Aug 31 - Head off early by myself, on foot, to sort out bus tickets for our next destination. I’ve read that it isn’t always clear how to go this route, and there is no information online, so decide to deal with it in person. The station I walk to is just a guess, as there are at least three bus terminals in town, and it isn’t immediately clear which terminal services which geographic area. The place I go to turns out to be correct, so go to the first company stall with my destination written on the door, and buy the tickets. There are several other ticket offices that do this route. Ohrid is 20 Euros/ticket. Choose this over the main stop of Struga, as this would necessitate a transfer to a taxi for the remaining 20 km.
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The Archaeological museum was really small, just a few rooms with glass cases of artifacts, from Neolithic to late Roman.
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There are two museums in Tirana that weave together art with a exhaustive journey through the ‘dark times’ of Albania’s Communist history. One is a ways out of town, but the other, called Bunk Art 2, is within walking distance. It is housed in a series of underground tunnels and bunkers, created by the regime to house important ministry officials in case of attack.
There are several rooms dedicated to the Border Forces under the 1946-1990 regime. These soldiers were typically recruited from families thought to be more loyal to the regime. Their job was to stop illegal immigration across the country’s borders. The vast majority of the time, this meant stopping people from leaving Albania. This was common, as it was nearly impossible for Albanians to obtain permission to travel abroad. The penalty for crossing the border was death. Nearly 1,000 Albanian citizens died this way, while it is estimated that nearly 15,000 escaped.
As an added assurance of border integrity, the regime also carried out a ‘depopulation’ program in the border areas, where every family within a certain distance of the border was evaluated for ‘degree of loyalty’. Those family not deemed sufficiently patriotic were forced to leave their homes for places deeper within Albania.
There was also a lot of discussion about the government’s propaganda machine, not dissimilar to what Stalin was doing in the USSR. In fact, there were some photos of parades in which Hoxha’s image was carried alongside Stalin. There was a quote here from a Albanian citizen, named Rajmonda Zajmi Avignonwho, grew up in this political climate that I felt was interesting enough to quote:
During my early childhood, walking in the streets of my town I couldn’t escape reading the slogans displayed in big capital letters everywhere.
Well, I couldn’t escape lots of other things too, but when I started learning to read for the first time, I was proud to read those big letters. Without paying attention I was actually being fed with propaganda, and unfortunately, no one asked me if I wanted to do so! These slogans were slowly, but continuously entering into everyone’s brains and mine too, like if it was food for survival and transforming slowly our human behaviors. Amongst many slogans, we were used to read everywhere in the streets, walls, buildings, mountains, fields, and everywhere possible, I am still nowadays unable to take this one out of my mind:
“WE BUILD THE SOLIALISM BY HOLDING THE PICKAXE IN ONE HAND AND THE RIFLE IN THE OTHER”
As a child, never understood this slogan, and still I don’t, or better, now days I refuse to understand any propaganda of such any longer. At those times, as we learnt to be proud without thinking of what we were proud for, and having experienced different situations, we went a different way. Therefore I decided to create the monster of dictatorship as an old tale that speaks about some true stories in one piece.
I collected these pieces that belong to the past and put them together in order to transmit feelings, emotions, fears, thoughts and also letting you know that in fact, we create the monsters, applause them, follow them, put them in a pedestal and after these monsters feel so powerful and they don’t want to leave us anymore. They also try to get us twirled into their abyss’ whirlpool. This is the moment when the unspoken fear of the monsters ampl[ify] and they build big walls, prisons, twisted strategies, as they become afraid of free speech, thoughts and diversity. Being scared even of their own shadow, the monsters are suspicious of everybody and they can not trust anyone anymore. This is the moment when the monsters isolate themselves and they think who is the next victim on the list. Exerting the power of life and death over the people, the monsters make ones loose the sense of analyses and reflection which paralyses the society. They overwhelm everyone, and reduce oxygen for thinking, breathing and heart beating and what’s more important [than] living in freedom.
……
If one day you decide to fight the monsters, be aware, while fighting monsters, do not forget what you strive for,
Always watch out [for] the monster inside of you!
The Bunk Art 2 Museum is just south of a large plaza complex with many government buildings and historic structures.
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