Albanian Journeys

I lucky enough to visit Albania through a huge period of history.⁠ This work started during the last throes Albania's communist regime. In 1990 I joined an “archaeological study tour” touring the country. We were constantly watched and had a lot to fear, especially as the timing of the visit followed hard on the heels of the fall of the Berlin wall and fighting had started in Kosovo. We were taken from co-op to commune, listened to traditional folk singers and as a grand finale visited the Enver Hoxha state tractor factory (devoid of tractors). Between the lines, however, we could see a country in its death throes. People whispered at night of demonstrations and unrest, asking endless questions about the West and... Norman Wisdom.⁠ The first mass anti-communist protests took place in July 1990, forcing the regime into some cosmetic changes in economic policy. It was in vain: shortages of spare parts, aging machinery, drought and growing unrest brought the economy to a standstill. By the year’s end, after strong student and trade union protests, the regime was forced to accept a multi-party system. Hoxha’s gilded statue in Skanderbeg Square, Tirana, was torn down by rioters on 20th February, 1991 marking the end of a forty year era.⁠ I returned later in the spring to travel into the Accursed Mountains, an region previously closed to foreigners. The inaccessible mountains a way of life had resisted forty years of repression throughout Hoxha's regime. Here in these isolated heights, village and tribal life was based on the Kanun, a rigid set of codes based on honour and blood from medieval times.⁠