Durres
Sailing south from Montenegro, we arrived in Albania, once the most isolated country in Europe, now in the throes of a messy transition from communism to democracy. Our travels took us to three Albanian capitals: the port city of Durres, which served as the capital of Albania in 1914, the ancient capital of Kruje, and the modern capital of Tirana. Each town demonstrated a different side of one of the most enigmatic and least known nations in the world.
A country of just four million people, Albania is a case study in arrested economic development. Facing Italy across the Adriatic sea, Albania was ruled by Ottoman Turkey for over 400 years, finally gaining its independence in 1914 on the eve of World War I. After World War I, it was ruled by the self-proclaimed King Zog, an admirer of the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. The Communist dictator Enver Hoxha seized power after World War II, cutting the country off from the rest of Europe, declaring the world's first “atheist” state, and banning all private cars.
After the fall of communism in 1991, Albania experienced several years of anarchy and cut-throat capitalism. Many Albanians entrusted their lifetime savings to pyramid schemes which collapsed in 1997, leading to a disintegration of central authority. Millions fled the country illegally, finding refuge in Italy and Greece. While the situation is much calmer today, the visitor still finds plenty of evidence of the social upheavals, ranging from countless unfinished buildings to streets thronged with Mercedes cars stolen from western Europe.
After rejecting communism, Albanians now see the West, and the Uinited States in particular, as their salvation. American flags are almost as ubiquitous as the red flag of Albania with the black eagle at its center. (Albania is the “land of the eagle”). Albania gave a rapturous welcome in 1991 to former U.S. Secretary of State James Baker and to President George W. Bush in 2007. We passed by the George
W. Bush coffee shop in Fushe Kruje, on our way to Kruje, named to commemorate a drop-in visit by the former U.S. President following his visit.
In Kruje, we visited an ethnographic museum and a museum commemorating Albania's national hero, George Kastrioti, otherwise known as Skanderbeg. We had lunch in Tirana, where we enjoyed a wonderful display of Albanian folk dancing, representing different parts of the country and different cultural traditions, including Ottoman Turkish rule. After a bus tour of the modern capital, which included sights from the Italian, communist, and modern periods, we headed back to the Panorama, safely docked in the port of Durres.
