Durres to Kruje and Tirane, Albania
After a week of the beautifully developed and maintained coastal cities of Croatia and Montenegro, with their well-preserved or restored Venetian and medieval architecture, we were now told to prepare for a change of pace and to keep an open mind. We were spending the next two days and 250 miles of Adriatic coastline in the enigmatic and perplexing country of Albania. Where? What? Few images come to the western mind when we hear the name of this country that calls itself Shqiperia (“The Eagles”), and claims its ancestry and language as descendants of the Illyrians who predated the ancient Greeks.
Part of the reason for this is that Albania was an isolationist communist country for fifty years after World War II under the paranoid rule of dictator Enver Hoxha. Hoxha prohibited entry and departure from Albania, and convinced the Albanian people that they were the wealthiest and most privileged people in the world, and the rest of the impoverished world was out to invade them. When the country finally opened up in 1991, the people were completely disillusioned with generations of lies by their communist leaders, and they then fell as naive and easy prey to predacious pyramid banking schemes which they thought were the essence of capitalism. Physically and morally devastated, the country has been rebuilding with western help since 1999, and is now a landscape of construction and paradoxes.
We departed from the busy industrial port of Durres, one of the oldest cities of the Adriatic Coast, now buried in communist-era construction and 21st century investment properties. We drove through an agricultural landscape alive with the sprawl of recent construction, seemingly with no plan or reason. Through the small agricultural trading town of Fushe Kruja, where a statue of George W. Bush commemorates his historic visit “to meet the people” in 2006, and then we continued up to the old, historic capitol of Kruje. Kruje is the home of Albania’s national hero George Kastrioti, or Skanderbeg, who is known as a savior of Christianity and protector against the Ottoman Turks in the 15th century.
The Skanderbeg Museum is impressively displayed and surprisingly well laid out, and is the gem of the Skanderbeg Castle that sits under the limestone cliffs above. The castle also houses a fascinating ethnographic museum that illustrates the rural life of a wealthy landowner in the 17th century, with clear influence of the Ottoman culture. We ended the morning in the dizzying medieval bazaar, where every imaginable souvenir, rural household item, or ancient weapon could be found.
On to the new capital of Tirane for lunch, where we found the city under major construction and demolition as they continue to implement the artistic city planning vision of former mayor Edi Rama. The 6’8” Paris-educated artist has had numerous illegal buildings removed, cleared a large pedestrian area in the center of town, re-established natural waterways, and painted the town in living colors. We enjoyed a traditional lunch with lively folk music and dance from the group “Shqiperia,” and by the time we left Tirane for the drive back to Panorama we were all dizzy with a dazzle of first impressions of Albania. Go Albania!
