May 2024. Tirana. Albania.
We had the best part of a whole day in Tirana before our evening flight back to Luton’s Long Stay car park, and I was thrilled, thrilled I tell you, to be exploring one of Europe’s least known capitals.
Largely dismissed as not worthy of an overnight stop on the way to the coast or the hills, but then they said that about Sofia.
And to be fair people level criticisms about Manchester (or Sheffield) being a disjointed building site,
a jumble of modern art,
quirky statues,
“controversial” new construction projects,
and possibly the worst example of those “I heart x” city signs, tucked away in front of a functional opera house.
As we stood in that vast and empty Skanderbeg Square, blokes in Greenwoods shirts whizzing past on bikes,
it all looks a bit sad and communist era, the eponymous hero’s statue standing forlorn amongst the playground and street food.
I asked the young man in the tourist hut for a city map. He asked where I was from “for research purposes”, and adding a fourth UK tick to his tabulation.
But then, from nowhere, it came to life.
A tree-lined boulevard, old boys under the Flensburger sign,
well-dressed women in the layered Millennium Gardens.
all drinking those 70p espressos.
And then you’re at the remnants of the castle, teddy bears guarding the entrance to a startling row of upmarket restaurants and jewellery shops to rival W1.
And as you leave the castle, the Namazgah mosque brings you to the real city away from the designer quarter,
and then to the murals that Tirana excels in,
and a random medieval bridge that starts and ends nowhere,
and then a real bridge across the dried up Lana, where you finally have your late breakfast, following the lead of the man in the shiny Martin Fry suit into Gostivar,
where the apple strudel costs 60p and feeds two.
But makes a heck of a mess of Mrs RM’s blouse.
retiredmartin 