The Other Toronto

So the next two week in Tirana were spent exactly how life should be spent everywhere: cooking elaborate meals and entertaining for the intellectual elite of the community.  Riding the coattails Garrett’s celebrity status in order to achieve a position of my own, I plotted a course that would have me on top of the social scene by the end of two weeks, which I was.   All the ex-pats in the city made pilgrimages to Garrett’s apartment on the west side of town to eat, drink, be merry, and most importantly, claim that they were there.  

The highlight of these two weeks came when we went to the Coin Tower to watch the latest protests.  Everyone who receives Albanian news e-mail alerts knows that there are two common themes in Albanian news: flooding and political gridlock.  As the opposition had been boycotting parliament and on a hunger strike for however long a period of time, Friday was to be the day that the strike ended, and most were anticipating the government falling, violence and widespread brigandry.  In fact, a Czech girl working for the EU in Tirana called and pleaded that we remain indoors that night because the government was about to fall and that things could get real, real fast.

Interpreting this as a suggestion that we go out and have one of those “I was there” moments to peg up on our walls of privileged elitism*, we set off for the new Coin Tower, which I have every reason to believe is the tallest building in Albania, which had a terrace and a brilliant view of the downtown.  It’s also the only place in Albania where speaking English—which tacitly implies that the speaker is American, which directly implies that he/she has supported Kosovo—does not give one carte blanche.  In fact, we had to dress up, as dressed up as a filthy backpacker on the road for seven-and-a-half months could be (by tucking in my plaid shirt), and set off.  To my delight we were let in and we sipped imported beer and a $6 glass of wine on the terrace overlooking the main square and the hunger strike below.  This was it.  This was our “Let them eat cake” moment.  I felt like the Gromekos in Dr. Zhivago, mocking the revolutionaries just before they moved into their stately apartment and divied up the rooms, headed by a stern party matron.   As it turned out, however, [unfortunately] no plump Russian commissar would be mistress of my destiny.  At least this time around.  The “revolution” sputtered and died remarkably quickly like an old Mercedes.

So aside from this, I attended the opera for an Italian-Albanian cultural exchange, dined on fresh prawns and innovated with both arugula and kitchenware design from old 5L water bottles.  In all, a success for me and Tirana, which has proven itself to be just as, if not more, worldly than its namesake, Toronto.  

*This is very important to people like me, who expect to cap out at $30K a year and want to be able to turn my nose up at the world and say things like, “Yeah, I have no employable skill, but I have experienced the raw emotion of the Balkan spirit.”