Tirana, Albania

While the kids were in Speak Teens, I spent the week exploring Albania’s capital, Tirana. I was pleasantly surprised at how much I liked it (R didn’t…). There were tons of huge cafes scattered throughout the city and lots of green spaces and parks.

Flamingo Revolution

Soon after we arrived in Albania, the Flamingo Revolution started. It began as a protest against Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who was planning on buying up and developing land near Vlorë that is a protected flamingo habitat (hence the name of the protest / revolution). While we were there, this protest evolved into the Albanian people asking President Rama to resign. As the days passed, more and more people joined the protests which started in Skandebeg square every evening. During the day, you would never know that this was happening – it was just like walking around any other city, although I did see quite a bit of broken glass.

Skandebeg Square and Downtown

The square was a large empty space, and contained the Opera, a museum (which was closed) and a couple of other buildings. One of the more interesting buildings inthe square is the one that looks like a face. In fact, I found the architecture in the downtown area quite interesting and modern.

During the cold war, Enver Hoxha commissioned the building of 175,000 bunkers across the country. To put this into perspective, this was one bunker for every 4 Albanians at the time. He did this because he had severed ties with pretty much every powerful country in the world (USA, The West, Yugoslavia, Russia and China), and he was paranoined that Albania would be invaded. Nowdays, you will find these bunkers everywhere in Albania – on beaches, in the middle of cities, in mountains – everywhere. Many of them have been turned into bars, storage areas and museums. In Tirana, there are 2 bunkers of note that are now museums: Bunk’Art 1 and Bunk’Art 2. Bunk’Art 1 was a bit further out of town and I didn’t make it there. I considered going to Bunk’Art 2, but from reading the reviews, it sounded similar to the House of Leaves museum so I decided to go there instead (see below). My budget didn’t allow for both.

Here are some photos of the square and downtown:

House of Leaves Surveillance Museum

This was an interesting museum discussing the Sigurimi, Albania’s secret police during the Cold War. This museum is located in the headquarters of the Sigurimi and showed some of the surveillance equipment they used and how the network worked. And of course, there was also a bunker on site that you could visit. It would recommend this museum to anyone visiting Tirana.

Et’hem Bey Mosque

This Ottoman mosque is located on Skandebeg square and was built in the 18th century. It’s not as big today as it was back then, but it still has beautiful painted frescoes.

Namazgah Mosque

In contrast, just down the street is a new mosque – only a couple of years old. It is the largest mosque in the Balkans. What was really impressive with this mosque is the chandelier which is all arabic writing.

Castle

Unfortunately the only part of the castle that remains today is a wall. However, they took the opportunity to turn this into a nice restaurant / bar / shopping area.

Lake

There is a large artificial lake near the university area. The forest and park area around the lake had tons of walking paths, an outdoor ampitheatre and some cafes. It was a nice break from the downtown and felt like a peaceful space.