We have a free day in Tirana today. We are away from home
for about a month and it may surprise you to learn that we do not travel with a
month’s worth of clothing. Today was laundry day. Fortunately there’s a brand
new 24 hour laundromat just 200m from our hotel, so after breakfast we took our
washing. Unlike in Italy where we faced a similar challenge, this one has
helpful instructions in English. The money change machine was unfortunately not
working, but we found a grumpy exchange office that gave us 5 ALL100 coins in
exchange for a note.
Objective achieved, we then planned an itinerary. First stop
was Bunk’Art2, a former bunker which has been converted to a museum showing the
history of Albania in the 20th century. Itt all started out fine and
dandy, but then took a turn for the worse under King Ahmet Zogu, before being
invaded by the Italians (again!) in World War 2. Where it got really dark was
the communist regime under Hoxha from 1945 to 1991. Albanians don’t shy away
from their history; only by showing what it was like can they then move on from
it.
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| Inside the bunker |
We took a break for lunch at the same place we went
yesterday – Café Botanica. Yes, unadventurous, I know, but it was handy. We
then took ourselves to the
House Of Leaves, the former centre for the
Sigurimi, the Albanian secret police; they spied on everyone, with bugs, cameras, films, and intimidation. It’s quite
remarkable the lengths they took to spy on their own people. According to
Hoxha, private conversations were the property of the state. In what I can only
assume is an overload of irony, photography is forbidden inside the museum. There
were lists and statistics produced by the Sigurimi, but more importantly there
were films of survivors of the prison and torture camps, giving testimony to
the conditions they suffered; as well as from ordinary citizens, telling what
life was like without being in prison (not much better, in case you hadn’t
guessed).
We cheered ourselves up afterwards with a visit to the Orthodox Cathedral of Resurrection, which was much nicer than the American church we
visited yesterday (the one with the dodgy window).
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| A much nicer church |
Our final stop for the afternoon was the Pyramid. This was
originally a memorial for Hoxha and family, but has since been remodelled and
now serves an entirely different purpose. There are 120 steps to get to the top
as you literally stomp down on communism. The view from the top, unfortunately,
is of Tirana, which is not the most edifying of spectacles.
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| View from the base: 114 steps to go! |
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| Zero steps to go! |
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| Namazgah mosque |
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| Tirana skyline |
On our way back to the hotel we stopped at the park we'd passed yesterday, to take pictures of statues of Stalin and Lenin.
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| Joseph Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili |
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| Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov |
Tonight we’re going up the Sky Tower, a revolving restaurant
with views of the city, for cocktails.
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