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

[Valbona Zylo]

I, too, found Gross's article filled with offensive comments. What is more is
that his view is so superficial and ignorant that, unfortunately, might not
invite those that might be interested in travelling to Albania for the first
time.

I am going to Tirana in a couple of weeks, after 11 years of not visting my
hometown, and I AM SURE it will be a very authentic and magical experience. 

Faleminderit Jeton per artikullin.

Valbona

On Thu, 29 Jun 2006 11:46:26 +0000, "Jeton Ademaj" wrote:

>           === NYC-L: New York City Discussion Forum ===
> 
> 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.
> 
> Have you been to Greece or Turkey? Share your tips with the Frugal Traveler. 
> | Read comments.
> 
> 
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