Report on Tirana

Antigone, Fatjon and I drive to Tirana in the morning, 3th of May. She commutes to the capital every day. Entering Tirana: First apparent thing I sense is the unbearably chaotic traffic. As a german, I am not used to this kind of approach to the problem of transportation. From a birds eye view, the traffic of tirana might look like a horde of ants simultaneously getting into their den. Antigone tells me, there are two rules on the street: 1. Don't get yourself killed. 2. Don't kill somebody else. No other rules. Forget traffic lights, street markings, sidewalks, signs, police, and other archaic means of regulating traffic. The system adjusts itself by sonic communication: If you get too close to another car, it will honk at you. Alternatively, the driver will shout at you. This works surprisingly well. Actually, I would like to measure the traffic efficiency and accident probability of tirana against a system relying on more formal rules like munich. I suspect tirana wouldn't compare too bad.

Next thing coming to my attention are high-rise buildings painted in expressive, if not psychedelic, colors. Fatjon tells me the story of the mayor who was so sick of the dull brownish-greyish post-communist structures, he ordered to brush all the buildings in strongly saturated colors in an overnight action. I liked that story. For me as a foreigner, the colorful buildings create a positive impression of the city. The colored buildings of tirana are now famous, some kind of trademark. The tiraneans themselves lead a more controversial discussion about the colors, but that is another story...

Fatjon and Antigone take me to a bar in the blokk area. This area in the center of tirana was forbidden to enter for normal citizens in communist time. This place was reserved by the communist leaders, offering large parks and luxury residencies to them. Now the area is the most expensive sector in tirana, home to divisions of supernational companies and in-bars and in-restaurants and in-cafes. I liked the place very much, actually, as it gave me the feel of being in a lively urban area of an interesting metropolis. It reminded me of some parts of Berlin or Hamburg.

There are some similarities between Tirana and Berlin I noticed:

• Both cities have both facist and communist background. To me this expresses itself in some architecture: Some buildings, squares and monumenents seem alike to me.


• Both cities have no economy. No real prosperity-creating industry like BMW in Munich.


• Strong cultural ambitions in both cities, mostly among young people. I need to elaborate this more...


• Both strong metropolitan nightlife & young lifestyle, i.e. in-bars, etc.

Some main differences for me:

• Tirana is embedded in a very very poor, Berlin in a very very rich country. This makes the rich/poor contrasts heavier and more obvious. Tirana has huge infrastructure problems (i.e. broken roads, no public transportation) and less recreational possibilities.


• Tirana has southern climate. Both mountains and seaside are very nearby. To me, this means a lot of potential towards recreation and tourism.
  
• tbd.

Sum: Combine the climate and landscape of tirana with the industry of munich, embed it into a super-economy as germany is, change the language to english or french, and you have the perfect metropolis. What do you think? Would you like to live there?