Category Archives: Life

Albania!

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Doug Muir here, blogging from Tirana, Albania, where I’ll be for the rest of this week.

Albania is, as we all know, in a dead heat with Moldova for the not-coveted title of Europe’s Poorest Country. But downtown Tirana is surprisingly peppy: coffeeshops, restaurants, tree-lined boulevards, nightclubs, parks. Granted, non-downtown Tirana is concrete blocks and shanty towns. But the center of the city is actually quite nice.

Also, Albania lies on the right side of the line that separates “good Balkan food” (Greece, Turkey) from “horrible Balkan food” (Serbia, Romania).

Albania is nominally a majority Muslim country, but in Tirana they take their Islam lightly. I’ve yet to see a woman wearing a headscarf, never mind a veil, and the bars and coffeeshops are full of people casually drinking raki and the perfectly acceptable local beer. There are also large Catholic and Orthodox minorities; there’s a big Catholic church down the street from me, and when the new Pope was elected last month, bells rang all over the city.

There are a lot of shaven-headed young men driving Mercedes sedans while talking on their cell phones. Albania is supposed to be the stolen car center of Europe. A casual stroll around central Tirana suggests that this is entirely plausible. There are a lot of BMWs and Mercedes. (The high end Volkswagon models are also popular.)

It’s been suggested that some of Tirana’s pep is coming from Italian and Albanian organized crime, laundering their money in a city where oversight is not so stringent.

If work permits, I hope to get outside of Tirana for a couple of short trips. And Albania will have a general election next month, and I hope to blog about that.

Meanwhile, why not make this an open thread for all things Albania-related? Anyone?

Habemas Alemanam

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(Latin speakers from the previous thread will be swift to offer corrections, I am sure.)

Linguistic confusion reigns in the early days of Benedict XVI. One local tabloid said a German was Pope, another claimed him as a Bavarian, the third as a M?nchner. The Bild-Zeitung said “Wir sind Papst,” which would literally mean “We’re Pope,” a claim that’s odd, even by the standards of that paper’s often tenuous relationship with consensus reality.

Hans Kung has some sensible things to say on the subject.

My first thoughts are probably less so.
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U Can Be the President

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With sagans of words being written and broadcast about the death of John Paul II, there’s not too much to add. So here’s just a little.

Was he the last European Pope?

Brazil has 137.5 million Catholics, Mexico 89 million, the Philippines 61 million and the United States 58 million. The Europe appears with 55 million in Italy. The Catholic hierarchy is, famously, not a democracy, but the laity’s center of gravity is firmly in the New World, and its fastest growth is coming in Africa and Asia. Europe doesn’t much figure.

Josh Marshall succinctly describes why so many are even writing about this latest Bishop of Rome, and what the office looked like before Karol Wojtyla took it up:

[B]efore John Paul II, the Pope was a much more, well ? parochial figure than he has been in the decades since.

The Pope didn?t travel around the world. He was always an Italian. And he was far less involved in the ecumenical work that played such a role in John Paul?s pontificate.

The job is clearly different now, and John Paul II made it so.
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Pope John Paul II has died

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As Der Spiegel’s Matthias Mattussek writes –

“Looking back, there will be disagreement whether Woytila was a pope of inclusion or exclusion. [...] He was conservative, he was obstinate, he was a provacation. He said, kneel down, pray a rosary. But millions of people on all continents have been captured … by this pope’s fight, and who does not pray will at least show respect, even in enmity. Bidding farewell to him, the world suddenly appears to be more dangerous.”

I suppose, being as controversial as Karol Woytila was is a sign of success in an organisation as diverse and global as is the Roman Catholic Church. Mattussek is right – even if we do not agree with him on theological or political issues, or not even share his faith at all – it is impossible not to respect this pope’s achievements.

The BBC has collected some reactions to his death, here, and here.

Toilets

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I’m still thinking about Vienna. I didn’t especially like the anti aircraft towers, but I think the toilets were excellent.

I am quite serious. You see this is a problem for transatlantic comprehension. In the USA toilets have a large pool of water. This can cause an unfortunate problem called splashing.

In Italy the toilets have a tiny pool of water and uhm material lands on a porcelain surface which is in theory (but not in practice) washed clean when the toilet is flushed. Normally one has to clean the toilet after every 2nd type use. Innocent failure to do so by people used to different toilets can cause tension.

Now in Vienna they have figured out how to make toilets. There is a serioius pool of water down which the toilet is flushed then further back towards the wall a shelf which is very slightly concave so that one or two milimeters of water pool there after each flush. This is too little to splash but plenty to prevent sticking.

I haven’t seen such toilets anywhere else.

I think that squemishness about discussing this very practical issue is preventing the diffusion of this brilliant technology around Europe.

In fact, I would even be in favor of EU toilet standards if I weren’t sure that they would be dictated by larger countries with inferior plumbing.

Budapest

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These are my impressions of a recent trip to Budapest.

My father’s parents grew up in Budapest. The Waldmann family has returned on 5 or so occasions. Caroly, Erzebeth and Thomas (dad) went back in 1937 to tell the folks it was time to bug out of central Europe (they didn’t listen). Dad went back in 1989. I was there in 1997 after hopping on a train from Vienna. My sister was there on her honeymoon but didn’t take photos. I was there a month ago.

The main sight I went to see is Hojos 3, my grandmother’s family’s apartment. Dad took a camera to document the effects of war, 70 days of siege and 44 years of communism. Grandma didn’t notice any changes.

I was there in 1997 and found a used car dealership on the ground floor. Also the sweet shop across the street had turned into a bar. I had alarming thoughts about the relative power of the market and bombs in making everything solid melt into air.

Also I had never felt so foreign. Here I was in the city 2 of 4 grandparents came from and I couldn’t read anything. I mean I look at a sign that says something street and I don’t know which word is the name and which word means street. Also, for the first time in my life, I had to look carefully at the little stylised picture of a man and of a woman to figure out which was the mens’ room.

Budapest in 1997 had embraced the market and was smothering it with hot kisses. The city is at least as beautiful as Vienna (OK I’m prejudiced) and not totally out of Prague’s league, but the Budapest approach to attracting tourists was Las Vegas East (sorry central). I personally stopped at the “Las Vegas” casino but I still had money when I left so it is OK. I also have to congratulate the guy who impersonated a police officer (with no ID) accused me of changing money on the street (for no reason) inspected my foreign currency holdings and gave back most of them to me. Embarassing and expensive, but that’s the way to treat idiot tourists who are being paid strangely large sums to teach about economics while clearly lacking the most basic concept (don’t hand over your money to every guy in a suit who asks to see it).

By 2004 things seem to be going pretty well. Budapest seemed markedly richer. In fact it seemed like a normal functioning European city. OK the Las Vegas casino is still right across the Danube from Buda (next time I am not going back to it). Also there is sign advertizing a strip joint legally attached to one of the poles of a fence around a municipal playground. Still the place looked clean efficient etc. Also instead of the Eastern tin can cars people were driving normal Western cars (that means cars made in the far East).

Also the language had changed. I mean people still spoke Magyar but about half of commercial signs and bill boards were in English.

Finally there was positive proof of integration into the global capitalist consumer society — billboard advertisements for “motercycle diaries” the film about the young Che Guevara.