Saturday, December 12, 2009

Today’s stats:
Distance traveled today: 33.86  km
Total trip distance: 2716 km
Max speed: 30.1 km/ hour
Average speed: 17.26 km / hour
Total time biking: 1:58
Total days biking: 47
Spending: 5760 leke ($58)

More scenes along the country’s biggest highway thismorning. Wooden shacks for homes, their yards delineated by bamboo stocks;butchers displaying their fresh meat from hooks on the side of the road;furniture sold out of unfinished buildings with no walls or windows; morejunkyards, more turkeys; piles of gravel and cement; a well-dressed man takinghis cow out for a stroll; a scarf-covered woman pushing wheelbarrows of hay.

Furgons, communaltransport vans, drove past, their passengers’ stares lingering out the backwindow.

We stopped for some food at a supermarket, where the shelvesin the single bland room were half empty. The old man gave us pieces ofcardboard to sit on out of the rain while we ate our bagged croissants.

After about 20 or 25km, the sleepy countryside came to lifein a matter of meters, with sounds, people, movement. Music blared from smallpizza and byrek shops, packed side byside. Vendors sold clothes out of narrow stalls. Young boys hung outside ofopen doors of moving vans calling for customers: “Tirana, Tirana, Tirana!”

For the first time, as we approached the capital, I noticedtraffic lights, real bus stops, and yellow taxis. Tall apartment buildings,fancy shopping strips and an Ikea-look-alike.

Tirana is a real city, with trendy people, big boulevards,an opera house, 24-hour grocery stores, even an annual international filmfestival. Oh, and Albania now has Big Brother!

We checked into TiranaBackpacker Hostel, recommended to us by an American named Steve who livesin Tirana and contacted us through our blog. Housed in a 1930s villa, it wasthe first hostel to open in Albania fiveyears ago to meet a small, but growing demand of backpackers – mostlypassing through Albania to get to Greece or as part of a Balkans tour.

One of the managers, Nestur – nicknamed Robo, or “dude” –told us all about it as he made us tea on an age-old wood-burning stove in theshed that serves as a kitchen. The hostel mutt, Caramel, followed us aroundeverywhere we went.

“Most clients”, Robo said, as he put more branches of woodinto the stove, “get stuck in Albania… They come here just to sleep one nightand have some beers before heading to Greece to start another party…We have alot of good traditions, but a lot of people who come are just looking forparties.”

He took us to our room, which was slightly cold withslightly wobbly beds. But they’ve got the hostel concept bang on.

We tasted our first byrek,layered filo pastry stuff with either cheese, spinach or meat, for lunch.It was so delicious, we’ve been eating them every chance we get ever since.(Byrek is the easiest-to-find fast food around here).

We headed down Tirana’s main boulevard that pours ontoSkenderbeg square. There once stood a statue of dictator Hoxha, but it waspulled down by an angry mob after the fall of his regime (Saddam Husseinstyle), in one of many moves to wipe away the past and start over. In thestreets of Tirana, for example, are a number of brightly-coloured buildings –orange, purple, pink, turquoise – a move by the current mayor to change thefeel of the place, to paint over the grey concrete and raw brick of thecommunist past. 

We met up with Steve, the American, who was a great wealthof information about Albania (He’s been here on and off for 10 years, and ismarried to an Albanian).

The waiter who served our drinks at the Sarajet restaurant,a former Ottoman house, had just returned from more than 10 years in England,where his refugee claim was finally rejected. He was having a hard timeadjusting to the “mentality” of traditional Albanians and was prettypessimistic about his country’s future.

Then Steve took us into Blloku, the former communistleadership enclave, closed off to the common people. It’s now a chicneighborhood with lights, gambling centres and upscale boutiques. Across the street and a few housesdown from Hoxha’s former villa, we entered a small 2^nd-storyapartment, home to Steve’s wife’sgrandmother. What a woman. At 18 years old, she fought with Hoxha’s partisansagainst the Germans. She’s still got a gunshot wound in the head to prove it.Her 16-year-old sister was tortured and killed by the Germans. Her fatherfought for independence from the Turks.

“I’ve fought in a war of National Liberation,” she says,evoking a concept of utmost importance in her family. “For the war I’ve done,I’m proud.”

Now 83, she looks back nostalgically at the communist yearsthat followed liberation. “There were no beggars then. The army was strong. Itwas a closed country. Nobody left or came, but we stayed like in our own house…Things are much worse now.”

Like many of the older generation here, Ender Bita is not afan of the roughness of the transition into democracy, when people abused theirnew-found freedom.

“When democracy came,” she says, “everything was destroyed.In this country, democracy was badly understood and implemented: theft,looting, unemployment, emigration, laziness.”

It wasn’t what I expected to hear, but made perfect sense.It wasn’t communism people had a problem with – in fact it introduced astructure and efficiency to society that many look back on with longing. But inour perception of Albania, communism has always been inextricably tied with thetotalitarianism through which it was administered. People like Ender similarly conflatedemocracy and capitalism. Here she is with me and Steve, below a painting (centre) of her at 18 years old in her Partisan uniform:

After an enlightening discussion, we headed to a cheap localplace for dinner, Korça, where we had pig’s neck, chofta (like Egyptian kufta),sausage, fries, salad and beer, for $5 each.

Tomorrow we head south towards Berat, a “living museum” ofOttoman houses.