Day 149: Sarandë - Tiranë

Aug 30 - Up early and drag the bags through town to the bus stop. There isn’t really a station here, just street corners where buses going particular places congregate. The buses to Tiranë are parked right by the bus to Gjirokastër. A ticket to Tiranë is 1700 lek (US $15), which seems really high to me. Leave at 9:30, perhaps 1/4 of the passengers are backpackers.

We repeat the incoming route from Berat, over the Gjerë mountains and into the expansive valley beyond. There must really be a good reason to avoid the coastal route, even though the highway going that direction is wider.

Upon passing the city of Durres on the coast near Tiranë, I see a number of concrete tunnels built into a low cliff wall behind that city. I’ve read that the coastline here has the remains of many round bunkers. These are all from the ‘dark times’ when Albania’s leadership was convinced that they were always under threat of invasion. The subterranean tunnels were meant to be places for the leadership to hide, much like the tunnels we were told about in Poliçan (Day 142).

The chaos of the ‘North and South’ bus station on Rruga Kastriotet is the same as before, it is just a huge noisy parking lot with buses disgorging passengers willy-nilly and taxi touts dancing around for business. We take a taxi to the apartment, as the station is a full hour walk from city center. Of course, as I’ve noticed before, the exit from the station forces all traffic to go north along a busy street for at least five minutes before everyone can do a U-turn and just come straight back, since nearly everything in town is south of the station. Our hotel is in the Blloku district, which looks moderately affluent, and is just north of the Grand Park.

I had originally been under the impression that Tiranë would be like Podgorica or Sarajevo, fairly large in size but plain, except for some historic buildings and monuments. Our late afternoon walk around Blloku and north of the Lana River proves me incorrect. The city (at least a portion of downtown) is undergoing a huge metamorphosis into a futuristic, open plan setting. High rise buildings are going up all over the place, dwarfing the older structures remaining. I feel like we really haven’t experienced a city like this since Ljubljana.

The city was founded during Ottoman times, specifically in 1614. The plain it sits on, however, shows evidence of habitation from the Iron Age. It wasn’t of particular importance until it was declared capital of Albania in 1912, due to its proximity to the ocean, and central position along rail and road routes through the country.