[NYC-L] offensive NYTimes Travel article on Albania.

[Jeton Ademaj]

this is a Frugal Traveller article re: Albania with some noteworthy 
offenses...perhaps when this writer travels next to Greece and Turkey, he 
could solicit offensive comments about one country from residents of the 
other as well?

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/09/travel/28frugaltraveler.html?pagewanted=all

July 9, 2006
Frugal Traveler
In Albania, a Capital Full of Contradictions
By MATT GROSS
"Albania kaput!" announced the lunatic on the streets of Tirana. I looked at 
my new friends, a pair of Serbian filmmakers and a Dutch backpacker I'd met 
in a cafe, and we tried to walk away. But his insanity was unavoidable, and 
soon we were a captive audience to his crackpot ramblings about Bill 
Clinton, Sept. 11 and the future of Albania. I'd been in Tirana less than 
four hours and, already, moments like these had ceased to faze me.

I had arrived in Albania hoping to discover an untrammeled paradise hidden 
in the Balkans. What I found instead was a deeply weird place: a 
majority-Muslim country where the mosques are mute but the miniskirts are 
loud, where horse carts share highways with Hummers, and where people shake 
their heads to mean yes — except that sometimes they shake their heads to 
mean no.

Yes, Albania can make you shake your own head in confusion, but what can you 
expect after almost 50 postwar years of hermetic Communism and, more 
recently, a mania for pyramid schemes that plunged Europe's poorest nation 
into near-anarchy? In this stumbling nation, I was hoping that my Frugal 
Traveler budget might afford me more luxury than it had elsewhere.

People in neighboring Montenegro, Croatia and Italy, however, warned against 
such romantic notions. Albanians, they kept informing me, were criminals, 
corrupt and untrustworthy. But Tirana, it turns out, is quite lovable.

In fact, I'd given myself over to the country's refreshing craziness five 
minutes after crossing the border from Montenegro (entry visa: 10 euros, or 
$12.80, at $1.28 to the euro), when I saw a horse cart trotting down a 
half-paved highway, followed by a high-speed caravan of R.V.'s and 
motorcycles all flying the German flag.

I arrived by bus on a hot afternoon and was instantly struck by the amazing 
graphical flatness of the Italian colonial architecture, the epic ugliness 
of the Soviet-style architecture and the naïve aspirations of the new 
glass-and-steel towers. They all had an energy I couldn't dismiss. Many 
apartment blocks had bright coats of city-subsidized paint, thanks to former 
mayor Edi Rama, an artist and now head of the opposition Socialist Party. 
Clumps of green and yellow, the boxy buildings looked like Tetris blocks 
that had fallen from the sky.

I soon found myself in the Block, as it is known, the center of Tirana life. 
Once reserved for the families of high-level Communist Party officials, 
today the quarter is full of boutiques, Italian restaurants (no one eats 
Albanian food here) and bar-cafes where Tiranans of all stripes nurse 
espressos from dawn till dusk. I quickly took to the Flex Cafe (Rruga 
Deshmoret e 4 Shkuritit), which became my home base for the next three days 
thanks to its modern décor, cheap drinks (topping out at 500 leks, or a 
little under $5, at 104 Albanian leks to the dollar) and free WiFi.

Flex is also a hub for the city's young elite, and within minutes I made 
friends with several filmmakers from Serbia, Montenegro, Kosovo and Albania, 
who were in town for a regional reconciliation workshop. One was documenting 
BBF, a television network where for 200 euros anybody can walk in off the 
street and shoot a music video; another had trained his camera on a nearby 
pedestrian bridge blocked by an armless man and rival gangs of child 
panhandlers.

But apart from the beggars, Tirana felt oddly safe and inviting. I walked 
home alone at night through utter darkness, afraid only that I would trip on 
the tattered sidewalk or get hissed at by a stray cat. And if Tirana's 
energy surprised me, its affordability met my every hope. Dinners at the 
nicest restaurants, like the Sky Club atop one of the "Twin Towers," cost 
less than $15 a person for dishes like hot yogurt soup and veal medallions, 
and my Grilled Fish Index rarely exceeded $30.

The only things that frustrated me were the meterless taxis (never pay more 
than 500 leks) and the accommodations. Hotels were few and expensive. I 
stayed at the centrally located Hotel Lugano (Rruga Mihal Duri, 34; 
355-4-222-023), which a friend of a friend had recommended. My simple 
air-conditioned box was 40 euros, about twice what you'd pay in a place like 
Phnom Penh.

Far more frustrating was Albania's refusal to resolve into a neat picture. 
Skyscrapers were going up while sidewalks disintegrated; the National Art 
Gallery displayed beautiful artwork, but rarely identified the socialist 
realist painters and sculptors. A cocktail at Flex could feel like the 
height of cosmopolitan cool — until you had to contend with adorable but 
depressing street kids who would kiss your arm in hopes of a 50-lek coin. 
But when I saw another deranged man threatening buses with a brick — and the 
even odder response by passersby to brandish their shoes like weapons — I 
knew it was time to leave.

So I checked out of the Lugano, hailed a taxi and uttered two words to the 
driver: "autobus" and "Gjirokastra." The bus is the cheapest (but not 
easiest) way to get to the southern city of Gjirokastra, which raised two of 
Albania's most famous — and infamous — citizens: the novelist Ismail Kadare 
and Enver Hoxha, the dictator who ruled Albania from 1944 until his death in 
1985.

Six and a half hours later, I stepped off the bus, paid my 800 leks and 
hoped that I would find the key to understanding Albania.

Gjirokastra is imposing, with an enormous 19th-century castle, towering 
slate-roofed houses and cobblestone streets so steep that every walk is an 
exercise in masochism. Luckily, the people were as friendly and as open as 
they'd been in Tirana. That first night, I had a warm conversation in 
Italian with Zini, an 80-year-old man playing dominoes with his pals near a 
mosque, and befriended 15-year-old Emi, a waiter at Festivali, one of just a 
handful of restaurants in the old town (try the veal tongue). Best of all, 
dinner here never came out to more than $10.

Even my accommodations were perfect: I checked into the Hotel Kalemi (Lagjia 
Palorto, 355-84-63724, hotelkalemi.tripod.com ), a painstakingly restored 
house with intricate carved-wood ceilings (one is 200 years old) and 
spectacular views of the old city and the entire Drinos valley. It cost 
4,000 leks a night, a bargain for a place this nice. (I found it in the 
smartly written "Albania: The Bradt Travel Guide.")

But I wanted more than good food and clean sheets. I wanted to grasp the two 
themes that seemed to govern 20th-century Albania: the intellectual, 
cosmopolitan strain exemplified by Kadare, and the violent and repressive 
tendencies fostered by Hoxha. Unfortunately, neither Kadare's boyhood home, 
which burned down in 1999, nor Hoxha's house, which also burned but was 
rebuilt and is now an Ethnographic Museum (entry, 200 leks), provided any 
insight into a place designated a "museum-city" by Unesco.

Stepping back further in time, I walked through the citadel that dominates 
the town. Dating back at least to the sixth century, it's a gloomily 
fascinating structure to explore, with soaring archways and stairs that lead 
down into cool, damp grottoes (one of which is a bar). But here, too, a 
visitor is left in the dark. Who built this place? What was the prison for? 
Is the American jet on display really a spy plane that crashed in 1957? The 
answers were found only in my guidebook — not exactly a fulfilling tourist 
moment.

After five days, I left Albania unsure of what I was leaving behind. I'd 
tried to reconcile the country's contradictions — its surreal street scenes 
and thirst for civility; its violent legacy and remarkable hospitality — and 
I'd failed. As I made my way toward Greece, after dropping by the beach town 
of Saranda and the ancient ruins at Butrint, my mind was full of gnawing 
questions. I guess I'll have to return.

Next stop: Kefalonia, Greece, then to Turkey.

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