i am sparticus: Albania (Part 1)

Albania (Part 1)

It was dark when we arrived at the Mother Teresa international airport, twenty minutes out of Tirana, the glorious capital of Albania. With no street lights the only thing we could see from the back of the car was the lights of other traffic and the florescent tubes that illuminated the unfinished shopping centres that stood sentry on the road side. Occasionally we'd pass an unfinished shell of a house, all concrete and breeze blocks, where men would sit in the black of the doorways watching television and drinking beer. Once we passed by a fire on the embankment at the side of the road.

Soon we'd entered Tirana itself, a maze of towers, shopping centres and traffic. At least half-a-million people live in a city designed for a fifth of that. Through snarled up side streets, dirt encrusted roads and blaring horns we arrived at our hotel. Someone reversed into us as we were pulling up.

I read an article in the Observer one Sunday a month or two ago by a man who was riding from Turkey to the United Kingdom. He could have saved himself a few hundred words of observations about Albania if he'd just cut to the chase and said what he'd meant. It's a dump. When I went to sleep that first night, I have to confess I didn't disagree with the man.