Gadling

Prior to 1992, it was illegal to own a car in Albania. There were, of course, a few automobiles running around but these were either driven by high communist officials or municipal employees doing their job. No one actually owned the wheels they were driving.

In March 1992, a new democratic government was elected and the universal right to own a car was one of the many benefits which quickly emerged with the fall of communism. Or so you’d think. The problem was that after 52 years of outlawing car ownership, Albania had no traffic laws, no traffic lights, very few paved roads, and no system to issue drivers licenses. The country also had very corrupt border officials. Cars stolen in Western Europe were smuggled en mass across the border to feed the ravenous appetite Albanians suddenly displayed for a set of wheels. The result was chaos, if not predictable. It was as if 20,000 16-year olds were all given a pair of keys without any instruction whatsoever. From March to September of 1992, Tirana alone had 208 traffic fatalities, quickly bumping it up to the highest per capita in all of Europe.

Albania ranks pretty high on the Mercedes per capita list as well. The entire country is crawling with the German car–more so than anywhere I’ve ever seen in Germany. Of course, that may simply be due to the fact that an estimated 80-90% of the cars on the road in Albania were stolen. Most, probably from Germany.

It took many years to develop a traffic infrastructure and for drivers to begin to settle down. They’re not there yet. My travels in Albania were peppered with mad drivers who swerved all over the roads, pounded through potholes and otherwise made me slightly nervous. Every time I passed a junkyard–and there were dozens of them just off the road crammed with every imaginable type of destroyed automobile–I felt the ominous presence of foreshadowing. If this were a movie, the ending would have involved a fiery crash and a shot of a junkyard as the credits roll.

I was one of the lucky ones, however. I had debated renting a car, but wisely chose to travel by public transport instead–leaving my life in the hands of those more experienced in the art of defensive Albanian driving. I’d still look out the window at recently totaled autos that were just pushed off the road and abandoned and get worried, but everything worked out fine in the end; there was no rolling of credits whatsoever.

Despite such worries, getting around Albania is surprisingly simple. Every city has an area reserved for minivans, or furgons. The furgon is the lifeblood of Albania, crisscrossing the country in every which direction. The destination is always written on a large placard sitting on the front window. If you can’t find a card with the place you’re looking for, just ask around. Everyone was always very happy to help me out in such situations.

The problem, however, is that the minivans usually don’t depart until they are full. If you’re the first to sit down, it might take a few hours before the driver has enough passengers to make the trip worthwhile. Occasionally, there are actual departure times as well. If such departures were too many hours away and I wasn’t traveling very far, I could usually find a taxi to take me. I could travel 1-2 hours for 15-20 euros. The minivans, on the other hand, ran about $1 per hour of travel.

The minivans are surprisingly comfortable. They’re certainly not luxurious, but they were efficient, cheap, and a great opportunity to meet the locals. On longer trips, the minivan will usually pull over and stop for a meal at a local café. Passengers tend to sit together at the same table so this is a great time to meet the other people in your van–the ones who shot the look-at-the-foreigner glances in your direction when you first climbed on board.

One of my more memorable experiences was sitting with five people in a café in the middle of nowhere on the way to Northern Albania, chowing down on warm soup, bread and cheese and trying to communicate with my new friends. I had gone from the odd foreigner sitting quietly in the back of the van to the center of an animated discussion which ended in some type of marriage proposal, I think, from a middle-aged woman in her fifties.

Did I already mention that traveling in Albania is fraught with danger?

Yesterday’s Post: Berat, city of a Thousand Eyes
Tomorrow’s Post: Lake Komani, Albania

Fortunately for mankind, someone many years ago had the foresight to designate the ancient town of Berat a “museum city.” It was this designation which helped spare the town from city planners who ran amuck during communism tearing down churches and mosques.

Berat, located just three hours south of Tirana, has been inhabited for more than 4,000 years. Time has been kind to the town, showering it with beautiful ottoman houses, stone buildings, red tiled roofs, churches, mosques, cobblestone roads, and some very iconic, ever-so-expressive, windows. The amazing windows are what gives Berat is nickname: The City of a Thousand Eyes.

High above this collection of houses looms the remains of a rather substantial castle. Not much is left of the original 14th century structure, but it’s still worth an afternoon climbing among the ruins and checking out the views. Bring plenty of water, however. There is very little shade atop the castle and the sun can become unbearably hot.

The best place to stay in Berat is Hotel Mangalemi (tel. 032 32093). This quaint, ottoman house is a portal to another time. Unfortunately, a group of Austrian kayakers–the only tourists I saw the whole time in Berat–had booked out the hotel’s nine rooms.

The very kind proprietor–the hotel is family run–walked me down the hill 100 yards to another hotel that sat right on the Osumi River. Hotel Palma (tel. 032 32143) was 20 euros a night. It was very modern and clean but ultimately disappointing because it so thoroughly lacked the old-world charm so abundant everywhere else in Berat, especially at Hotel Mangalemi.

I made sure to return to Hotel Mangalemi, however, to eat in their fine restaurant where I indulged in cheese, bread, and sausages served in a spicy tomato sauce. The only other place worth grabbing a meal is Ajka, directly across the river from my hotel. Like nearly all the other restaurants in Albania, they specialized in Italian food. Although the pizzas are decent, the view of the town, castle and river from their outdoor deck makes the food taste all that much better.

The rest of my time in Berat was spent wandering the narrow streets, peering into various backyards, and checking out the not-terribly-exciting churches and mosques. The Ethnographic Museum, however, is well worth a visit. This two-story ottoman house replicates what life was like in the 18th and 19th centuries. You can get a good laugh from the non-English speaking tour guide if you point at the strange metal disks in the kitchen and ask, “pizza?”

One afternoon, I spent a few hours in search of Enver Hoxha. The former communist dictator had a very primitive way of forcing those in small towns to honor him; they spelled his name out in enormous letters on hilltops and mountainsides across Albania. This was mostly done with large rocks and boulders carried up the hillside. When communism crumbled, villagers climbed back up those same hills and triumphantly, but painstakingly, removed the thousands of rocks that spelled out Hoxha’s name. The signature in Berat, however, had apparently been burned into the hillside in acid and was therefore unable to be removed. Someone must have been very diligent, however, because after a couple hours of wandering and scanning all the scenic hills surrounding Berat, I was never able to find his name anywhere. I did, however, come across a very large snake. So be careful if you go tromping around.

Getting to Berat from Tirana is rather easy as long as you can find the minibus station. The departure point for minibuses heading south seems to jump around quite a bit. Your best bet is to hop into an official (yellow) taxi and ask to be taken to “Berat minivan” (or, if your Albanian is decent, “Berat furgon“). The taxi will cost just a couple of dollars and save you an enormous headache trying to find it on your own. The three hour journey to Berat, is just a little more expensive at $3.

Yesterday’s Post: Tirana Photo Essay
Tomorrow’s Post: Albanian Transport, Living to tell About It

During communism, the buildings of Tirana, Albania, like all eastern European cities, were smothered in depressing gray monotones. Painting these buildings more cheerful colors after communism fell, however, would have been expensive and cash-strapped governments throughout the eastern bloc simply had more pressing issues on which to spend the little money they had in their coffers. Tirana proved to be an exception, thanks to Mayor Edi Rama. Mayor Rama was a professional artist who lived in Paris during the early 1990s plying his trade before returning to his native country to run for mayor. One of the first things he did upon being elected was to make repainting the city a top priority. And not just repainting it in basic, foundation colors, but in wild, uber-colorful mosaics and patterns as seen here.

Ah, yes. The communist mural. Once such an integral part of every communist city’s landscape, this mural is pretty much all that remains from Albania’s half-century stint in the socialist camp. Hanging above the entrance to the National Historical Museum in the central Skanderberg Square, the mural dominates the center of town. Communism may be dead, but its spirit lives on in thousands of tiny bits of colored rock and stone.

Never have one of these directly outside your hotel window. This shot, taken from said window, is one of a handful of mosques recently rebuilt in Tirana after communism fell and religion was once again legal. The reason for not wanting such a beautiful structure just a few hundred feet from your hotel room? The 4 am call to prayer is broadcast every morning at top volume from speakers placed near the top of the minaret. I try to be tolerant of everyone’s religion but it makes it awfully difficult to do so at that time of the morning.

Mmm… meat! Rather grisly, but this is what the local butcher looks like in Tirana. I wonder if you can hack off just the parts you want?

The area above was once cordoned off from the public and populated with the homes of the communist elite; citizens of Tirana weren’t allowed to step foot within the perimeter. Known today as the Bllok, the area is brimming with bars, nightclubs and cafes. In the center of the shot, next to the grass lawn, you can spy the former home of Enver Hoxha, the iron dictator who ran Albania from 1944-1981. Directly across the street are the western style bars that ironically serve Coca Cola and other snippets of western capitalism he successful fought to keep out of the country for so long.

The Enver Hoxha Museum, built in 1988 by the former ruler’s daughter three years after his death deified the leader until communism fell in 1992. It was then turned into a disco for a brief stint and afterwards gutted and transformed into a semi-shopping center where bored salespeople practice capitalism behind little tables packed with books, toys, cosmetics, and other goods and knickknacks. Skateboarders get gnarly on the pyramid’s outside ramps while Hoxha does some tricks of his own that involve rolling over in his grave.

Mercedes, Mercedes, Mercedes. Albania is awash in Mercedes. How did the poorest country in Europe become (perhaps) the highest per capita Mercedes ownership in the world? Grand theft. An estimated 90% of all Mercedes in Albania were stolen abroad and smuggled across the border.

Yesterday’s Post: Tirana Accommodations
Tomorrow’s Post: Berat, City of a Thousand Eyes