Tirana, te dua

What can we say about Tirana, Albania’s capital city? As trainees, we tour the city at the beginning of summer heat. After months in the villages, the sudden burst of people and the traffic jams seem foreign. After navigating the city so long, things that initially seemed so odd now make sense. Buses that don’t have clearly marked routes? No central station for trains, buses and furgons, meaning different locations for every form of transportation and every direction? A Peace Corps office that is in no way close to anything else? No problem!

Whenever there is Peace Corps business in Tirana that keeps you there overnight, you’re usually placed in one of two hostels (both of which are on the other side of town from the Peace Corps office, naturally). To first get to the place, I had to ask a cop and several people on the street and then constantly verify locations. The hostel was conveniently located off a back street, under an underpass, and in a residential building without any marking whatsoever. Luckily the owner will come to find you if you give him a ring while you’re on your way. These kinds of things become normal in a city that is just now getting road signs and street numbers.

Tirana can be a good morale booster in a way. People are quick to help you get where you’re going and to compliment your Albanian skills. An early conversation when I was first in the city on my own went something like this:
Me: Excuse me, is this Rruga Kavajes?
The officer walks down from his perch several feet above me.
Officer: Hello.
Me: Is this Rruga Kavajes? Where is the south bus station?
After a while, the officer realizes that I couldn’t possibly be a native speaker, given the fact that I’m responding in Albanian at a fraction of the speed he is speaking.
Officer: You’re not Albanian are you… are you Italian? (Albanians always think we’re Italians, even when we’re speaking English)
Me: No, I’m an American.
Officer: But you are speaking Albanian (This has happened so many times, where people will tell me, in Albanian, that we are speaking Albanian, always with an amount of surprise).
Me: Yes, I’ve studied it for 5 months. I’m living here as a PCV.
Officer: That’s great, I have a lot of respect “shume respekt” for you.”

The officer then gives me an elaborate explanation and tells me that yes, it’s Rruga Kavajes, and that I should just keep going straight. “It’s not even five minutes,” he told me. This reminds me of a conversation I had with my host sister about Albanian minutes versus American minutes. To figure out the difference, multiply Albanian minutes by five and you get the American minutes. This rang true because the walk to the station was really about a half hour. The difference in time is also something you get used to after living here for a while.

Tirana also becomes more navigable. It’s hard when you’re used to American grid systems with some sense of organization. The In Your Pocket guide for Tirana sums up getting around in Tirana the best:

“Unfortunately for guidebook writers and other foreigners, Albanian addresses often do not include street numbers. Instead, a close landmark (like a building, school, ministry, statue, etc) is mentioned for reference, prefaced by pranë (‘near’), or përballë (‘in front of).

Even if the landmark is long gone, Albanians will still refer to that using ‘ish’ (former). The medieval logic behind this is that the locals know where it is and you can ask them, so why bother painting an ugly number on a building when you can sit down and have a nice cup of coffee instead?"