This is biased, but my favorite place in Tirana is my funky little patchwork neighborhood. The posh and lively Blloku is more organised and tree-lined, built as it was for Communist party elite, but elite and I are never in the same sentence. I live about a 20 minute walk from Blloku, and instead of wide avenues and treelined sidewalks the atmosphere is a lot more homespun and handmade.
My neighborhood is tucked a few streets behind a hectic round about called Zogu i Zi, so every morning I leave a quiet bubble to cross one of the busiest intersections in town twice a day on my walk to and from work.
It’s a hyperbolic contrast, and almost comical for how ridiculously stressful this one small part of my 15 minute commute is. The entire rest of the walk is downright quaint, slowpaced, filled with markets and local shops, and then right before my school I have to cross this death trap.
My first week in Albania, Zogu i Zi round about paralyzed me on the curb, watching a churning circle of 4-6 lanes (it’s what you make it, as a driver you’re the boss, not road rules) stream in front of me in an overwhelming loop of black smoke, honking horns, and frequent shouts.
My boss, Jeff, coached me to just “jump in so they know to stop for you”. That’s a lot of faith to put in a stranger, Jeff.
I’ve gotten better at throwing my body into traffic and trusting the process, but I’m always relieved at the end of the day after I cross Zogu for the last time. Heading towards the little alley that shortcuts through the buildings points me towards a much more peaceful place.
Once I turn off the main street and step into the zig zaggity network of alleys and cut throughs and skinny streets that spider themselves into the shape of my neighborhood, I feel at home. The traffic noise fades out as I move further into tightly knit buildings. The cars move through this area with more caution out of necessity, weaving turtle pace slow through produce stands and pedestrians, dodging potholes ready to eat the bumpers of what is, almost 100% of the time, a black Mercedes.
I pass the cafe where the taxi cabs park lopsided on the sidewalk, their right wheels hitched up over the curb, the left leaning into the street. Despite the fact that I pass this way every workday, twice a day, the sleepy eyed men still say “Taxi” to me every time I walk by. It’s not an eager proclamation, or a question as to my need for a ride, but rather a statement of fact as to the existence of their car and its purpose.
“Taxi” said in that way sounds like “I have a car, and it’s a taxi, in case you were wondering. And if you were wondering, and if you need a ride, you can talk to me about it. If not, it’s fine, I’ll just continue to nap in my car/drink coffee/smoke this cigarette.”
I appreciate the laid back sales approach, even if the obliviousness to my permanent presence in the neighborhood is wrapped around it.
I continue on my way until the road curves to the right, and opens up into a larger space where several little roads feed awkwardly into a central paved area that lends itself to organic parking lots that change shape each day.
When I enter the free form parking lot/paved area/central meeting spot, I have a 360 view of the random shops along the edges. There is a hot pink beauty shop in the first floor of the building to my left. A dusty mama dog is always curled up on the marble steps. She sleeps through the sound of the women inside, talking loudly over bad pop music, while the little girls play with dolls on the floor. The beauty shop seems less like a place of business and more like the scene of a teenage girls’ bathroom before prom- patrons and workers are hard to tell apart, as everyone crowds around the mirrors. Some of the women blow dry their own wet hair as they wait for the stylist to finish with another woman.
The mama dog sits up to investigate the old woman who runs her small business squatting on the street, fanning the flames of a tiny grill. Once the flames are smoldering she’ll carefully, with impossibly gnarled and slightly shaking hands, put corn on the smoky grate, or nuts. Next to her is a cardboard box of sunflower seeds, shiny black petals you can buy by the recycled newspaper cone.
Along the far side of the paved area is a secondhand shoe store, comically stuffed with worn boots and dress shoes, floppy sneakers and scuffed heels. Every square inch is packed, from floor to ceiling, and more shoes are crammed into overflowing racks outside on display. I have never seen anyone really working or buying here, but it seems to be a popular place to stand in front of and chat. It smells strongly of leather and tobacco when you walk by, especially on a hot day.
If I went left off the paved area onto a side “street” that cuts between the beauty shop and the shoe store I would find what we call New Grocery Store, whose yogurt has yet to give us food poisoning due to benefit of having refrigerators that work. Next to New Grocery Store is the secondhand shop run by the gentleman we call Dusty Dude*. His shop is open to the street and thus to the Tirana grit, so anything purchased from his store is sure to be covered in a fine layer of blackish red dust. This is nothing a quick rinse can’t solve, and he’s friendly and has reasonable prices, so we frequent his shop for household needs.
Just last week I was able to buy an entire set of secondhand dishes that were arranged on the ground so I could see that the Lisa Frank stationary pattern somehow perfectly matched the fro-yo franchise vibe of my apartment.
At the far right edge of the paved area, under the only tree, a creaky, tin-roofed lean to shades a gathering of old men in traditional Albanian hats, huddled around warped wooden tables.
They sit on over turned buckets or long benches, engrossed in a game of dominoes which I have never seen start or end- it is always just in progress.
The power lines multiply above my head here, stretching like a loom between the circled buildings. They tunnel together into snarls and knots at the top of randomly placed poles. The effect is something akin to a twisted, industrial May pole. Sometimes the lines dip down and sag to graze near the top of my head; in other places they have been gathered together and pinned aside with homemade restraints. Electrical work and the management of power lines seems to be a layman’s hobby, as the community pitches in to sort the lines as they see fit.
As a whole, the residential buildings huddled wagon circle style around this area are old, their exteriors studded with sketchy looking balconies rimmed proudly with pots full of flowering plants. Laundry blows in the breeze above the plants, and ever more power lines criss cross through it all.
Since I don’t need anything from the circle of stores and side alley offshoots, I cross the misshapen paved circle and head right towards the street where I live. Everything arches slowly, busted pavement and potholes, and I am sliding in between double parked cars and stepping onto a half finished (or half demolished, who can say) stone sidewalk grown furry with patches of returning grass.
The road straightens out and definitely starts to look like an official city project again. I walk past the densely packed bakeries, the fish shops, and the produce stands. At the small street next to the woman we call Watermelon (because she gave us cheap watermelons and then a free watermelon and wouldn’t let us pay) the real sidewalk begins, and I am now on my block.
Trees pop up to my left, boxed in by concrete borders that serve no real purpose other than to trip you, and thrift stores, pharmacies, tailors, and the ever ubiquitous bar cafes crop up on my right. My neighborhood has stores on the bottom floor capped off with multi story apartment buildings on top, a popular style in new development in Tirana and one I favor because it makes life so much easier.
On my errand days I can walk the row of streets, stopping at New Grocery Store, the bakery, the produce stands, and finally at the store run in the ground floor of our apartment building. It’s run by the kind man we call Downstairs Dude. His shop steps are right next to the steps of my building, and they are heaped with a small selection of produce. I get bananas from him, as well as large jugs of water. Bobby and Scott get their beer from him, and we all get ice cream from his freezer for late night snacks. On the weekends his son can be found working with him.
He’s been there for me from the beginning, when he had to give me my total by typing the numbers into his calculator because I didn’t know the words in Albanian. Now I like to think he’s kind of proud of me when he tells me my total in Albanian and I understand and give him correct change. I pay the water and electric bill to him as well, which is a much appreciated convenience.
The internet cafe is one door down from my building, and while we were waiting for our internet in our apartment it was a frequent spot. The man who runs it never fails to smile, wave, and greet me, or Scott, or Bobby with an exuberant “Hello, my friends!” if he happens to be on the sidewalk. Hanging out there reminded me so much of my time in Japan, back in 2005, when I had no personal computer and no internet at home, and would bike downtown to an internet cafe to log into MySpace and connect with home.
Laden with jugs of water and a sack of whatever we might need, I climb the stairs to our apartment.
If I’m lucky, the lights will be on in the stairway. If I’m not, they’ll be burned out. If I’m really unlucky they’ll be burned out and the cleaning women will have just mopped the steps, making them a marble death trap.
The apartment right below us usually has the same inexplicable things waiting on its doorstep- a water bottle filled with yogurt drink next to well worn houseshoes. The fire extinguisher box is broken and empty, so someone creatively uses it as a plastic bag holder for trips to the store.
I end up at my door, which is right next to my co-worker, Scott’s, door, and drop off anything I’ve been forgetting to give him. Sometimes we’ll just leave both of our doors open, the boys will have a beer, and we’ll share some food, drifting back and forth through the hall. Other times Scott comes over and we jam out to Garth Brooks’ greatest hits while “lesson planning.” Many nights we flop on one another’s couches, talking and laughing, bouncing road trip ideas off of each other.
If Scott has a couch surfer, which is fairly often, they will join us and we’ll listen to their travels and plans. Sometimes we’ll all share the couch surfer’s “Thank you for letting me stay in your house” food, which has up to this point always been delicious. I’m still campaigning for an Iron Chef Couchsurfer competition. So far, the tiramisu has won my heart, although the German onion pie Julius baked us after our weird day in Durres is a close second.
If the windows are open and there is a soccer game we can hear explosions of cheers from the gamblers down the street watching on an outdoor projection screen. If there has been a wedding, fireworks will pop in the distance and into the night, and sometimes even into the early morning. This is usually the time of night when I try to take a shower and realize, like always, that I’ve forgotten to turn on the hot water heater. I switch it on, at which point I’m sure to step in the perpetual puddle of water that creeps out from underneath the washing machine.
I make tea listening to the kids galloping over our heads, but I have gotten to where I almost forgive them their insanely loud play that rattles my ceilings to the point that a fine snow of plaster is sometimes created. Almost.
If it’s a Thursday night, calls or texts will be made to sort out breakfast or lunch plans Saturday. Our meeting spot is always the same, splitting the difference between all of our apartment- the Holy Tree, in front of the blue wall, in between the bakery and the butcher. There is nothing sanctified about it- it’s just riddled with holes. I reckon you are seeing the desperately simplistic pattern to naming by now, based on the most obvious characteristics. If it matters and explains it, remember we teach first graders.
To already have these people, this neighborhood, and all these familiar routines and rhythms three months into a new country, job, and home is incredible. Tirana is difficult, loud, hectic, and dirty, but it is also charming, quirky, beautiful, and thankfully, unexpectedly, and so strangely, very much home.
*We know the names of all of these people, but we also have these endearing nicknames for them we use amongst ourselves, from the early days before they warmed to us enough to share small talk like names, where we are from, etc. I’m also not keen on sharing strangers’ names on the internet without their knowledge/consent.
Originally published November 5th, 2012, on Blogger
