Flamingos and History, Two Weeks of Whirling Questions in Albania
July 2026
“It’s a real missed opportunity,” Gentian used to say in Berlin, shaking his head when I reported our trip to Albania had been diverted. Finally after multiple trips to Croatia, up and down the Balkan Peninsula, any number to Berlin and around the world, we confirmed a trip to Albania. Well worth our efforts, we connected with some wondrous people, water, a revolution organized around flamingos, all while contending with history and its long shadows along the Adriatic, Aegean, and Ionian seas.
Our trip ended in Tiranë, where we took part in day 56, 57, and 58 of the protests. That’s where this story begins.
July 25, Tirane
We stayed in Blloku, the Tiranë neighborhood where communist dictator Enver Hoxha lived. While secretive and closed for much of the second half of the 20th century, today it is a vibrant neighborhood full of bookstores, cafes, bars, eclectic architecture, from Italian times, in addition to once dreary communist era, brutalist monstrosities splashed with color. While less visible to the eye, old enclosures remain.
"The protest was here" says a sticker on the street. "Flamingo Revolution" says another. Around 7 PM, I follow everyone to Skanderbeg Square, where people arrive with protest signs and flags. Just behind us stands,"The Albanians", a mosaic above the National National Historic Museum from October 28, 1981, depicts the struggles against the Ottomans to the right, the Italians and Nazis on the left, a fitting backdrop to the struggles against corporate developers today. Protesters stand about an equestrian statue of national hero, Skanderbeg, who vanquished multiple Ottoman invaders. Can the Albanian protesters do the same of the American developers who want to build their tacky resort on the Vjosa-Narta wetlands and Sazan Island, an uninhabited Island in the Adriatic, near the picturesque Vlorë coast. With flamingos and a wilderness preserve in play, this open space has come to symbolize much of the prospects for Albanian democracy, its durability, and possibilities to ascend into the EU. Complicating the prospects, it appears the Albanian prime minister, Edi Rama, has cleared the way for the tacky project, with an end around checks, balances, and environmental laws, giving it a green light. The pattern is not unfamiliar. Recall Dick Cheney forging the Halliburton Loophole, using the office of the vice presidency to recommend that congress exempt hydraulic fracking from the Safe Drinking Act, poisoning, leaving toxic wastewater, contaminating drinking water. Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump hope to build a luxury resort there. The Albanian people have another idea, with week after week of marches, speak outs, waves of civil disobedience, protesters arrested at Parliament, making their claim that Albania is not for sale. ‘Tonight, I’m not sure,’ says one elderly woman who has been here every day for 56 days, when I ask her what might happen. ‘They are destroying our environment,’ she tells me. ‘We are for democracy, not corruption,’ says another man. People with flags over their shoulders are arriving, as the sun goes down. Around town we see US flags. Several others carry US flags, along with Albanian flags, to the protest. It seems strange given that an anti-democratic American developer scheme ignited the protests. Increasingly, the protesters are targeting the four term prime minister for what they see as a pattern of corruption, many see as omnipresent in Albania. ‘Resign!’ people scream in the streets, referring to Rama, frustrated with growing inequality and corruption.
"Day 56 in the square, in the streets, in history," says one sign, a woman is carrying. The sounds of horns, drums, and chants fill the air, as the march kicks off. Kids with parents and grandparents, young people and old, we march up to Parliament, a dilapidated building, a few police guarding it. One man carries a pink plastic pink flamingo, a symbol of the leaderless movement. Several carry signs calling for repeal of the 2024 bill sweeping away environmental review for the project. "Resign shqiperi e re" says one banner, calling for Revolution, for a new Albania. The struggle against the flattening, the mallification of the commons, the privatization of the public, it is everywhere. It’s hard not to think of similar fights for Union Square and Zuccotti Park in New York, for Gezi Park in Istanbul, the fights over the new metro stop in Exarchia Square we saw in Athens.
"Trust us, we will be in the square until your resignation," says another sign, carried by a young woman.
In one way, it reminds me of the intergenerational movement swirling about Tiananmen Square with its tragic ending in June 1989, in another, it feels like the Leipzig pro-democracy protests of the same year1989, that eventually brought down the Berlin Wall. Whatever it is, it feels powerful and complicated.
A group of speakers follows, some elders, others kids, more and more people joining the action, hanging out, talking, sharing ideas and the city, its public spaces.
"The protest is so important here. It has connected with the public after Communism," says Arnoldo, an archaeologist and tour guide here. “There was so much ambivalence about the left, about the commons. It has helped Albanians see and be a public.”
July 26
Woke up to the news from Berlin. “Car Plows Into People Near a Pride Event in Berlin, Killing at Least One” reports theNY Times. We check in with friends in Berlin, who were there. One was walking along at the parade, witnessing the car crash into the parade.
So much hate.
Day 57 of the Flamingo Protests. Everyone meets at Skanderbeg Square. Nationalistic music, families here, the same same flags as the night before. More calls for Revolution, for a new start.
Some think the demos must be more militant. More calls for his resignation. Yet, to force the prime minister to leave after 13 years, that's a tall order. ‘Plus the mafia owns him,’ says a bartender the night before. ‘Even if he wanted to resign, they wouldn’t let him. They own him.’
Everyone stands for a song that sounds like the national anthem.
More and more join us, the street swelling with people, demanding a new government, as well as the repeal of Law 21/2024 around investments in protected nature areas. Albania has been through so much. But it can be more, more than a luxury resort, more than a place where developers plunder. Covered on all the TVs in the bars, the protests are the conversation of the summer. People hang out at them, meet their friends, talk, and disagree. Most everyone agrees that Albania needs another path, something beyond mega development on beachfronts, along the coast. Instead of negotiations, civil resistance continues. Few seem concerned with police, tear gas and water cannons. With kids and elders in front at rally after rally, it is not so easy to crack down on the actions.
Day 58, July 27th
The vibe on the 58th day of protests feels both joyous and concerned. Many laugh as they chant and march together, a few looking over their shoulders. No one is stopping them. Others seem to worry about the size and message and how it is framed. What comes next, new tactics, or keep the same conversation going. What's the revolution people are calling for? Whose included, queer people, women, Catholics who were seen as collaborators to the fascists, Communists who executed, tortured, imprisoned grandparents and parents here, or the Capitalists ever ready to sell off nature reserves to the highest bidders, or environmentalists, ready to put a halt on development? A subtext of this is Trumpism and capitalism itself, the favors for developers, for the superpowers, the superconnected, for the oligarchs, a system which calls itself democracy, but creates favors for the rich. Does Albanian civil society have the strength to stop it, no one is sure.
July 27, 2026
History is messy here. Cops roam the streets of Tiranë the next morning, protests outside Parliament, several arrests of protesters, many elders concerned about the treatment of environmental regulations. It seems like there are special rules for the rich, even as Albania makes its case for stability, to enter the EU. Yet questions about gay rights, women's rights linger.
We make our way out to The Women's Museum Albania — MiG. Founded by Elsa Ballauri, whose parents and grandparents suffered persecution under the dictatorship, the museum looks to share this family story, foregrounding all too neglected struggles of women of Albania. Ballauri’s son is at the museum to greet us. A quiet person, we find ourselves talking with him about Free: Coming of Age at the End of History, Lea Ypi’s story about growing up in a ‘bad family’ during the dictatorship and its aftermath. Everyone has been reading it all summer. Like Lea Ypi, Ballauri's parents endured repression, imprisonment, torture and social isolation during the dictatorship. It's a hard topic, but it “is not something to laugh about,” he says, referring to Ypi’s sometimes cavalier approach to speaking about the topic. Few seem to know how to talk, write, create cultural production about the dictatorship. Stories about starvation, isolation, torture, collaboration by neighbors, no one is quite sure the best way to represent this history. Through family objects about Balluri’s old family home, turned museum, MiG endeavors to face this history, weaving a community narrative, with objects, many from before the dictatorship, pictures of a young woman learning to sew, Muslim and Christian women to her right and left, symbolizing tolerance. Looking around, I see a black dress with Venetian decoration, a hoop at the legs, open shoulders. “This is an Xhubela northern woman,” a pagan, we are told, Illerian pagan culture. I look across the room to a black evening dress. “That was my grandmother's,” Balluri’s son tells us. My eye catches an elegant black and white picture of a couple in evening wear. “He was executed by Enver Hoxha,” he tells us. Caroline notices a picture of his grandmother and friends dressed as 'la garçonne’ , the 1920s style, popular from Paris to Berlin, that women, such as Marlene Dietrich embraced, with men’s style, loose and comfortable. A display on abortion announces 50 % of pregnancies were aborted. Women who had abortions were imprisoned. On another wall, a display of metals for women who had lots of kids; ten or more kids, you got a cow. A cow. To say Albania was behind is an understatement. We walk to the next room, full of books and a display of prohibited objects, a Bible or Koran or devotional objects, you could be imprisoned for owning. What about gay people or gay rights, we ask. Social judgement is still there, says our guide. Perusing pictures of the anti fascist partisans, who fought the Italians after the 1939 invasion, it appears there were queer people here. The Catholics were seen as collaborators during this period. “What of the files held by the Sigurimi (the communist-era secret police in Albania),” we ask. “The files are not open,” he says. Even if you had a bad dream in communism, you didn’t talk about it. He shows us the movement book from these years in which family movement was tracked by the authorities. Neighbors could report on the whereabouts of their neighbors. Official stickers inside the book reveal fines of 25 Lek from the police, who asked the neighbors about their whereabouts, many offering contradicting stories. I wonder about the feeling when the police walked up the stairs to check up on the family. Old fears, old habits die hard.
There is a lot to digest. Baby C walks back. I stroll to the Archaeology Museum, exploring the remnants of the classical civilization we've explored the last few weeks. There is not a flyer, not a guide, not much direction, or a sense of wonder in the display of these majestic objects. With such a collection of Greek, Roman and and Illerian jewelry and other objects, this could be a world class museum. But it is not. It’s a shame, says one of our guides when I ask about it.
Next up, I walk on to Rruga Sheshi Skënderbej, past the Old Mosque, to the steps of the Opera house to meet Arnoldo, our guide. We stroll the rest of the afternoon, discussing the protests and messy history here. Arnoldo takes me past old churches and mosques, through neighborhood after neighborhood exploring the strands of the history of Albanian Communism. Read From Stalin to Mao: Albania and the Socialist World, Arnoldo tells me, referring to a 2017 book
by Elidor Mëhilli. Over the previous two weeks, I’ve read and heard several narratives of Albanian leader Enver Hoxha’s drift toward isolation and paranoia. What went through his mind, I ask Arnoldo. Was he losing his bearings? Few came out of WWII completely intact. Hoxha went from the Italian invasion of 1939, to the Nazis, contending with Fascists, to navigating the Machiavellian alliances to survive in the Cold War. In the years after the war, his machinations follow a familiar pattern: distancing Albania from Yugoslavia, in 1948, following the Tito–Stalin split, building an alliance with Joseph Stalin and the USSR, separating Albania from the Soviets after Khrushchev’s critique of the brutality of Stalin and de Stalizination. Hoxha saw this as a threat, breaking with the USSR in 1961. Subsequently cuddling up to the Chinese Communists, before a similar split. Albania broke with China in the 1970s as it set its own path away from the USSR. Recall, Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai met with US officials in 1972. Triangulating between Communist powers, the US embraced Communist China, in an effort to neutralize the Soviet Union. With Mao's death, China's thaw and rapprochement with the United States, and Deng Xiaoping’s neoliberal turn, Hoxha further isolated Albania, denouncing Maoism as anti-Marxist and capitalist, cutting ties with China, leaving Hoxha's regime in self-imposed exile, with few friends or allies.
Was Hoxha paranoid or just nuts after WWII, I wonder.
Probably the former, says Arnoldo.
What kind of mindset Hoxha must have had coming out of invasions from the Italian Fascists and the Nazis, 500 years of Ottoman rule before that. While he died in 1985, the dictatorship lasted from 1944 to 1991, old secrets, a collective scar remaining.
We stopped outside an artist's residence at Hoxha's old house at Villa 31, a colorful home behind a fence, now an artist's residence. Ernesto Sábato, the Argentine writer, came to Tiranë in 1996. Staying there, when he heard he was sleeping at Enver Hoxha's house, he said he smelled blood. And ran away, moving into a hotel.
Our next stop is the House of Leaves, an innocuous looking museum housing the old Stasi like city security quarters. Its name has several meanings, hidden in the woods, the leaves of books, and files on regular people. Borrowing from East German style surveillance and Western technology, the secret police, dubbed Sigurimi, honed techniques of total observation of people and their everyday lives, forming a record of their lives, built from surveillance, antimidation, and civilian informers, neighbors snooping and reporting on neighbors. Arnoldo tells me about his father's reaction to the museum. He remembers the food scarcity of the dictatorship. Yet, they had the money to pay for all those cameras and surveillance devices from the west, he wondered, disgusted and dismayed. Still his grandfather remains a Communist at 93 years of age. What about the files, I ask. Will they ever be open? We are all victims, all guilty, they say. Don't go too deep. Let the trauma heal. It takes two, three generations. Technically, they are managed by the Authority for Information on Former State Security Documents. Theoretically, victims, who survived on can access their files, researchers can review historical records, yet most documents were destroyed after communism. None of the guides I met know anyone who has access to their files.
Arnoldo walks me to The Pyramid of Tirana, a memorial to Hoxha, designed by his daughter shortly. On the way over, we talk about Albania as part of the world and the Balkans. Can we even use that term, I ask. Balkans sure, but not Balkanization, says Arnoldo. The stories about the US falling into 'balkinization' after Jan 6th were not received well, he tells me. But still they may be true, I reply, referring to our ever fractured and dangerous politics. There is still a long way to go. In Hunger and Fury: the Crisis of Democracy in the Balkans, Yasmin Mujanović suggests the region is finding its way back with an "authoritarian elasticity" , says Arnoldo. What do you mean by that, I ask. It’s a sort of ideological flexibility, says Arnoldo, with talk of liberalism and democracy, offering Balkan elites coded language to adapt their rhetoric to maintain corrupt, autocratic control. Hence the protests.
But what of the Balkans or Balkinization, I wonder. Countries referred to as the Balkans tend to include Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Bulgaria. Yet, this is fluid; maps are always changing. Others thought of as Balkan countries: Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia. And on the periphery, people refer to Greece, Romania, Slovenia and even Turkey. Of these, we missed visiting Slovenia, which left Yugoslavia with little more than a ten day fight in 1991, and Montenegro, with its Russian oligarchs and ex pats, on our travels. Albania was always the question mark, ever estranged, eternally connected and separated from Kosovo, as well as Europe, forever a part of the Balkans and its long shadows. What of Albania?
As Ypi (2021, p. 254) puts it in Free: "I accepted the different explanations.. the international community had warned about such and such decision, how the Balkans had long had an explosive history, how one much factor in the ethnic and religious divisions that pervaded that corner of the world, and the legacy of socialism..." Walking, I see Ypi in a great deal here. She reflects on friendships. “We relied on friends and neighbors for everything,” writes Ypi (p.48), even as seen as a threat during the dictatorship. “Whenever the need arose, we simply knocked on their door, regardless of the time of day.” (p. 48). Ypi concluded, "There was no sphere of our lives where we were free. We couldn’t even tell the people closest to us what a hard time we were having. And as we couldn’t trust anyone, we couldn’t form any close bonds, either. The system knew that true friendship could kindle rebellion." Hence the myriad of ways Albania's communist regime unleashed surveillance and paranoia, blocking citizens from forming close bonds, stifling potential rebellion, or challenging a totalitarian system that forces individuals to isolate themselves for survival, contents Ypi.
The House of Leaves highlights the theme of the panopticon, a whole system gazing on the individual. You feel it reading Free and other accounts of these years. And certainly, the mass surveillance would not have been possible without the assistance of neighbors, tracking the goings on of neighbors, turning former chums against one another. Still movements took shape, yet so did the barriers to civil society. Reflections on friendship and the political imagination run throughout Ypi’s story. “It was from either a failure of the relevant institutions or a lack of imagination that my mother lived all her life in a Socialist state convinced that one can only ever fight against others, never alongside them,” (p. 180). In the streets in Tiranë, one can witness the kinds of friendship networks that Ypi imagined, that both hinder and support social movements.
You saw them in the effort to topple the dictatorship.
Baby C has been reading Mud is Sweeter Than Honey: Voices of Communist Albania by Margo Rejmer and Małgorzata Rejmer. She regales me with stories: "In July 1990, a historic crisis unfolded in Albania when roughly 5,000 citizens crashed through the gates and walls of foreign embassies in Tirana to seek political asylum… On July 2, 1990, an Albanian named Ylli Bodinaku drove a Liaz truck crashing through the back wall of the German Embassy compound in Tirana with his family inside.The breach in the wall created an opening that allowed dozens, and eventually thousands, of desperate citizens fleeing the repressive communist regime to pour into the embassy grounds.Over 3,000 people crowded into the West German embassy alone. Following negotiations with international envoys, the Albanian government agreed to let the asylum seekers leave.On July 12, 1990, authorities moved the refugees in a convoy of buses to the port city of Durrës, where ferries transported them to Italy to be resettled across Western Europe.This mass exodus shattered the country's decades-long strict isolation and set the stage for the total collapse of communism in Albania later that year."
Inside the embassy, people watched the world cup, a party atmosphere taking hold, everyone rooting for Germany prevailing against Argentina in the final July 8th in Rome.
Our current system, Ypi tells The New Yorker, “is not really democracy: we have constellations and configurations of interests that are very powerful . . . strong states shape the fates of weaker states. You have countries where stronger citizens with more money shape the fates of weaker citizens.. because you have an election, democracy is secure. It’s not a finish line.”
Each day, we tour the city, mixing food and history, talking about protests, snacking on byrek. Marcel, who lives here, tells us about his grandfather who endured the dictatorship years. Poets and musicians were jailed, the people starved and servile, isolated from the world. He tells us stories as we explore the open air food markets and bazaars, the murals and communist buildings. “Gëzuar!” we toast at Komiteti - Kafe Muzeum, sipping raki, "may you be happy.” 'Raki and Dashni,' says the neon light. 'Raki and love' the two things we need. Black and white nude pictures, trinkets, books, and kitsch about the cafe/ bar, pieces here and there. We were starting to get a feel for the place. That was not the case two weeks prior when we arrived.
July 15
Through passport control, on the noon ferry for a short trip to Albania. Ciao Corfu. Hello Sarandë. We will stay in this coastal city for a couple of days, taking in the beaches, Ionian Sea waters, promenade, restaurants, and historical sites of this Albania Riviera. Originally named after the Byzantine monastery of Agioi Saranda, or 'Forty Saints', this port town has gone through several names between the Ottoman times and Italian occupation, only to return to its Albanian Saranda with independence. I have so many questions for you Siranda, I write in my journal. On the way to our hotel, we passed the ruins of a 5th century basilica-synagogue, an old city co-existing with something new. At the beach, a stream of water flows, tickling us with a chilly shiver. It’s from the Bistricë River, the Blue Eye Natural Spring, says the bartender at our hotel. It flows into the water. The Adriatic Sea wraps its way about the northwest coast, while the Ionian Sea stretches about the southwestern shores here.
Our friends from Budapest, Hungary joined us via Corfu. It's sad we all have to cross through passport control to get to this beautiful country, still finding its sea legs after Ottoman rule and almost five decades of dictatorship. That all seems a long time ago, but like yesterday. The daily protests against Jarrod Kushner's land deal continue, a part in most every conversation here. They are still buzzing about their election in April, beating back Orban’s far right, populism. We watch England and Argentina in the latest installment of their Falkland Islands war. It's never just football. There's always more to it. With Messi's repeated passes on the England goal, it was a matter of time before Argentina prevailed.
July 17
Next morning, we journey out to Butrint, an ancient Roman colony, now a world heritage site, taking in the crumbling walls of the lost civilization, where book three of The Aeneid is fabled to have taken place. Landing in Buthrotum (modern-day Butrint), Aeneas is said to encounter the Trojan Survivors Helenus and Andromache, who have established a new Troy there. Finishing the tour, we head out to Pulëbardha Beach, nearby. Swimming in blue waters, I dream about Aeneas’ adventures, feeling the waves of history through me. A little disco music in the air, people jump off a rock ahead of us. Others cavort along this cove, between Sarandë and Ksamil. That night, we meet Brandon and Noemi at Tommy Bar, a tiki bar by the ferry, enjoying a pina colada. Lots to learn from this shoreline, boats rolling to and from this modern and ancient city coming out of a dark history.
July 18
The two cats at our beach hideaway are named On and Off. Our favorite is Off, a mellow creature who spends her days napping, welcoming guests. That morning, we found ourselves on a remote beach, floating on the Ionian Sea at Gjiri i Midhjeve, a secluded bay, known as Mussel Bay. 'Have You Ever Heard the Rain' plays on the radio, a baby giggling with her parents. We spent the day reading and swimming. It's the most beautiful cove of the whole trip. We spent the day taking in views of Greece in the distance, enjoying the Mediterranean vibe.
Finishing our afternoon at the beach, we head north, through mountains to Gjirokastër, the home town of Albania's 20th dictator Enver Halil Hoxha (16 October 1908 – 11 April 1985). Driving in, over the cobble stones, we get a sense of why this little town is known as Albania’s "City of Stone". With deep steep, cobbled streets, you feel the city's Byzantine and later Ottoman-era influences. It only found its independence after the 1912 13 Balkan War. Today it is a UNESCO World Heritage site. Walking through town, past a bazaar, we stumble upon the face of Ismail Kadare, the Albanian writer Caroline has been reading. In Chronicle in Stone, he wrote this was a "strange city" that seemed to have been "cast up in the valley on a winter's night".
“Everything in the city was old and made of stone," wrote Kadare, about Gjirokaster, where he grew up, surrounded by "wise old ladies in black." During the Cold War, Hoxha put resources into defence tunnels under the city. A veteran of WWII when the country was invaded, Hoxha made an elaborate network of bunkers. He isolated the country. Rather than alliances, he feared a Soviet attack that never came, oppressing his people, forcing them to build bunkers. Today, the city offers tours of the bunkers. Our guide, a middle aged woman, talked about her childhood under Communism. Only two rolls of bread, she said. It was bad. And we had Hoxha, who was crazy, she laments. I remember. Corruption, she sighs, referring to the current protests against corruption. She hasn't gone, fearing for her job. But she supports them.
Finishing the tour of the damp bunkers, it’s relief to be outside again, in this old magic city, looking at the goods for sale in the bazaar, communist relics, rugs, and other treasures, perusing the goods, before enjoying a delicious meal with a view of the hills. Our waitress tells us funny stories about growing up here. “Every Albanian kid will tell you about their first accidental taste of raki,” she laughed, “mistaking the clear bottle for water.”
Were your parents angry, we asked.
“Stupid,” they said, laughing.
July 19th
We woke up on Saturday, looking out at the mountains from our little room. Off to the square, we meet our guide Klarens, an engineer with a world weary energy, right next to the statue of Cerciz Topulli, just below the Bazaar.
Have you been to the protests, I ask him. Yes, I was there. Not sure it's going to do anything or change anything, he replies, with a resigned sigh. We walk through the town past Christisian and Muslim homes right next to each other. No one had a problem with that, says Karens. We stop at a 16th century Byzantine Church, he says the town just calls it the old church. Many have been stolen or replaced, says Klarens. He leads us up to Argjiro Castle. Built in the 5th century, its origins are full of mystery. In recent years, it mostly served as a prison. By the 20th century, it was dubbed, ‘Seven Windows’ prison, says Klarends, showing the spaces where prisoners would live, looking out the window. A plague outside recalls the martyrs and prisoners who fought and perished here on these fortifications on a 335-meter-high hilltop overlooking Gjirokastër:
“In the memory of the anti-communist martyrs that were arrested, punished, tortured, executed, died of torture and disappeared at the prison of Gjirokastra Castle... Eternal honor to their resistance and sublime sacrifice!"
We walk about the 1932 prison, past a German cannon, and a Cold War-era US Air Force plane. Klarens tells us stories about the layers of history here. It's an archeologist's dream. There are Roman ruins in people's back yards. He walks us to the area of the castle, where according to legend, Argjiro was a young woman, jumped off with her child to avoid capture by the Ottomans invaders. She died, but her baby survived, becoming a symbol of resilience and defiance. Back and forth, we talk, referring to the 1997 Civil War here. It wasn't a civil war, it was anarchy, says Klarens. No one knew who was on whose side. In 1939 Italy invaded Albania, followed by the Germans. This must have impacted Hoxha, I say. The prison in the castle was put in full use, as a prison. Much of the conversation leads back to the Hoxha years. "If you were different, if you were an artist, you were sent to be a political prisoner," says Klarens. The castle was a fully functioning city, with people living here. Klarens leads us to a temple for the Bektashi Order, a mystical, Sufi non-denominational highly tolerant religious sect. They sound like hippies or like Rumi, I think.
Up and down cobble stone alleys, Klarens leads us across town to
Zekate house, a traditional home built in 1811 for Beqir Zeko, with views of the river valley from the top. Cats hover about as we chat about it all in the cafe.
Inside the Ethnographic Museum, and childhood home of Hoxha, they show a propaganda film about him. He starved his people, recalls Baby C.
The tour ends.
And we are off, on winding roads, overlooking cliffs, past rustic and beautiful beaches, on an adventure through the Albanian Riviera. Baby C found us an agriturismo style stay where they cook local food for us and we camp. Where is the secluded beach? “You have to be strong,” says the proprietor, pointing us towards the woods, winding down. “We tried out the trail last week. There’s just a minor rope to a drop at the end.” A minor drop? Through the woods, we hike, my mind trailing off to the moment on the St Francis way in Assisi, when I slipped on a similar trail, breaking my arm the first day of hike, my arm in a sling the next ten days. On we walk down, clutching branches, trying not to slip. Finally, we reach a rope hanging ten feet down to the isolated beach, desolate and beautiful. Not a bad jump down, but not so easy for a 56 year old man, repelling off, climbing back up was not so simple, terrifying a better word. Still, dinner was lovely. "So much of the environment has been destroyed since communism, we don't know what was better, then or now" says the proprietor the next morning. Saying goodbye to our hosts, we move North to Dhërmi, an overrun village in Vlorë County, Albania, construction and condos about. A donkey on the road to the beach. Nothing but hyperdevelopment and back, the schizophrenia of the road can wear.
July 20
Past as prologue. Shakespeare said it in The Tempest. Maradona won it in 1986 for Argentina. Four years later gets his team back to the final, only to stumble to Germany. It is like 1990 all over again for Messi. Amazing watching him all these years. Feels the same here in Albania. Past as prologue. 45 years of communism set the country back. It's hard to catch up. The country is trying to come back. But the path feels awkward. Hyper development. Bad deals with Jared Kushner and his 1.6 billion land deal here, the Flamingo protests which have followed. Like the US, too much plastic. Alternately beautiful and gloriously tacky. The waterfront is beautiful. The condos and hotels springing up everywhere, privatizing, polluting, excluding, they relate a different story. No one is sure what path is next. Still lots to learn here. Lots to figure out.
July 21
When you hit a wall, try another beach, that's a bit of our lesson from being here. On the first day here, we encountered fake Gucci glasses and cigarettes, boob jobs and bikinis on coveted beach chairs extending exponentially, expanding tacky hotels and whiffs of toxic masculinity. Baby C has been reading about the Tate's and their hateful so-called "manorsphere of Men's Rights Activists (MRAs)." She sees their trimmed beards everywhere. She tells a friend: "Hi from Albania. We’ve been here six days and trying to make sense of this strange place. It is stunningly beautiful but the people are not okay. Very rough. Like East Germans. Not happy and yet they don’t really see how their history lives on. Hospitality is hard to find. Very rough." And then pauses. "But then you stumble upon wild horses and an outcast donkey kicking up a fuss. The green mountains roll down into the crystal sea. Spotted with old olive trees and lime trees. And lots of construction." We spend the morning reading, looking up at an old monastery and cemetery in the hills, the afternoon on a boat, exploring watering holes and caves, jumping into the water, finding a swimming nook, and going out for a bite, drinking Albanian wine. Talk to a woman with a lovely baby about the protests in her own town of Tirana. She says she doesn't like them. Not the tactic for her. Our waiter says he misses his kids and chats away. We miss ours too, we tell him. He says his religion teaches him if we have girls and have them 'honorably married' then we all go to paradise. What's honorably married, we wonder silently. A chill. What about queer people or gay marriage? Families reflect our diversity. We go on looking at the boats and swimmers, sunbathers and divers in the distance. It all reminds me of the Amalfi Coast. Magic.
July 22
The next morning, we say goodbye to the little ones at our hideaway on the coast and drive 90 minutes to Appolonia, an Illyrian, Greek, and Roman city, dating back to 588 BC Greek colonists, with epic, classical ruins, and Saint Mary's, a medieval monastery, now housing a unique collection of classical artifacts. Through the ruins, we explore the Agora, thinking about Dionysis and Apollo, chaos and order, the birth of tragedy, here, now and then, through the 13th century monastery, looking at frescoes and mosaics still intact, of this rich collection.
Leaving Appolonia, we make our way an hour to Berat, a tiny, distinct city of another time and world. Today, it's a UNESCO World Heritage site, with Ottoman style architecture, known as the 'City of a Thousand Windows' for its white homes on a hill, stacked on top of one another, two bridges up and down the Osum River, where people stroll. Baby C got us a room in Mangalem, a largely Muslim neighborhood of windy, cobble stone streets. We walk out to the Solomoni Jewish and Museum and the Ethnographic Museum with its collection of 1,300 objects in a beautiful old townhouse. At the Jewish museum, we hear stories about the families who helped other Jews during the war. We wander about, stopping for a snack, looking out at the dense city below, the beautiful mountains in the distance. After dinner, everyone winds their way to the Boulevard Republika as the sun goes down, music playing, people walking, amidst a mix of Byzantine churches, mosques, a bar playing disco, kids playing soccer, out and about in the magic hour light. It's strikingly beautiful.
July 23
"Your silence won't protect you!!"says the writing on the walls. Walking through Berat, outside the old mosque, we stumbled upon this graffiti on our tour of the old Mangolem neighborhood here. Our history begins in the Bronze Age, says Emilio, our guide. Each civilization has had an impact on our civilization, says Emilio, referring to the Illyrian, Byzantine, Roman, and Ottoman, The Albanoi were a key Illyrian tribe, he tells us. We finally got independence in 1913, but Kosovo and Macedonia were left out. About the 2% of the country that still practices religion, says Emilio. Most just meet up for coffee, crossing paths two or three times a day by the Old Mosque. Our main religion is we are all Albanian. Albania is the only place in Europe where the Jewish population increased during the war. People took care of each other here. Albanians followed a code of honor to treat guests as family. We are bound to protect guests. Their brethren in Kosovo, controlled by Serbia, did. They became the first country in the world to become fully atheist in the 1960's. The whirling dervishes disappeared after that. Old social mores rarely die. You don't see gay flags or gay bars here. We are not that progressive, says Emilio. On we walked up to the old town in the castle above. He shows us stones from the Roman, Byzantine, and Ottoman eras here, appearing and disappearing as the castle's been invaded and re-invaded through the centuries. There, we admired the frescoes at St Mary's of Blchnervae by Nicholas Onufri, the prominent 16th-century Albanian iconographer and fresco painter. His work is a mystery, says Emilio. It's some of the most striking work I've ever seen. Inside his museum up the street, we encountered images of Christ with olive to medium-dark brown skin, dark eyes, and dark hair. Everyone looked out for each other here, says Emilio. We planted olive trees and protected the Jews during the war.
A generation later, Civil War broke out over a Ponzi scheme. People took their frustration out, shooting at each other here in 1997, destroying the old dome. Emilio has been to the protests in Tiranë. We want to stop the corruption. If we stop the corruption, we are the best country in the world. We are the sons of Shqipëria, the "Land of the Eagles". Emilio talks about the two Eagles, East and West, Byzantine and Constantinople. We stopped at Red Mosque, of 1389, the oldest mosque in Albania. But no one is really sure of the date, it's around the Ottoman conquest of Berat. It's hot. We look out at the city below.
View from Berat
Owen sent me a poem.
I replied, We are all born dying
It's chilling when we see we are closer.
I feel like it in the middle of the night on the road.
Can't sleep.
Unsettled dreams,
images of Appolinaire and Dionysus,
ego and id,
sex sublimation,
our lives and stories,
unfiltered fears always with us..
.otherness, on the other side of empires,
Roman and Byzantine,
Ottoman and Communism,
i look at the city of windows,
city of steps,
lost bunkers,
protection from wars that never happened.
The Italians and Nazis made their way here.
No one was sure what to do when the capitalists arrived.
Fears and hopes, searching for a forthrightness that had long disappeared,
lost in a hall of mirrors.
July 24
Last stop at Maxol's Dream Hotel, a communist era beach hotel cafe and restaurant at Ionian and Adriatic seas with a honkey tonk flair. There's an island in the distance no one has ever seen before, we laugh, looking at Sazan Island, off the coast, the uninhabited, 1,400-hectare former military outpost at the center of development plans for an ultra-luxury resort. With mountains and water in the distance, the drive from Berat is as beautiful as any I have ever had says Baby C. A beach restaurant offers sustenance, grilled fish. Raki on demand. Kids play in the water and the sun dips into the coast. We play shithead, the card game we learned in Corfu. And descend into dreams.
An old chef,
Cooking Goolash on the beach.
Waves and sunlight.
Brown, blue, green waves.
Waves of tears,
Waves of memories.
Waves of moods, up and down, crashing on the shore...
Waves of stories of Sandra Mazzola from
from Italia who played Pele in 1970 and had one daughter, who runs the dream Cafe, with her kids.
Waves of philosophers, at the Existentialist café
Waves of raki in the stomach here.
Waves of civilizations, Illyrian, Roman, Byzantine, Ottoman on shore, disappearing in the sands.
Waves of bad dreams and good, horrors from 1945 to 1991, a civil war 1997.
Waves of bottles on the beach
Boats on the beach
Waves from the Ionian, Waves from the Adriatic.
Tirana beer bottles and guests.
Old magazines and grandkids.
July 25
Gulash needs paprika, says our host as we leave the Maxola's Dream Motel, the restaurant/ beach hotel / piano bar her father started after losing to Pele in the 1970 World Cup Final. Her whole family works there. This is our way. Lovely Albania. Ciao, everyone says goodbye. We make our way to Durrës, Albania's second-largest city, a major port on the Adriatic Sea, where refugees have long come and gone, for over 2,500 years, founded by Greeks. Driving into town, we see more Communist architecture with a desolate Miami feel, a Roman Amphitheatre, next to a mosque. Much of Ypi’s Free takes place here in Durrës, around its port, where her best friend jumps on a boat to Italy, becoming a refugee there. Her boyfriend returns. She stays, walking the streets of Milano. People are still struggling here, welcoming us, hoping for better. One man tells us all he does is work. He's not opposed to the rich. But the inequality is too much. The 10% have everything. We have nothing. There is no middle class.
I see a mural that declares: "Shqiptarët kanë nevojë për dritë e dije, aq sa për bukë" — Albanians need light and knowledge as much as bread.
We make our way to the beach, where Italian kids spend all day playing soccer, the beautiful game, talking about Maradona on the beach. People snap pics in the magic hour. The beach promenade is full of people, kids, grandmoms, gorgeous ladies, people out in the cafes, bars. No visible queer life, no LGBT bars. It's Christopher Street Day in Berlin. The whole city is gay. Not a peep here. The silences are many. Still the TVs cover the protests, now in something like the 55th day. We will join tomorrow.
Early out of Durrës, we head out to Kruje, to explore the old bizarre and mountains. For a while there around 1190, Kruje was the capital, later a part of Byzantium, before the Ottomans took over, Skanderbeg pushed back.
July 28, Tirana
On our way out of town, we stop by the Studio Kadare & Agolli House, a literary museum dedicated to Emili Ismail Kadare and Dritëro Agolli, two of Albania’s most famous writers. Located in the 1972 "Palace with Cubes" designed by Maks Velo. Kadare (1936–2024) was a major literary voice of Albania. He spent his life drafting poems and novels, contending with censorship, traveling the country, visiting villages, inventing language, reimagining words and images, eluding censors, even as those around him endured the hardships of the dictatorship. During our tour, we heard the story of Maks Velo, the architect who renovated his apartment, who was sent to jail for a decade for designing a modernist fireplace there. He had approval from the party. But not on paper. That wasn't enough.
As Velo told Maris Kostandini (2019) in an oral history interview:
“Enver Hoxha, strangely, started with art, in 1973. He started criticising [artists] and then arrests began! Of course, I was one of the conspicuous targets! I mean, I had done things that were eye-catching, I was more of an “avant-garde” artist and all the time I had people supporting me, I had also people who were against me…Ismail Kadare supported me. There were these people… The people who were innovative, contemporary, realized that Maks had a different mindset and needed support. While others, who were not qualified and had no aspirations and always embraced that bad socialist realism would not accept me. Well, this was the case for them after the break-off of relations with China where they convicted not only me, but also ten people from the Politburo were executed by firing squad. All that occurred in that period.”
He was arrested in 1978 and sentenced to 10 years in prison under charges of "agitation and propaganda" because of the modernist, Western-influenced tendencies of his work. Maris Kostandini (2019) explains what happened next:
“Velo spent eight years in the notorious labour camp Spaç. During his imprisonment 246 of his works were burned. After his release, he processed his trauma in ten books, and in 1991 was retrospectively granted the status of a political prisoner. Since then he has been a committed champion for human rights. Velo died on 7 May 2020 in Tirana at the age of 84.”
What did Kadare think enjoying a fire in his newly renovated fireplace as Velo sat in jail? What inspired his "Llora", and his bittersweet, poem from his days studying in Moscow:
“At the airplane door the wind awaited you.
My heart filled up with snow.
Like a great solitude I descended,
But at the airport—
No one. No one.
Hey, take these suitcases.
Heavy? They are filled with waiting.
All night we flew over the cities of Europe
You didn’t know what ailed you, you did not wait for me.”
Walking through his home, we wonder about Kadare’s life. What became of him after missing Llora in Moscow? Did he run into Marquez, also there in the 1950's, or Kundera in Paris, four decades later? Did he challenge the powers that be or accommodate them? For Peter Morgan, author of Ismail Kadare: The Writer and the Dictatorship 1957-1990, it’s an open question. Some people saw him as a hero who fought the regime using his pen; for others, he was just too close or possibly a bit of both, simultaneously powerful and impotent. Kadaré himself understood the trials of self censorship in the face of oppression (Suta, 2024). He saw the compromises, the self edits in his works, "They are layered in my conscience in two states.. their ghosts right in front of my eyes.... blinded by trauma...." (quoted in Suta, 2024).
“Youl could write a book about the artists censored under Hoxha,” Baby C laments.
It’s still hard to remember, hard to fathom what happened, a whole country starving, imprisoned, beaten, tortured. People don’t talk about it much. Many do not remember; others can’t do much but look back. “I was dirt poor for years,” confesses the driver of the car into the German embassy wall in 1990 in the end of Mud Sweeter Than Honey. “I used to cry from hunger.” (Rejmer, 2018, p. 265).
Memory culture is complicated here. A quote from Hannah Arendt on the wall ("Imperfect Past") ends the exhibition at the House of Leaves (Museum of Secret Surveillance) in Tirana: "To the extent that the past can indeed be overcome, this can be achieved only by telling what happened."
Easier said than done. Recall Arnoldo’s grandfather, who has never disavowed the Communist years here, even if he barely ate. If you were from a ‘good family’, there was little incentive to look back. But if you were from “bad,” there was plenty to try to understand what happened.
Of course the silences here are many, a generation after the end of the highly repressive communist dictatorship. It takes three generations to get over trauma, says Caroline. Some say five.
"If there is one word for Tiranë, it is transformation," Arnoldo told me.
As Ypi concedes, “I have gone full circle. When you see a system change once, you start believing it can change again,” (p. 263).
But what it is changing into remains a question.
Maks Velo sees Europe as the future for Albania, telling Kostandini (2019) “it is essential for Albania to become an EU member state.”
“How would you define Europe?” asked Kostandini (2019). “As a more cultural, political, or economic union? As a union of diversity? How would you define it?”
Velo replied:
“Certainly, the three of them together. As a cultural, political, and economic union and all this makes it more beautiful as a union of diversity that has a priority and a much greater value now because they have managed to eradicate conflicts. Even when they have conflicts, such as the case with England, they resolve them peacefully! It has also made it a huge territory with many values, free movement, exchanging values, which are so tangible. The progress is very obvious with youngsters, students, and this is your case. All these values affect one another and the integration of these values to one another becomes much easier. Europe has reached its maximum and now I hope it resolves those few conflicts that are inevitable since there is still much diversity, but they have the organs to solve the conflicts!”
July 29
And so the journey comes to an end, a short flight back to Athens, back in the water, back to the golden light, thinking about Corfu and Sarandë, Durrës, and Gjirokastër, Beret, Krujë, Maxola's Dream Hotel & Restaurant and their hospitality, Apollonia and Butrint, and their ruins, the protests and history of Tiranë, our swimming days on Ionian and Adriatic
seas. Back in the water, thinking about the lessons and stories, the horrors of history, the sweet sounds of Italian in the air, kids laughing in the water, a cold beer after a long journey on the way back home. Shumë faleminderit Albania. Thank you very much.
Interviews:
Arnoldo, Alban,
Emilio, Albania
Klarens, Albania
Marcel, Albania
References
Abramson, L. (2015, July 12). Albania, the Berlin Wall, and the embassy storms of 1990. HuffPost. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/albania-1990-embassy-st_b_7780550
Kadare, I. (n.d.). Llora [Llora]. Letërsi Shqip. https://letersishqip.com/ismail-kadare/krijime-letrare/llora
Kadare, I. (2011). Chronicle in stone (D. Bellos, Trans.). Vintage Books. (Original work published 1971)
Kostandini, M. (2019) “Maks Vel Interview by Mariana Kostandini, Albania, August 2019, https://arbeitaneuropa.com/transcripts/maks-velo/
Mëhilli, E. (2017). From Stalin to Mao: Albania and the socialist world. Cornell University Press.
Morgan, P. (2010). Ismail Kadare: The Writer and the Dictatorship 1957–1990. Legenda.
Rejmer, M. (2021). Mud sweeter than honey: Voices of communist Albania (Z. Krasodomska-Jones & A. Lloyd-Jones, Trans.).
Suta, B. (2024). Literature and trauma under a totalitarian regime: The Ismail Kadaré case. Kwartalnik Neofilologiczny, (4), 485–497.
Ypi, L. (2021). Free: Coming of age at the end of history. Allen Lane.
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