Bunkers are bonkers and other tidbits of Albanian history

Please note, we are now doing part 3 out of 5 on our trip to Albania in February. Comme d’hab, better late than never innit. <3

Albania is a land of fascinating history. What did I know in advance? Once upon a time there was a dodgy Communist dictator. That’s about it.

So, after day 1 of going up a cable car, I dedicated day 2 to educating myself.

After the BEAUTIFUL pistachio roll in the BEAUTIFUL sunshine, I forced myself into a dark dingy building to go round the National History Museum.

I’m not quite sure about my relationship with museums. I love them, but they exhaust me, so much so that I’m never the keenest visitor.

However, the National History Museum was a refreshing experience.

It was less comprehensive and thus less exhausting than I’d envisaged.

As described to my travel journal notebook, with whom I am always a tad more direct than with my blog here: “Museum was a surprisingly pleasant experience, contributed partly to the fact most things were in Albanian, so I didn’t feel the crushing pressure & consequent exhaustion of Reading & Trying To Take In Everything.”

Brief burst of history: Albania was inhabited by Illyrians in something like 2000 BC, and since then Albania has been part of the Roman Empire, the Byzantine Empire, and the Ottoman Empire, with brief stints of independency once in a while. One of these stints of independency was upheld by national hero Skanderbeg, who has not just a statue in prime position in the main square, but is also in the process of having a literal skyscraper built in the shape of his face.

Check out this article for example if you don’t believe me, and let me just share a quote from said article:

“Wealthy future residents will be able to look out from the warrior’s eyes, hang out on his ears or dine alfresco on the end of his nose – from which greenery will dangle in an unfortunate snot-like drip.”

Here’s a pic of the statue.

Anyhoos, back to history. Albania became independent in 1912 and seemed to have a decent time especially under King Zog who, although being sort-of-a-dictator also brought about positive change in the country (plus I think we shouldn’t be too quick to critique someone with such a beautiful name).

During the 2^nd World War, however, Albania was occupied by Italy and their hate for fascism was rather strong, so much so that communist Enver Hoxha managed to gradually take hold of the country and create his own paranoid communist regime. “The North Korea of Europe” was an analogy I heard more than once. Hoxha always chose one leader from another Communist country as his bestie, and pursued a happy relationship with him and his country till they were deemed not Communist enough, which is when Hoxha levelled up in his quest for a new Communist BFF. (Think from Yugoslavia to the Soviet Union, and when Stalin popped his clogs it was time to move onto China.)

He died in 1985, his follower was less Stalinist in his style, accepted to have a general election, and in 1992 the Democratic Party were victorious. After this the 90s were a fiasco of people buying into pyramid schemes and the country basically going bankrupt, but now the country has emerged from its tumultuous previous century. Somewhat.

We’ll continue our history trip in a moment, but let’s continue my trip:

After the museum I continued my Historical Day by joining the 2pm Free Walking Tour. You know the type, not really free unless you really hated it since you are socially guilt-tripped into making a decent donation. Fair enough, though, if the guide is good. I’d not felt inspired, but since so many people recommended it, I turned up a few minutes late and was only vaguely disappointed they hadn’t left without me. I’d get a nice overview of the history, maybe make some friends, which is always an exciting challenge on one’s solo trips.

Also, you get some easily accessible photographers when you’re part of a Tour. 🙂

And our guide was PHENOMENAL. Never have I had such fun on a tour. American Bailey had lived in Albania for eight years and she was informative, sarcastic, friendly and interesting. Utterly HILARIOUS. I had to stop myself from giggling in church after I kept thinking back to the moment when she described St Paul on top of his church looking like “he was taking a selfie and then dropped his phone.” :’’’’’’) See for yourself.

I wish I’d written down more of her quotes, but she for example described to us all the different buildings around the Grand Square, including introducing me to the story of the Skanderbeg building, and telling me how this building I’d admired was indeed in the shape of Albania, see below.

She eyed us all up and down and told us who of us would’ve been let into Albania during the Communist Regime (my outfit was okay, except my trousers looked a bit too much like jeans).

She told us about how Tirana changed the name of one of their streets to “Free Ukraine Boulevard”, coincidentally the street the Russian embassy was situated on. Consequently Albanians can’t visit Russia, she claimed, though I haven’t found any backing evidence to this statement.

She told us about her Albanian friend who shared stories about her grandfather when the Communist Regime ended in the early 1990s. When the borders opened suddenly all these foreign products were available to Albanians that they’d never seen before in their lives – think everything from bananas to Coca-Cola. An inundation of new produce, and this Albanian grandfather was quoted of requesting his grandchildren to bring him the “yellow bananas and the red bananas”, aka bananas and Coca-Cola.

And she told us how Albania is not famed for getting work done on time, how the famous pyramid (also mentioned in my first Albania entry), for example, was due to be “ready in January” – BUT, she was quick to remind us, the YEAR remained unclear. So it became an ongoing joke to repeat it in unison once in a while, of how everything half-built will be “ready in January” (and this ongoing inside joke was probably not unique to our own little gang).

She also showed us a random bit of Berlin Wall in a little Tirana park.

Near this slab of wall there was a bunker, and as we learnt earlier this is not exactly a unique little sight that tourists come near and far to see. Built by our old non-mate Hoxha who was a bit bonkers for bunkers as he feared nuclear attacks and two-front wars from neighbouring countries and NATO. So instead of spending money and resources on pointless things like homes for his people, he decided to build a nice 750,000 bunkers (tho ofc one may argue with bunkers you get both… I wonder if he did share this point of view.). They were never used for their intended purpose, but most of them nowadays sit as derelict little morbid souvenirs as they’d be pretty expensive to get rid of.

The rest of the tour group included M from the Basque country in Spain, embarking on a gap year of travel after finishing uni; H, a stylish lady from Hawaii who accompanies her husband on business trips; and N from the UK who seemed to have travelled the world for the past 20-odd years, primarily as a teaching consultant or similar. Fun people, and I suggested we go eat afterwards and M, N and I ended up at the Oda restaurant, mentioned in the first entry.

Another historical site to be seen in Tirana are the famous “BunkArts”, bunker museums. There’s BunkArt 1 near the cable car (was closed the day I was nearby so I never went, M said it was phenomenal), and BunkArt 2 in the centre. So, the following morning I bade goodbye to the sunshine again as I went down the steps into the next museum – this one with a far more atmospheric entrance, tbh.

So BunkArt is made in a bunker, as you can see. It looks old and decrepit with some clear signs of explosions – but apparently these explosions mostly happened long after the Cold War itself, as some people felt the history BunkArt was exhibiting was still timewise too close for comfort and decided to try and destroy it.

If you have to choose between the History Museum and BunkArt, do BunkArt (again, apparently BunkArt 1 is the best, but I’ll talk about what I know). It was far more informative, at least in English, than the museum. You went down narrow corridors and each little room on the side had some kind of exhibition, memories of the communist era. I did briefly tear up in the bunker playing dramatic music with long lists of executed people hanging from the ceilings, some of their clothes strewn on the walls and floor.

This was an especially interesting bit – photoshop Albanian Cold War style. Can YOU see the differences?

All in all, it was a succinct, emotional, informative tour of Cold War era Albania. The corridors were well-perfumed (I did wonder what kind of natural smell they were trying to disguise) and though everything was a tad too narrow and too small, it was well planned-out and I was very content with my decision to go.

It was nice to climb back into the warm sunny outdoors. All of this tragedy was fortunately in the past. And it was instantly rather sobering that nearby there was this outdoor exhibition, not about past horrors but current, ongoing horrors.

Here we had some bits and pieces of the historical aspect of Tirana and Albania.

Next, off to the south!

Emzy