate roadside memorials to drivers killed in car accidents appeared with the frequency of caution signs. I saw weary women wearing black smocks and white kerchiefs leading mules burdened with firewood to distant farms. The only industry I saw was junk yards selling parts from the rusted hulks of cars. As we reached the outskirts of Shkodra, we passed block after block of depressing communist-era public housing the color of rotting nectarines. Perfect.
But as we entered central Shkodra something seemed amiss. Traffic was orderly. My hotel not only had power, but was air-conditioned and filled with friendly, attentive staff. Across the street, a nun strolled past the front of a mosque, the picture of religious harmony. Around the corner, well-dressed men sipped Turkish coffee at cafes in Italian colonial buildings. Damn. Was this going to be pleasant? A four-course evening meal of sizzling meat, fresh vegetables and an array of sauces in a refurbished Ottoman-style villa only confirmed it. I was enjoying Albania.
The next day, I lunched on the balcony of a restaurant with a view of fishermen rowing through the blue waters of Lake Shkodra. Hawks circled around the razor-sharp ridges of surrounding 7,000-foot mountains. All the fresh air and sunshine was beginning to make me surly. Ignoring the historical relics on a castle tour above town, I asked the guide about the disheveled neighborhood I saw at the far end of a bridge outside of town.
"Oh, um, yes, that is where the Roma live. Once we tried to have them in the city, but it didn't work out," she answered.
Gypsies! Strife! Poverty! I had to visit. Our car bumped its way over a one-lane wooden bridge to stop in the middle of a mess of crumbling concrete homes. I hopped out to take some photos, expecting to be mobbed by pickpockets, beggars, one-eyed men with hooks for hands, the works. Instead, the only thing the street kids wanted from me was that I kick their soccer ball back when it bounced in my direction.
When I aimed my camera toward a fisherman on the river I heard shouting behind me. Had I insulted Roma pride by photographing their people? Would I get embroiled in a genuine Albanian blood feud, continuing until the grandchildren of the fisherman had wiped out the last of my future offspring?
No, it was only a guy on shore yelling for his buddy on the boat to turn and smile for my photo. Then, as I walked back to the car, a large swarthy man jumped out the door of a building, pointing at my camera. I froze in my tracks. A robbery? No, just another smile as he proudly posed for a photo in front of his freshly painted cafe.
Shkodra was pleasant, but I expected more of a disaster in the capital of Tirana, a two-hour drive south. I recalled CNN news flashes from 1997, when anarchy reigned and gangs of looters rampaged through Tirana with machine guns. I had read of the mass migration from the countryside following Albania's democratic transition of 1990, when squatters overwhelmed parks with illegal shanty towns, trash, streetside stalls and every shady business scam imaginable in a capitalistic free-for-all. Out of desperation, it seemed, Tirana in 2000 elected an exiled artist as mayor, Edi Rama, to try to fix things. His first action was to have the buildings repainted pretty colors.
So I arrived in Tirana expecting to see a city with a new surface but rotting at the core, a painted pig of a capital wallowing in its own filth. But as disasters go, it was another disappointment. Central Tirana parks are now filled with kids playing around new jungle gyms. Parents sit on public benches amid neatly manicured, trash-free lawns. Multicolored buildings create a skyline resembling a postmodern Lego set. Couples stroll through the formerly forbidden and now fashionable "bloc" district of bars, cafes and restaurants. At night, young groups order cocktails and listen to chill music in Euro-hip bars, while men sip their thimbles of coffee and smoke away the time in sidewalk cafes. People walk home without fear of mugging.
I asked mayor Rama how he had managed this dramatic change in Tirana. He began to speak in the language of his socialist predecessors, "The first step was to liberate the public space," he told me. "You inject ideas and begin with modest programs."
Then catching himself, he added "But the simple path is bull -- . Crime and corruption can't be fought with populist speeches. You need to build trust and prove yourself one small step at a time. And sometimes we take a step backward."
Naturally, I made it a priority to visit Albania's current big steps backward, the seaside "resort" towns of Durres and Saranda. Albania has more than 250 miles of Mediterranean coastline, bordered by Greece and the Ionian sea to the south, the Adriatic to the north. Even locals told me the beauty of beaches had already been destroyed by Durres and Saranda's rampant overdevelopment, pollution and neglect. Durres, an hour outside of Tirana, has the additional fault of being built on top of prime archeological sites, which meant the development destroyed much of Albania's distant past as well.
These towns were a bit of the joke I expected -- Atlantic City transported to Eastern Europe. They were mobbed by local tourists covering every spot on the sand, their evenings spent in low rent casinos, discos and third-rate pizzerias. Eight-story apartment buildings and hotels crowded the hills like the people on the beaches. Container ships anchored in the harbor a hundred yards from shore.
The only people really enjoying the Durres/ Saranda scene were the many visitors from neighboring Kosovo, ethnic Albanians glad for a chance to escape the trouble of home for a taste of the sea. But truth be told, an evening promenade along the seaside amidst cheerful Kosovars isn't really all that bad. For one thing, they're about the only Europeans who still like Americans, as they thankfully recall the NATO bombing of the anti-Albanian Serbs in Kosovo in 1999.
The promise of visiting remnants of Albania's military past brought me outside Saranda. To the north, we drove into what had been a restricted zone of army bases constructed during the 35-year reign of Albanian dictator Enver Hoxha. Hoxha was such a hard-liner that he kicked out his Soviet advisers for being soft communists -- in 1962. He invited the Chinese to lead a cultural revolution in Albania in 1967, destroying the bulk of churches and mosques in the country. He then ejected the Chinese and later the Yugoslavs -- to create his own hermit kingdom.
From a mountain above the bay of Palermo, I could see the massive concrete entrance to what was Hoxha's cherished secret submarine base. Shielded by mountaintop bunkers and army barracks, the base looked like the lair of Dr. No awaiting battle against James Bond and his imperialist capitalist cohorts.
Ironically, Hoxha's hostility toward foreigners may ultimately have been just the thing to attract them. Unlike Durres and Saranda, which have been overbuilt for years, Porto Palermo and its surrounding miles of formerly forbidden white sand beaches remain largely untouched by development. Club Med is thinking of opening a resort along this coastline, while the Rogner Hotel chain may actually develop the sub base area for its own vacation destination. I just hope they keep a sub for rides. For the time being, intrepid travelers can seek out nearly deserted beaches every bit as scenic as those on the Greek islands to the south. Farther along the shoreline, the lonely Albanian archeological sites of Butrint and Apolonia are among the finest of the Mediterranean.
Hoxha's other lingering paranoid monuments sprout from the countryside like a million immovable mushrooms. Concrete bunkers still stand watch over every angle of the hills, fields, beaches and roadsides of Albania. Hoxha had hundreds of thousands of bunkers built in the 1960s and '70s to (as he said) protect his people against the imperialists, fascists and counter-revolutionaries who surrounded his nation, ready to attack. With one for every five people in the country, the bunkers served little military value. They were more of a fear-mongering tool to keep the populace distracted from their lack of rights and poor quality of life.
But the air-raid sirens are gone, the defensive drills finished. The Albanians have begun to turn these depressing concrete turds into cheery symbols for the future. Beachside bunkers now sport murals of colorful seascapes with frolicking fish. One bunker looks as if it could have been the work of some Berkeley students on spring break: Smiling cartoon soldiers hold daisies; a bug dances in a top hat next to a giant mushroom. And following the spring break theme, a large beachside bunker in Durres has been converted into a bar, complete with cold Tirana beer, ice cream and mix tapes. Up in the hills, a local tour operator now runs eco-tours based on hiking an old military trail connecting mountain top bunkers.
Prior to my visit, Albanian eco-tours like river rafting expeditions would have made as much sense to me as snowmobiling trips through North Korea. But true to form in Albania, the absurd has been transformed into the enjoyable. We drove a couple of hours from the coast to the central mountains, hiked into a canyon and rafted for hours downriver. We had escaped from every remnant of the joke version of Albania: no trash, no crime, no ruined buildings, rutted roads or rotting infrastructure. We were just four people on a small raft amid white water, blue skies and red rock. At the end of our trek, blonde-haired local kids dove off cliffside rocks, shouting in a mixture of Albanian, Italian and English, "Look at me!" Like the news reporters, the kids were eager for the outward world to see them at their best.
Confounded by Albania's charms, I asked the head of the country's National Tourism Organization how he was getting the word out. I enjoyed hardly ever bumping into tourists, and hoped the NTO was doing a lousy job of attracting more. He did say even without publicity, many Italians and Germans were rapidly discovering the country, and recently announced flights direct from London would encourage the British to come. To help, I offered him some new slogans for the country, free of charge: "No, Seriously, Albania," and "Albania, More Normal Than You'd Think." He politely declined my suggestions in favor of a recently hired branding consultant.
I asked the mayor of Tirana how he'd like Americans to think of his country. "Tell Americans to come see the land of their forefathers," Rama said. Not because he thinks America is filled with Albanians, but rather that Albania is full of America. He told me Albania has "all the passion, the courage ... and the brutality" of a newly democratic country. The people are eager for change, and are willing to do anything to make it happen.
I had come to see the brutality of change in Albania, and found it in places, the illegal construction sites, the overflowing dumpsters of many a public street. But as the cameras rolled, I was able to honestly tell my interviewers that despite my best efforts I had managed to enjoy Albania.
For even in the midst of the trashy resort town of Saranda, I was able to see something of the Albanians' passion and courage. One night, an old woman, a relic of communist times, dragged a small folding table down a hillside to the busy seaside promenade, trailing behind her a long cord. She returned several times with various implements. When I later passed, she had assembled a vintage 1970's popcorn popper, plugged it into her 50-foot-long extension chord, and was selling bags of popcorn to smiling kids who were nearly as delighted as she.
Bill Fink last wrote for the Magazine about the Smoky Mountain trash can debacle in the Philippines.
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