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Tirana presents itself as a quirky city, but it really is a mix of sweetness and badass. A club sign with a black cat, for example, which is meant to signal meanness and bad luck, is cute at the same time. It wants people to go into the club and consume brashly, even though it looks nonplussed, writes runner Carien du Plessis
Place: Tirana, Albania, Southeastern Europe
Distance: 10km to 15km
Time: 6am to 8am (sunrise 5.15am)
Route: Town centre through, Garden Park and back
Reason: Passing through to Sarajevo
Albania has a criminal underbelly. The country is known as a hard-drug route to Europe, although there are not many obvious signs of local drug use.
It’s interesting to discover that so many people in this city of about half a million are fitness freaks, gymming in the park. Many doctors here are said to prescribe exercise for ills and it seems as if they are taken seriously.
Before the heat of the day can set in (the place is hot enough to do 40°C in the shade), I set off from the backpackers’ lodge in town (one of the nicest I’ve stayed at).
It seems that people here also have home-made electricity solutions resembling spiders’ webs. The city used to be dogged by blackouts because of the communist-era grid (the hooting, as a result of non-working traffic lights, apparently also made it a pretty noisy place). One 72-hour blackout was blamed on a cat and mouse running into high-voltage cables. Top that, Eskom.
First, I pass the National Museum of History with its impressive façade and, inside, a section devoted to the more bloody abuses that took place in the communist period from 1945 to 1990.
Around the museum and the central square, Albania’s flags hang on streetlights paired with German flags in preparation for a five-hour state visit later in the day by Chancellor Angela Merkel that will bring the city’s traffic to a standstill.
There is also Skanderberg Square, where a statue of communist-era leader Enver Hoxha stood until it was pulled down by crowds in 1991. Now only the statue of Skanderberg, a 15th-century Albanian noble, fighter and hero, remains in the square.
Heading for the river, the run takes me past the National Art Gallery (behind it is a dismantled statue of Lenin, but it’s too early to go see), the cinema, Parliament and then into George Bush Street, so named in honour of his 2007 visit. Balkan countries have a way of naming streets after living statesmen in a way only South Africans would understand.
Some apparent gamblers exit a gambling place on the road and get into yellow taxis in the not-so-early morning hours. Judging from the cars outside, gambling can be a lucrative business here. There is the old castle, the National Assembly building and a charming old stone bridge – and a map that hints at a massive green space to the south of the city. When the Tiranë River turns out to be more of a shallow stream smelling a bit like sewage, I abandon my initial plan to run along it and set off for the park, which turns out to be an important landmark called Tirana Park on the Artificial Lake.
It is a joy to see so many people exercising, using park benches to do sit-ups and trees to do press-ups or to hug. Some people don’t even wear gym clothes, but their usual jeans, trousers and shirts. A few men take off their shirts, with the likelihood of them doing so in direct proportion to the size of their tummies.
The deeper I go into the park, the more crowded it gets. People leave the paved pathways to walk on footpaths in the woods. Eventually, I get to Artificial Lake, which was built in 1955 and which people use for fishing – although not this morning.
Viewpoints in the wood remind me of the mountains around the city and, although I ache to climb, I wonder how people do that in this heat.
Next to some water taps is a statue of a woman giving water to a soldier. They make it look so nice. It’s a pity that visitors are advised against drinking Tirana’s water.
The shadows cast by the trees ease the heat of the day a bit, and I kick myself for not bringing a few lekë for an espresso in one of the many cafés.
Towards the south side of the park are two interesting sights: an American summer campground (presumably for the kids from the “international school” in town) and, past a number of embassies, a real-life squatter camp.
I ask a local about it and he says they are gypsies who had been living like that, out of choice, for years.
Outside the park, the rush-hour traffic is in full swing and I have to be careful. Here, the drivers use their hooters to navigate, which seems to mean the one with the loudest hooter has right of way.
As I pass a street corner, a couple painfully part for work with a deep kiss and a lingering embrace. A bout of homesickness hits me, which is completely out of character.
This is an edited version of a post on the Carien Runs the World blog.
Follow the blog at carienrunstheworld.wordpress.com
