SUNDAY, MAY 26
OUR WALKING TOUR
I can’t remember the name of our tour guide. Names, like the Albanian words, are difficult. The language combines Italian, Greek, and Serbian languages.
Most Albanians are short and dark-haired, our guide was no different. He was a lively, fast-talking and funny 42-year old, who had studied and lived in Detroit at one point in his life. Perhaps his humor comes from his time in Detroit, or maybe it’s an Albanian characteristic, developed over centuries as a survival mechanism. Survival could understandably be in their very bones. I have never heard a sadder history than theirs, darker even than Romania.
ALBANIAN HISTORY
Albanians are descendants of the Illyrians, an ancient Indo-European tribe who lived in the Western Balkans. The country has been occupied for most of it’s long history, with the Ottomans the longest ruling empire, controlling Albania for 500 years. Before WWII, Fascist Italy invaded the country, but it soon fell into the hands of the Nazis. The Communists arrived in Albania, promising to oust the Nazis, and provide Albanians with the freedom they so desired. The Nazis were defeated but the promise of freedom was broken. The Communists established the most most repressive regime in their sphere of influence, isolated Albanians and effectively taking them into the dark ages from after the war for nearly 50 years.
Albanian democracy is young, having arrived in March 1992 when Albania became a parliamentary republic (it’s constitution wasn’t formalized until 1998). With only short stints of independence in the 19th and 20th centuries, they have little experience to draw from. But they idolize those moments of independence in their past and those who fought for their freedom. Skanderbed is an example. A prominent, huge, metal statue of George Castriot, known as Skanderbeg, sitting high on a horse and holding the Albanian flag (red with an eagle) dominates Tirane’s multi-tiled main plaza. Skanderbed led the rebellion against the Ottoman Empire.
Possibly the most repressive Communist dictator in all of the Communist countries was the dictator of Albania, Enver Hoxha. Hoxha, who ruled Albania from 1944 until his death in 1985, admired and emulated the Stalin’s inhuman tactics of repression. Hoxha beat down the Albania people through fear and intimidation, using imprisonment, propaganda, complex and pervasive spy networks, torture, labor camps and isolationism. All trade and communication with other countries, and any travel outside the country, were denied the Albanian people.
Hard as it is to believe, Albanians, other than government officials, didn’t have cars until 1991. People traveled on donkeys, horses and bicycles. They were also deliberately kept unaware of the outside world. Trust, even amongst friends, was eroded through forced spying and reporting on neighbors and colleagues. People were indiscriminately imprisoned and disappeared if they believed to be against the regime.
The extent and horror of Hoxha regime’s surveillance techniques are documented in the House of Leaves: Museum of Secret Surveillance, a small building that initially served as a maternity ward before being taken over by Hoxha’s Secret Service. This haunting museum is the actually site of torture and surveillance. It has the instruments used in surveillance and torture along with records, descriptions of techniques and heart breaking video testimonies of survivors.
WORKING OUT DEMOCRACY
Our guide grew up under this repressive Communism. It is still too soon for Albanians to have recovered, he said. They are working hard to make democracy succeed and to boost their hobbled economy, which unfortunately trades mostly with Greece and Italy, both struggling with their own economies. The Albanian dream is to be part of the EU by 2025 (if the EU still exists).
Unemployment is reported to be at 13 %, which doesn’t sound too bad for a developing country. But included in those counted as employed are the people living in the country who have a plot of land where they grow vegetables and fruits. Farming their small piece of land is considered employment in the census figures, even though it affords no income and the land may produce little.
VULNERABILITY AND TOTAL ISOLATION: PONZIED
In the late 1990s, ponzi schemes took hold of the Albanian imagination and their money. Beginning in the early 1990s with an open economy and more jobs, people began to make a tiny bit of money and were able to save. The schemers promised to turn 100 Euros into 1,000 in a short time. Most Albanians who had a savings gave their money to the ponzi hustlers to invest, to make them richer. Needless to say, the money disappeared, wiping out the savings of most of the country of 3 million people.
“We are naive,” said our guide. We had never had savings before. It was all new to us.” It used to be, still very recently, that an Albanian family would get only two small portions of meat a month. They lived primarily on bread. Milk was a luxury. Before 1991, people had never eaten bananas.
Unlike all the other East European and Soviet satellite countries, Albania existed in complete economic and social isolation. For awhile they traded with the USSR (under Stalin, but Hoxha thought Khrushchev was too lenient and broke off relations) and with China, but that ended, too. There were no trade partners after that.
NUMBERS AND DIVERSITY
There are estimated to be 6 million Albanians; three million in Albanian (one million of those in the capital city, Tirane), two million in Kosovo, and one million in the diaspora. The population is 60% Muslim, and 20% Christian. In addition to Sunnis, the Bektashi Muslims ( a Shia-Sufi sect), who were expelled from Turkey because of their liberal beliefs, settled in Albania. But our guide said, people don’t practice religion. Perhaps this is a consequence of years of Communism and the destruction of 80% of religious buildings. Or perhaps our guide was exaggerating.
Tirane’s main square is bizarre, a huge field of mulit-colored marble squares, that form a hump in the middle. The hump makes it look like a mistake, but in fact, it was designed to symbolize that the Albanian people are above the buildings/institutions surrounding the square. All the square’s buildings were built under Communism, though they’ve been altered. Signs have been painted over or taken down, like on the Opera House where the lettering “Opera” is off center to cover traces of other words below. Statues of communists and murals of social realism (except the one on the History museum) have been destroyed.
Almost everything in Tirane is new, or relatively new (Berat and other Albanian cities are different). I think if the Albanians had their way, they would wipe out all the Communist buildings. After all the Communist were responsible for wiping away their cultural history. To us, this Constructivist and Brutalist architecture was fascinating in its severity and determined weightiness; it alone tells a story.
NATIONAL GALLERY OF ARTS
Statues of Stalin and Lenin, which disappeared in the early 1990s, only recently have reappeared (though very few). Three are displayed behind the National Gallery of Arts near the garbage.
Believe it or not, The Gallery of Arts building is one of the nicest we have seen for modern art in Europe. It reminds me of the old Museum of Modern Art in NYC. Built in 1976, by a relative of the dictator, the modernist style — multi-leveled but open, light flooding in through tall windows, individual medium-sized rooms for galleries, long, elegant marble staircases in a simple, angular atrium — is perfect for displaying paintings and sculpture. The Gallery’s main collection is worth a visit — lots of constructivism, propaganda paintings. Unfortunately the paintings are not labeled.
HAPPY FOR HELP
Back to the Plaza…the multi-colored marble squares that blanket the large, open plaza are meant to be representative of the diversity of Albanian people. In fact, it seems quite remarkable how tolerant Albanians are of each others beliefs. The muezzin calls come between church bells. A new Mosque, the Great Mosque of Tirane, is being built (by the Turks) and will be the largest mosque in the Balkans.
A new Resurrection Orthodox Cathedral, (built by money donated to the Albanians) is the third largest Orthodox Church in the Balkans. We were taken by the striking absolute white of the new marble in The Resurrection Cathedral and by the simplicity of its design. Also the blues used inside, as in Dubrovnik’s Orthodox Church, are brilliant, deep and rich all at once. The details are markedly Eastern in influence.
International, but primarily European, donations are supporting Tirane, and the guide made it clear, they will take help from anyone, but will be indebted to no one. It’s a city on the move, slowly perhaps, but not timidly. Buildings are rising — left to stand and wait for more money when money runs out. There are art initiatives, a park that was designed and funded by the EU and is made of musical symbols, their “Cloud Festival” a performance art festival was going on.
TAKING A HAND
Throughout the city of Tirane, buildings are painted in bright colors, many with stripes, patterns and murals. Joyousness appears to be pushing forth, color blooming from darkness.
The guide suggested we visit one of the Bunk Art spaces. A bus goes to Bunk Art 1. Bunk Art 2 is near the city center. Both are bunkers built by and for the Communists. There are over 100 in the city, places the Communists could hide, if they so needed. They stand as symbols of the paranoia that drove the Communist regime to such atrocious ends.
When taking a bus in Tirane, our guide said, you pay the bus driver directly. At this point he went off on a tangent, talking about taking transportation in Germany on recent visit. He was in the train station trying to figure out which train to catch and asked someone for help. The man, a German, waved his hand at the electronic board and with some arrogance said, “it’s all right there.”
“I was confused,” said our guide. “Sometimes it’s good, like here in Tirane, to look people in the eye. To touch the bus driver’s hand. “
Much to my surprise, this is a place I think would be interesting to live, especially as an artist. It is in a timid transition, like a child testing her legs, eyes bright and hopeful, yet tinted with a bit of fear. Maybe she will make it up the stairs, maybe she will fall again before she learns to climb. In her face, there is promise.
