Tirana

We took a packed mini bus into Tirana, the capital of Albania. It is about a two and a half hour trip of being tossed, bounced, jostled and bumped some more along heavily potted and rutted roads connecting smooth highways through a verdant countryside sprinkled with small family farms. The city itself is quite large with grand boulevards and spacious parks at the center of town. You can feel the eastern block Soviet influence in the government buildings. But any sign of communist rule has been scrubbed clean. Albania is boldly trying to push themselves into the modern world. For me, the most exciting place to visit was the Art History Museum. I love socialist propaganda art with its workers of the world as heroic figures. Massive arms pounding iron with hammers big enough to demolish a house and women charging into battle with rifles in hand wearing angelic faces fighting for glory. It is a style that eastern block countries perfected and Albania had some astonishing examples of this genre. I loved it. We stayed at a nice hotel near the center of town that was reasonably priced and convenient. The restaurants are incredibly inexpensive. It was not difficult to have a nice lunch for less than 500 lek, (only about 5 dollars) a huge dinner with appetizers and all the trimmings still only ran about 1000 to 1200 lek ($10-$12). Typical main courses were about 400 lek ($4) We tried lots of the local cosine and loved the mixing of unusual flavors with simmered sauces and oven-baked meat. Lamb is probably the most common meat served in Albania. Pork not so much since this is a predominately Muslin country. Our favorite was a fried white cheese with a blackberry sauce. Wow, my mouth loved that combination.