Tirana is full of bike lanes. Athens;
They only needed it a few hours in Tirana, the capital of Albania, to suffer the first shock, especially pleasant in fact.
The bike lanes in the city center are endless. As you read it. If you want to use your bike or skate in Tirana, you can do it without running the slightest risk from other vehicles.
You will wonder what the shock is … This has to do with it without a doubt unpleasant comparison with Athens. If one excludes the Grand Promenade which turned into a magnificent fiasco, in the Greek capital there is no other place so that cyclists do not feel the hot breath of cars.
In Tirana, as you can see from the photo below, bike lanes are mushrooming even on the islands of the major central arteries of the city. Proof that it is possible, there is the way, there is the know how even in cities that 30 years ago looked like villages like Tirana. So, a big X from Tirana to those who took office as mayor in Athens at least from 1990 onwards.
If the above claim (that Tirana looked like 30 years ago with a large village) you think it is excessive, you only have to notice the photo below. Children and women, poorly dressed, are lined up waiting to share the milk of the day. The whole scene is reminiscent of a village in the Greek countryside shortly after World War II.
And yet, the photo, which can be found at magnificent women’s museum in Tiranais pulled the … 1989, shortly before the “communist” regime breathed its last and rid Albania of its poisonous presence. Do you understand how far Tirana has come in the last 33 years? Clearly you understand!
Futuristic architecture and asphalt apartment buildings
Tirana is a city defiant contrasts, perhaps nowhere else in Europe can one find such a thing. Next to the monstrous working-class apartment buildings of the Hoxha regime, brutal, tall buildings are mushrooming at a very fast pace.
Like Istanbul for the last ten years, so in the Albanian capital o building orgasm is something inconceivable, the city looks like a huge factory with all that entails.
Everyone in private conversations will tell you that this kind of orgasm has to do with money laundering from illegal, all kinds of economic activities. Officially and in front of cameras no one will take such responsibility. It is similar to what everyone has a drum and some (from Tirana in this case) hidden pride.
This image of innumerable buildings for the erection of very large buildings is impossible to do not associate it with that of too many, too many, too many luxury cars. It is one of the characteristic images of Tirana and at the same time another huge contrast. Mercedes, BMW and Audi in such a … quantity in a country that has a basic salary of 300-350 euros can certainly not be justified, this is a first basic thought, even if it seems sketchy.
But despite the luxury, poverty is not hidden, it is not possible to hide. It is reflected, among other things, in the dilapidated buildings that many remain unoccupied and unmaintained because obviously the tenants do not have the money to maintain them.
Apartment buildings that look like the refugees on Alexandra Avenue, low tiled houses, shown abandoned to their fate, next to endless parking lots (a big problem of the city) and modern skyscrapers, futuristic aesthetics. The past constantly and relentlessly clashes with the present and the future even on a symbolic level in this strange city.
Speaking of the future, this has already come to Tirana. Many of the city taxis are electric, so very environmentally friendly while in the center you will see many power stations for vehicles.
Life itself plays incredible games on the inhabitants of Tirana. A man in his fifties, who even in 1990 was squeezed in the morning in the morning for some milk, today can lead … electric taxi.
It is clear that history in this corner of the Balkans is running at a very fast pace. Perhaps that is why most people miss the train of evolution that is passing in front of them in a flash. But we will talk about this in detail – and with the help of experts – in future articles.
At the moment we can export the religious tolerance of this city. On the same road one can meet orthodox or catholic churches as well as mosques. The two Christian doctrines coexist without particular problems with Islam, perhaps because the obligatory atheism in Hoxha’s years necessarily reduced religious tensions. But this is only one possible interpretation. What is certain is that Albanianness is obviously not defined by religion but more by language. The girls in the headscarf are Albanian like the Christians, nothing less, nothing more.
And speaking of language. Let no one think that phenomena like the ones we recorded in the Albanian south are not repeated in Tirana. You have a drink at night in a small bar, the owner listens to Greek, asks (always in Greek) if his customers are Greek and when he gets an affirmative answer he shares with them the moments he lived during his professional career in Greece which was sealed with the purchase of a store in Paros. True, beyond, story.
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