Tirana, a surprising city

Tirana is a city in continuous evolution, far more emancipated than one would expect. Thanks to a mayor who has redesigned its historical centre, the city and its inhabitants are trying to rid themselves of the marks left by a past which still emerges from time to time.

Tirana is an emancipated city in ferment where, amongst the younger generations, the quest for fun and consumerism is comparable to their fathers' thirst for emergence at the end of the repressive socialist regime in 1990.
An article published in Le Monde in 2005 stated that the density of social gathering places in the centre of Tirana was greater than that of Paris. This wave of vitality won Tirana's mayor, Edi Rama, the World Mayor 2004 prize for best mayor in the world, placing him above his better-known colleagues of Mexico City (2nd prize) and Rome (3rd prize). It is in fact thanks to the initiative of the popular mayor that the city began to take on a new appearance, with the buildings painted in bright colours, the streets of the centre re-laid and well-maintained, the numerous cafés and other gathering places always full, the restoration of Sheshi park and improvements to the River Lana environment. This is the image the city centre presents to those who have just arrived. A city in full expansion which endeavours to remove the unpleasing label applied to Albania and its capital by European media. This re-birth is so evident that one gains the impression that it is a demonstration of pride towards their European cousins, who tend to attach only negative labels to the Albanian people. Walking the streets and searching beyond outward appearance, one still finds situations which remind one of the huge amount that remains to be done in order to normalise a situation which has been in continual variation for the last 15 years. There are clandestine money-changers who may change the equivalent of up to fifty thousand euros of dubious origins in one day. There are traders selling clothes donated by European non-profit organization which, in this context, are sold In Albania by those who control this activity. There are countless stolen European cars which are resold or even used directly by their new owners. There are many distressing realities to counterbalance the development and vitality which dazzle the newly-arrived. The hope of this people is perceptible as they endeavour to overcome a difficult situation to whose creation they did not contribute but which caused them suffering above all else. For 45 years the population was subjected to a socialist regime which has been described as the harshest and most repressive in history. The opening towards the West which followed the fall of the regime favoured and strengthened innumerable illegal commercial operations towards and from Europe, operations which have often been useful to those using Albania as a point of access for the countries of the Eastern block and the Balkans, and which reached their culmination during the Kosovo War. At that time unknown quantities of arms and other supplies of the Serbian army and Kosovo militia passed through Albania so as to escape the 1998 embargo.
This, then, is what the city of Tirana transmits: great frivolity, the occasional reminder of the past and, most of all, hope for a rosier future.