Exploring Tirana & a visit from old friends

Over the weekend, I was looking forward to receiving guests!  My friend Celeste, who became a close friend while we were both working with Calvary Chapel in Russia, is now living in Pristina, Kosovo with her husband Mark and 4 year old daughter Isabella.  I hadn’t seen them in nearly seven years, when I was a bridesmaid in her wedding.  So Mark and Celeste decided to drive out to see me on the new highway built between Kosovo and Tirana and finished just last year.  What before was a treacherous journey through the mountains on really bad roads is now a pretty quick trip of four hours.  They were going to come on Friday evening, but as it turned out, they all came down with a nasty 24 hour flu bug so they decided to come on Sunday evening instead.  So with the prospect of a free day to explore, Anya and I decided to go out on the town.  First stop:  the National Gallery of Art, featuring all Albanian artists from the mid-1800s (when the Ottomans started to let private citizens dabble in art, apparently) up to the 2000s.  A part of the exhibit was a fascinating series of color photographs taken by the British photographer, Martin Parr, in 1990 – just as things were loosening up in Albania – and in so doing, he provided a bird’s eye view for the rest of the world into life during the Communist period – in color, no less.  Color photography didn’t exist (or was very rare) in the Communist bloc of countries and didn’t become really widespread until the mid-1990s.  Displays of art that had been banned by the Hoxha dictatorship (and the artists imprisoned); huge tableaus of Communist propaganda depicting the idyllic and technologically progressive lifestyle the country was moving toward, and later modern art of the 1990s and 2000s. 

A stroll down the main street leading to Tirana’s Scanderbeg Square (commemorating Albania’s national hero, about whom I have written earlier), which is under major construction and is nothing but an eyesore at this point, unfortunately, and on (after a lunch of salmon and caviar cream risotto) to the National History Museum.  Unfortunately, these museums have very few captions in English, so we couldn’t read a lot, but we got the gist of things – artifacts, statues, mosaics, etc., dating hundreds of years B.C. from Greek vintage and earlier – amazing!  Several floors of exhibits provided a tour of Albania’s history, to independence in 1912, and up to the 1990s.

Tirana's mosque and clock tower

Detail of mosque

Scanderbeg on Tirana's main square

Sunday morning, I joined my long-time Albanian/American friend Lola for church followed by lunch.  Her American pastor and his wife were extremely gracious – they drove Lola and me to the restaurant overlooking the base of Dajti mountain and beautiful view overlooking Tirana, and then after lunch, picked us up in their Landrover and drove us up cratered, narrow roads almost to the top of the mountain.  More beautiful views of Albanian pastoral and mountainous landscapes!

New Hope Baptist Church

Lola treated me to a delicious lunch with a beautiful view!

Roasted veggies!

View of Tirana

Skinny Albanian hay stacks

The beauty of the Balkans

By the time I got back home after my time with Lola, it was almost time for Celeste and Mark to arrive so I started preparing dinner… when the phone rang.  It was Mark – their Land Rover had broken down about 40 kilometers north of Tirana, on a fairly unpopulated portion of the road but miraculously across the street from a mechanic’s shop.  It turned out to be the water pump that had broken, but spare parts only in Tirana and not on a Sunday.  So – with no taxis in sight out there, I called my faithful driver, Imer, and he picked me up & together we drove out to rescue my friends.  On Monday, Imer took Mark (who is fluent in Albanian, which is also spoken in Kosovo) around to spare parts places and back to the car, where he got it fixed.  I got off work a couple of hours early and was able to spend the evening with them, and they left the following morning.  Not really enough time to spend with good friends whom I hadn’t seen in seven years, but it was so wonderful to see them and enjoy catching up, even if the visit was brief.

Isabella, Celeste and Mark