The traffic ringing Tiranë was just about what you’d expect: back ups, confusing street signs, shouting drivers, horns, diesel fumes. My cabbie decided that he’d had enough – and I can’t blame him: what with a drive back across the border to Macedonia and all, it had turned into a 5-6 hour adventure. He found a relatively safe street and dropped me off, luggage and all, and told me to be very careful and to take an “Albania taxi,” but being who I am I chose to walk into town instead.
Not the best plan I ever had.
In truth, I felt very safe the entire time. My sketch-o-meter is highly highly attuned from my years in the Mission District, and nothing about Tiranë set it off. However, my arms were about ready to fall off after 20 minutes (the joys of lugging camera gear around?), and I stopped at Parku Rinia for a quick snack and some light sunbathing. It felt amazing in the sunshine after some chilly time in Macedonia. After a quick respite, I gritted my teeth and made for a luggage storage facility I had found with some quick googling at the hotel.
Luggage storage nearly always seems to be a trial, even in a good-sized city like Tiranë. I’ve had so many ridiculous run-ins over the years (dragging a rollaboard across the sand in Viareggio is a standout) that I suppose it’s no surprise I moved to backpack-exclusive travel for the vast majority of my adventuring.
Given this illustrious track record, I was surprised and pleased to find an excellent solution in the simply named Luggage Storage Tirana. It was having a soft opening of sorts (lucky me!), and I was able to leave my bags for a nominal fee. I got doubly lucky in that the proprietor, who first apologized for his command of English, saw my surname and asked, “ma non parli italiano per caso? - you don’t happen to speak Italian, do you?”
What I learned later that day is this was not a particularly unique occurrence – Italian is still the most widely spoken foreign language in Albania, a remnant of fascist invasion and communist-era pirated Italian television – but this was still a remarkably welcomed turn of events. And should you ever have need to find luggage storage in Tiranë, I would highly recommend you do the same. Bags safely deposited, I made my way to the center square.
I was greeted by a busy fun fair and Christmas market in Sheshi Skënderbej – the aforementioned center square, named for the Albanian national hero Skanderbeg. It seemed slightly smaller than it actually is with all the goings on of the day, but was massive nonetheless.
The square is gorgeous: pure pedestrian paradise, ringed with key civic and cultural buildings including the brilliant old Et’hem Bey mosque which was unfortunately (for me) undergoing renovation. The majority of the architecture is no doubt a relic of the Hoxha regime… decidedly socialist, but somehow lighter or less imposing than some of the heavy-handed brutalist relics one might encounter in, say, Podgorica or Zagreb (which, incidentally, I adore, but the beauty of Tiranë’s buildings felt more universally accessible).
I was absolutely enthralled with that contrast of harsh architecture and the palpable warmth radiating off the people I encountered. The square rang with laughs and shouts as it sparkled and gleamed in the surprisingly bright sunshine. There was something to be said for the incongruity of a massive and hideous conical Christmas “tree” with – I kid you not – “Feliz Navidad” emanating from one of the many food stalls in a majority-Muslim country. (Proving, as always, that we can all just get along, should we so choose.)
The building I was most looking forward to seeing in my quick tour was the Piramida, a UFO-looking thing from the end of the communist era, originally built in memory of Hoxha, now abandoned and decaying.
If decrepit communist ruins and discussion of photography aren’t your thing, you can probably skip to the end of the post. In fact, I probably could make this its own post, but what’s the fun of that?
There have been plans to rebuild the thing for years, but here it sits, all broken windows and garbage and graffiti.
While the sunshine had at first been a welcome antidote to all the cold, it did lead to some photographic challenges. What’s the fun of an endless blue sky and harsh midday shadows? I’m not sure how I would have liked to have shot the pyramid, but what I got certainly didn’t capture much of what I was hoping for. At the time I remember being frustrated I had nothing wider than the Q’s 28mm, though I’m wondering if that would really have given me what I wanted.
Black and white didn’t seem to absolve the images of their sins either, and it’s all a bit frustrating in reflection. All the same, it was exactly as impressive in person as I’d hoped – something I should probably try to keep in mind.
The most delightful part was just how accessible it was: 10 minutes south of the square on foot, just across the river. Something like this in the states would be fenced in, boarded up, inaccessible (I mean, relatively inaccessible), but here people climbed freely up the sloping concrete sides for the view over the city.
I wanted terribly to join in, but my footwear was suspect and tumbling off a building to crack a tooth or worse hours before an international flight seemed like a bad plan, even for me.
It may finally be time to give up the ghost and admit that I’m an adult.
All too soon, my time was up, and I cut a quick path back to the luggage storage to grab my bags. Across the street was a cab stand, and after some quick haggling in Italian (The best kind of haggling, if I do say so myself. That language was made for furiously fast negotiation.) I was on my way to the airport.
My quick Albanian tour felt almost like a gift with all the hassle it took to get there. I’m glad I toughed out the trip in, and am thoroughly looking forward to return visit some time in the future. Faleminderit, Shqipnia – thanks, Albania!
