We're diving into the Totalitarian Relics of Tirana, Albania

mor (58)in #travel • 8 years ago (edited)

Day 12: Government Bunker, Socialist Art, and The Pyramid

While traveling one has to pose quite often the question - what now? In everyday life one has his schedule appointments - things to attend to, on the contrary in the travelers life (if one doesn’t everything in advance which we don’t) one has to quite often think about the new stept he will take. So we were thinking about what is there to do in Tirana and got again quite lucky, because we were recommended by the hostel’s local guy (Marko) few unusual places in Tirana - Bunkart (bunker) for the Hoxha’s communist government (during the cold war), National Martyrs Hero cemetery with a communist monument, artificial lake and forest (The artificial lake he recommended to us after we mentioned that we study/work in this field) and also some other places outside Tirana.

Before we started we had to buy some shoes for @hr1 who by then had only the very heavy hiking boots. It took us some time to find him the shoes, because his size (45) was quite unusual for the Albanians but finally we managed to buy them.

Next, we headed to the Bunkart - the anti atomic bomb shelter which is now transformed to a museum of Albanian pre- and post war history which fits very well to the dim space of the bunker.

Together with the exposition of socialist art we saw in the National gallery it was probably the most interesting thing we saw in Tirana.

People were checked whether they 'mourn enough' after the death of a totalitarian leader Enver Hoxha

I liked the dry statement that art had a single purpose during that time - the propaganda. Unfortunately they didn't allow to take pictures inside, and they didn't even sell any postcards with it, but I managed to find some of them online.

I actually like it in a way.. as it celebrates peoples work and everything is just perfect (but of course it wasn't the reality)

We then continued our trip to Albania’s history towards the monument of national heroes which was located in a park with a nice view over the city.

Monument of National Heroes

We walked through the artificial park to the Tirana’s biggest attraction: The Pyramid. Without knowing how that happened I suddenly saw @hr1 climbing up the building and surprised by myself I followed him. It was a great idea, because we had a perfect view, we were there alone, little bit isolated from the omnipresent noise of the city, and because I got a panic strike from the height ;)

We then had a great dinner, grilled pork ribs with a yoghurt sauce and a ton of salad with fresh cheese. We had to pack the leftovers which I couldn’t finish even the day after, so we gave them to some poor people.
We bought a bottle of local wine and opened it in the hostel while planning the next day. We offered a glass to some Japanese, which made them very happy and to Marco, the friendly Serbian, whom it made asleep :).

Day 13: Fake Castle + a New Friend

Today we decided that @hr1 needed a haircut. Well, we also decided that we would head north and try to catch a plane back home from Dubrovnik in Croatia on Sunday. Haircut worked out fine and heading north pretty much too. We even found a bus to Kruja, a small somewhat medieval town which Marco recommended to us. There wasn’t actually much to be seen, the most of the castle was just restaurants and souvenir shops and then there was very obviously fully newly built castle.

We had a good lunch, but the waiter tried to cheat us. He overcharged us by almost 1/2 (1700 Leks instead of 1200). This made us angry, so we managed to bargain (almost) the correct price.

We then took a bus down from the village to the highway. We wanted to go to Shkodra, the biggest city in the northern Albania, but the last bus already had left. We took a minibus to another small town, then we hitchhiked and finally got to Shkodra again with a minibus.

Shkodra is actually quite a small tourist city. We found a hostel and decided we would have a little luxury - we rented a room for two. The whole hostel was really pleasant. They baked their own bread from their own wheat (they had some fields outside of the city) and they separated the trash, which is something unseen in Albania.

We went to a docu-fest. There was this open air cinema on a street where they were showing various short movie documentaries. We also talked to an Albanian guy - Irgen, who helped us understand the speeches before each movie. After the festival we had a wine with him and talked more about Albania, about their universities and the corruption there, about his work in Germany, so much interesting information! We agreed we would meet him the day after at his work in a cafe.