A walk around the Tirana is never a dull one, and for me it is a city of many contradictions and paradoxes. It is a place where your morning commute can see you share the road with horse carts and Hummers, where people shake their heads to say yes, and where protests and demonstrations can pop up at any moment.
The first thing I noticed, and subsequently loved about Tirana was the architecture. A fascinating confusion of brightly coloured Tetris blocks, haphazardly placed where they fell with little or no consideration for the wider aesthetic panorama. Leftover remnants from the communist era sprout from the concrete in garish shades of pink and green like roses forcing their way through the cracks in the pavement. Sprawling glass and steel structures permeate the sky like tombstones that give little or no regard to the devastating destruction, social cleansing, and riotous gentrification that they leave in their wake.
As you walk around the streets, negotiating the potholes and loose paving slaps you are confronted at every turn by state-commissioned artworks that brazenly paint over the underlying social issues and decay which is palpable in the air around you. But these are all reasons why I love this city.
Tirana has a raw energy about it, one that I have not experienced anywhere else. It is undoubtedly alive and has a spirit and vibrancy about it the likes of which cannot even be diminished by festering social strife. Its people are resilient and proud, and the mixture of urban spectacles, disasters, and abnormalities has resulted in it evolving into one of the most intriguing and delightful places you could hope to visit.
Out of the darkness of its communist years, life has sprouted in the form of Bohemia and each street offers a cornucopia of history and colour. This is a city that is never quiet and its bustling avenues resonate with car horns, the voices of its inhabitants and a heartbeat that can never be quelled.
For me, Tirana is a city of opportunity- a place that ignited a somewhat quashed creative spark, and a place where love, friendship, passion, beauty, and creativity has flourished and poured from every part of my being. It is an unexpected friend, a place where I found solace when I felt I had no home, and it has opened doors for me that I never knew existed. Whilst I know I am privileged to be able to live the life I do in a place where so many live on the poverty line and where others find themselves in social black holes that they fear they will never be able to escape, there is not a day that passes that I don’t feel thankful for being here.
Yes, this is a place that has its problems, but I believe that there is no such thing as perfect and that to achieve wonder, one must negotiate the hardest obstacles that one can imagine. Good things do not come easily and when it comes to fixing the things that need fixing, all that is needed is a little bit of love and perseverance. The Albanian people are some of the most interesting, fascinating and inspiring people I have met, and overcoming the issues of the present day is just a mere bump in the road compared to their volatile past.
I think this place is on the verge of blooming. What now to many seems like an unassuming bud that seems unlikely to flower, I see the beginning of something beautiful. This place is alive with spirit and potential, all it needs is more of its inhabitants to realise it and to nurture the opportunities for greatness that lie here.
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