Wednesday, July 19, Tirana

There's cache in American branding on the streets of Tirana. This is just  a sampling. 

When I go to foreign cities I generally check out the public parks. I do this because I have a role in maintaining our local park in my neighborhood. And the one thing I can almost always say is that our park has about 1% of the vitality of any city park I've ever seen.
Today I went by a city park in Tirana.  It was about 1/4 the size of our Oakland park, yet it had hundreds of people, mostly adults in it at 8pm on a Wednesday night.
Our park closes at dusk so the comparison is not completely on the mark, but even an hour before dusk our park would have, at best, one or two adults supervising their kids on the play equipment, plus a few guys playing basketball.
The Tirana park had whole families, sometimes three generations, enjoying the night together. There was no special kids equipment but they found ways to entertain themselves. Some smaller kids had improvised a soccer field using an old TV box with a circular hole in the side.
What are the factors that make their park so successful, and ours so much a failure? I'll speculate since I can't ask the people of Tirana:

• it's hot out and many folks don't have air conditioning, so being in the cool park is comfortable
• their park has benches, lots of benches. Adults sit and talk on the benches. We have nowhere to sit.
• Albanian TV is probably dull:  soccer and guys in suits I'd guess. And people don't have home computers with internet. 
• the park is surrounded by commerce. Shops line three sides of the park. Vendors sell magazines, roasted corn, and other goodies either within the park or on its border. 
• the streets of Tirana are teeming with people. I'd guess half the city is out and about. Obviously no such thing happens in my neighborhood.

I'm headed south tomorrow. I'm going to make a grand circuit of Albania, south to the beaches, then inland to some archeological sites, then back to Tirana on the 27th. I've signed up for an interesting tour of Northern Albania beginning here on the 28th. The tour ends on August 1. I'll motor over to Macedonia right after that. 

      

I like this 1980's Hopperesque painting.

I hit the museums today. I spent a couple good hours in the National Art Gallery. To their credit they have retained the socialist murals of heroic steel workers while at the same time showing more contemporary stuff. I liked a few things I saw.

Enver  Hoxha's idea of childhood, I guess.

I've apparently reached the maximum number of photos I can put on one day's blog so I'll include a couple more paintings tomorrow.