This post continues the blog posts about the 2013 Balkan journey.
From
Gjakova in the Kosovo I went to Albania's capital
Tirana by bus. The bus ended at the huge
Skanderbeg square in the center of the city directly in front of the tourist information office - on a Saturday. Fortunately the office had tourist-friendly opening times ;-):
Walking around the Skanderbeg square is a pleasure because you find a good mixture of architecture and culture. Tirana is a very young city. Before it became Albania's capital in 1920 it was a small town and only a few houses, like parts the
former castle, survived Tirana's growth. Albania became independent in 1912 and therefore everything that makes a city a capital had to be built at once. Therefore you find around the Skanderbeg place buildings for ministries, mosques, churches etc.:
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| View into the mosque. Note that you see paintings of houses - which is an exception for mosques. |
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| The TID tower still under construction (after 6 years) |
The neighborhood at the south-west of the Skanderbeg square was in the times of the dictator
Enver Hoxha a closed suburb for Albania's leaders and their families. It is called
Blloku and is now the party location for Tirana's youth with lots of bars, discos and restaurants.
This the call for dance music:
Fuse ODG - Antenna (so funny when he controls her "remote").
Along the
Dëshmorët e Kombit boulevard at the south of the Skanderbeg square you find many interesting government buildings built in different periods; for example the
Presidential Palace. At the end of the boulevard is the campus of the
University of Tirana (has more than 100.000 students):
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| The impressive main building of the university. |
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| The rectorate building of the university |
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| The ministry of finance. |
At the south-east of the Skanderbeg square you find the
Murat Toptani street which is a nice boulevard. Along the boulevard is the national art gallery, the castle a huge and beautiful garden restaurant, the
building of the National Assembly and the the
Ura e Tabakëve.
In my opinion Tirana is a nice city with many places to discover and super friendly inhabitants. Even the new-built outskirts look OK and clean. The only drawback is its "chaos" in terms of information and transport. For example Tirana has a large network of bus lines but nobody, not even the bus or taxi drivers know it. There is no network map and no timetables and often also no numbers of the lines at the bus stops. But as I wrote in my
first post about Albania the key is communication. For example Tirana is surrounded by high mountains and there is a cable car to the
Mount Dajt. But how to get there? Well I drunk a beer with some locals and they called a taxi driver who called a bus driver who explained how to get there by bus. The bus is very cheap while the taxi is not but the taxi driver abstained to make money to drive me there. That is what I really liked. In many tourist places people try to get your money but not in Albania where tourism plays almost no role. OK, this is the reason for funny things like the new bicycle renting system: There are several places where you can rent a bike but the bikes are all locked and the persons to unlock them don't work on weekends. I never saw anybody renting the bikes also not during the week but I admit that the bikes give the city a modern touch ;-)
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| One of the bike rental stations. |
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| Typical urban housing close to the center of Tirana |
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| The Lanë river in the inner city. |
The cable car to the Mount Dajt is so expensive that most of the Tiranians cannot use it (nevertheless cheap for Western-Europe tourists). The ride up the mountain lasts some minutes and the views are magnificent. The area at the top consists of a restaurant and an astonishingly cheap and modern hotel. Some hiking routes start there too but the real top of the mountain is unfortunately a closed military zone.
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| The mount Dajt. |
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| The new outskirts if Tirana at the bottom station of the cable car |
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View at misty Tirana. The lake at the left is one
of the two artificial lakes with large parks around them |
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| At the top of the Dajt. |
I repeat myself but Tirana is really worth a trip for a long weekend. The nightlife is good and the museums are the best ones I have been on the Balkan. The surrounding is beautiful and the city still has an adventurous touch while it is super safe. I never felt so safe in such a big city - no matter where and when.
