How wrong I was. Tirana may be a bit hair-raising at times, but for the most part it's a lovely place to spend a few days. The positive parallels with their ethnic cousins in Kosovo (see my last-but-two blog) are striking. More and more I feel justified in having had a partial man-crush on Lorik Cana back in 2009.
I'm staying in a hostel, but I have a private room, in which the bed has a 'Star Wars'-themed duvet cover. (Obviously I'm far too mature to approve of that. Obviously.) The hostel has a big open rooftop where I can kick back in a hammock and lie there reading, my hat pushed over my eyes against the sun, with no interruptions and nobody around other than the locals hanging up their laundry on distant balconies, and no noise other than that of the traffic five floors below; all in all, a luxury worth more to me than all the poncey cocktails & cappuccinos of Europe combined.
Another thing in Tirana's favour is that it has a nice little airport, easy and cheap to get to, and small enough to be entirely hassle-free. A good way to head out for part 3.
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| Looking west from the hammock at sunset... |
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| ...and east. |
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| Grand Park of Tirana. The lake is artificial, but that's fine. |
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| Namazgjah mosque in the foreground. Dajti Mountain (5,292ft) in the background. |
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| Memorial for the late and unlamented dictator Enver Hoxha. Probably this will get knocked down before too long... |
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| ...in the meantime, the cops turn a blind eye if you scamper up it. Here's a picture from the top. |
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| This was my first breath of Albanian air, coming over the border in a bus from Macedonia. |
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| Edd vs Food #71 Caesar salad (my default half-hearted attempt at being healthy) with chips. Also the nice but unfortunately-named Puka Albanian craft beer. At Spaghetti Western. |
