English version
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Tirana Ekspres
Photography by Andrea Chierici e Veronica Mollese
Story edited by Antonio Oleari
A trip to Tirana tells us about the difficult Albanian “rebirth”. Although it faces economic and social contradictions, this young democracy is trying to find a balance between past and future
In Tirana, there is a people that looks to Italy, not only in the use of language, but in wanting to promote fashion, costumes and cuisine. There is a palpable cultural ferment: art galleries, libraries used for cultural centers, the Tirana International Film Festival and museums in the former nomenclature bunkers, such as the Bunk’Art2 dedicated to victims of the communist regime.
The Blloku / Block, the neighborhood where formerly the dictator Enver Hoxha and the party officials once lived, is now one of the coolest place of the Capital, with restaurants, bars, boutiques, nightclubs, literary cafes and bookshops. Decadent buildings that Edi Rama, artist who became mayor of Tirana and now the premier of the country, wanted to color in bright and flashy ways, to deviate from the universal gray plaster of the regime.
But just move a few kilometers from the well-being, almost ostentatious, of the city center to find very different realities. The Kombinat, the workers’ district that housed the main companies in Tirana, is now a degraded suburb where refugees and immigrants live and few local factories that work for the Italian market survive.[:]
Robert D. Kaplan: Europe, the US and early-stage globalization
by Sidonja Manushi
The first time Robert D. Kaplan was in Albania, the country was still isolated, deprived and unknown. Although communism was in its final throes, it had not officially fallen, and so nobody from the West had been in the capital, let alone rural areas, for decades
Passing through the now modern Skanderbeg Square with a tour group from Greece, Kaplan, who was no stranger to the Balkans, then saw a very different image from what one sees strolling down Tirana’s center today: a number of gangs, made up of ten-year-old boys, harassing and pickpocketing around old stores, most of which poor, empty and surprisingly standing despite the cheap quality everything was made of.
“It was like going backwards in time,” says Kaplan now, 28 years later, “and I hadn’t been back since. It is different, like coming to a new country, but having the advantage of having known how far it’s come.”
For Kaplan, renowned American author whose books on foreign affairs and traveling are read from university students to former US President Bill Clinton, distinguishing the sometimes subtle causes and effects of the Hoxha regime in Albanian society makes up part of his life’s work.
“I can see the incredible change and although I have read about it, what strikes me, with people asking my impression of Albania now, etc., is that the worst, the more oppressive the communist system, the harder it is to recover from,” he says, drawing parallels with Romania, from where he was reporting until the 1980s. Romania, Kaplan notes, was by far the worst communist system in Eastern Europe – apart from Albania. Throughout the 90s, the country was far behind Hungary, Poland and Czech Republic and, although you could still enter Romania and leave its borders, it took 20 years for it to reach normality.
Read the complete story on tiranatimes.com[:][:en]
Robert D. Kaplan: Europe, the US and early-stage globalization
by Sidonja Manushi
The first time Robert D. Kaplan was in Albania, the country was still isolated, deprived and unknown. Although communism was in its final throes, it had not officially fallen, and so nobody from the West had been in the capital, let alone rural areas, for decades
Passing through the now modern Skanderbeg Square with a tour group from Greece, Kaplan, who was no stranger to the Balkans, then saw a very different image from what one sees strolling down Tirana’s center today: a number of gangs, made up of ten-year-old boys, harassing and pickpocketing around old stores, most of which poor, empty and surprisingly standing despite the cheap quality everything was made of.
“It was like going backwards in time,” says Kaplan now, 28 years later, “and I hadn’t been back since. It is different, like coming to a new country, but having the advantage of having known how far it’s come.”
For Kaplan, renowned American author whose books on foreign affairs and traveling are read from university students to former US President Bill Clinton, distinguishing the sometimes subtle causes and effects of the Hoxha regime in Albanian society makes up part of his life’s work.
“I can see the incredible change and although I have read about it, what strikes me, with people asking my impression of Albania now, etc., is that the worst, the more oppressive the communist system, the harder it is to recover from,” he says, drawing parallels with Romania, from where he was reporting until the 1980s. Romania, Kaplan notes, was by far the worst communist system in Eastern Europe – apart from Albania. Throughout the 90s, the country was far behind Hungary, Poland and Czech Republic and, although you could still enter Romania and leave its borders, it took 20 years for it to reach normality.
Read the complete story on tiranatimes.com[:][:en]
Robert D. Kaplan: Europe, the US and early-stage globalization
by Sidonja Manushi
The first time Robert D. Kaplan was in Albania, the country was still isolated, deprived and unknown. Although communism was in its final throes, it had not officially fallen, and so nobody from the West had been in the capital, let alone rural areas, for decades
Passing through the now modern Skanderbeg Square with a tour group from Greece, Kaplan, who was no stranger to the Balkans, then saw a very different image from what one sees strolling down Tirana’s center today: a number of gangs, made up of ten-year-old boys, harassing and pickpocketing around old stores, most of which poor, empty and surprisingly standing despite the cheap quality everything was made of.
“It was like going backwards in time,” says Kaplan now, 28 years later, “and I hadn’t been back since. It is different, like coming to a new country, but having the advantage of having known how far it’s come.”
For Kaplan, renowned American author whose books on foreign affairs and traveling are read from university students to former US President Bill Clinton, distinguishing the sometimes subtle causes and effects of the Hoxha regime in Albanian society makes up part of his life’s work.
“I can see the incredible change and although I have read about it, what strikes me, with people asking my impression of Albania now, etc., is that the worst, the more oppressive the communist system, the harder it is to recover from,” he says, drawing parallels with Romania, from where he was reporting until the 1980s. Romania, Kaplan notes, was by far the worst communist system in Eastern Europe – apart from Albania. Throughout the 90s, the country was far behind Hungary, Poland and Czech Republic and, although you could still enter Romania and leave its borders, it took 20 years for it to reach normality.
Read the complete story on tiranatimes.com
Robert D. Kaplan: Europe, the US and early-stage globalization
by Sidonja Manushi
The first time Robert D. Kaplan was in Albania, the country was still isolated, deprived and unknown. Although communism was in its final throes, it had not officially fallen, and so nobody from the West had been in the capital, let alone rural areas, for decades
Passing through the now modern Skanderbeg Square with a tour group from Greece, Kaplan, who was no stranger to the Balkans, then saw a very different image from what one sees strolling down Tirana’s center today: a number of gangs, made up of ten-year-old boys, harassing and pickpocketing around old stores, most of which poor, empty and surprisingly standing despite the cheap quality everything was made of.
“It was like going backwards in time,” says Kaplan now, 28 years later, “and I hadn’t been back since. It is different, like coming to a new country, but having the advantage of having known how far it’s come.”
For Kaplan, renowned American author whose books on foreign affairs and traveling are read from university students to former US President Bill Clinton, distinguishing the sometimes subtle causes and effects of the Hoxha regime in Albanian society makes up part of his life’s work.
“I can see the incredible change and although I have read about it, what strikes me, with people asking my impression of Albania now, etc., is that the worst, the more oppressive the communist system, the harder it is to recover from,” he says, drawing parallels with Romania, from where he was reporting until the 1980s. Romania, Kaplan notes, was by far the worst communist system in Eastern Europe – apart from Albania. Throughout the 90s, the country was far behind Hungary, Poland and Czech Republic and, although you could still enter Romania and leave its borders, it took 20 years for it to reach normality.
Read the complete story on tiranatimes.com[:][:en]
Robert D. Kaplan: Europe, the US and early-stage globalization
by Sidonja Manushi
The first time Robert D. Kaplan was in Albania, the country was still isolated, deprived and unknown. Although communism was in its final throes, it had not officially fallen, and so nobody from the West had been in the capital, let alone rural areas, for decades
Passing through the now modern Skanderbeg Square with a tour group from Greece, Kaplan, who was no stranger to the Balkans, then saw a very different image from what one sees strolling down Tirana’s center today: a number of gangs, made up of ten-year-old boys, harassing and pickpocketing around old stores, most of which poor, empty and surprisingly standing despite the cheap quality everything was made of.
“It was like going backwards in time,” says Kaplan now, 28 years later, “and I hadn’t been back since. It is different, like coming to a new country, but having the advantage of having known how far it’s come.”
For Kaplan, renowned American author whose books on foreign affairs and traveling are read from university students to former US President Bill Clinton, distinguishing the sometimes subtle causes and effects of the Hoxha regime in Albanian society makes up part of his life’s work.
“I can see the incredible change and although I have read about it, what strikes me, with people asking my impression of Albania now, etc., is that the worst, the more oppressive the communist system, the harder it is to recover from,” he says, drawing parallels with Romania, from where he was reporting until the 1980s. Romania, Kaplan notes, was by far the worst communist system in Eastern Europe – apart from Albania. Throughout the 90s, the country was far behind Hungary, Poland and Czech Republic and, although you could still enter Romania and leave its borders, it took 20 years for it to reach normality.
Read the complete story on tiranatimes.com
Robert D. Kaplan: Europe, the US and early-stage globalization
by Sidonja Manushi
The first time Robert D. Kaplan was in Albania, the country was still isolated, deprived and unknown. Although communism was in its final throes, it had not officially fallen, and so nobody from the West had been in the capital, let alone rural areas, for decades
Passing through the now modern Skanderbeg Square with a tour group from Greece, Kaplan, who was no stranger to the Balkans, then saw a very different image from what one sees strolling down Tirana’s center today: a number of gangs, made up of ten-year-old boys, harassing and pickpocketing around old stores, most of which poor, empty and surprisingly standing despite the cheap quality everything was made of.
“It was like going backwards in time,” says Kaplan now, 28 years later, “and I hadn’t been back since. It is different, like coming to a new country, but having the advantage of having known how far it’s come.”
For Kaplan, renowned American author whose books on foreign affairs and traveling are read from university students to former US President Bill Clinton, distinguishing the sometimes subtle causes and effects of the Hoxha regime in Albanian society makes up part of his life’s work.
“I can see the incredible change and although I have read about it, what strikes me, with people asking my impression of Albania now, etc., is that the worst, the more oppressive the communist system, the harder it is to recover from,” he says, drawing parallels with Romania, from where he was reporting until the 1980s. Romania, Kaplan notes, was by far the worst communist system in Eastern Europe – apart from Albania. Throughout the 90s, the country was far behind Hungary, Poland and Czech Republic and, although you could still enter Romania and leave its borders, it took 20 years for it to reach normality.
Read the complete story on tiranatimes.com
Robert D. Kaplan: Europe, the US and early-stage globalization
by Sidonja Manushi
The first time Robert D. Kaplan was in Albania, the country was still isolated, deprived and unknown. Although communism was in its final throes, it had not officially fallen, and so nobody from the West had been in the capital, let alone rural areas, for decades
Passing through the now modern Skanderbeg Square with a tour group from Greece, Kaplan, who was no stranger to the Balkans, then saw a very different image from what one sees strolling down Tirana’s center today: a number of gangs, made up of ten-year-old boys, harassing and pickpocketing around old stores, most of which poor, empty and surprisingly standing despite the cheap quality everything was made of.
“It was like going backwards in time,” says Kaplan now, 28 years later, “and I hadn’t been back since. It is different, like coming to a new country, but having the advantage of having known how far it’s come.”
For Kaplan, renowned American author whose books on foreign affairs and traveling are read from university students to former US President Bill Clinton, distinguishing the sometimes subtle causes and effects of the Hoxha regime in Albanian society makes up part of his life’s work.
“I can see the incredible change and although I have read about it, what strikes me, with people asking my impression of Albania now, etc., is that the worst, the more oppressive the communist system, the harder it is to recover from,” he says, drawing parallels with Romania, from where he was reporting until the 1980s. Romania, Kaplan notes, was by far the worst communist system in Eastern Europe – apart from Albania. Throughout the 90s, the country was far behind Hungary, Poland and Czech Republic and, although you could still enter Romania and leave its borders, it took 20 years for it to reach normality.
Read the complete story on tiranatimes.com
Robert D. Kaplan: Europe, the US and early-stage globalization
by Sidonja Manushi
The first time Robert D. Kaplan was in Albania, the country was still isolated, deprived and unknown. Although communism was in its final throes, it had not officially fallen, and so nobody from the West had been in the capital, let alone rural areas, for decades
Passing through the now modern Skanderbeg Square with a tour group from Greece, Kaplan, who was no stranger to the Balkans, then saw a very different image from what one sees strolling down Tirana’s center today: a number of gangs, made up of ten-year-old boys, harassing and pickpocketing around old stores, most of which poor, empty and surprisingly standing despite the cheap quality everything was made of.
“It was like going backwards in time,” says Kaplan now, 28 years later, “and I hadn’t been back since. It is different, like coming to a new country, but having the advantage of having known how far it’s come.”
For Kaplan, renowned American author whose books on foreign affairs and traveling are read from university students to former US President Bill Clinton, distinguishing the sometimes subtle causes and effects of the Hoxha regime in Albanian society makes up part of his life’s work.
“I can see the incredible change and although I have read about it, what strikes me, with people asking my impression of Albania now, etc., is that the worst, the more oppressive the communist system, the harder it is to recover from,” he says, drawing parallels with Romania, from where he was reporting until the 1980s. Romania, Kaplan notes, was by far the worst communist system in Eastern Europe – apart from Albania. Throughout the 90s, the country was far behind Hungary, Poland and Czech Republic and, although you could still enter Romania and leave its borders, it took 20 years for it to reach normality.
Read the complete story on tiranatimes.com[:][:en]
Robert D. Kaplan: Europe, the US and early-stage globalization
by Sidonja Manushi
The first time Robert D. Kaplan was in Albania, the country was still isolated, deprived and unknown. Although communism was in its final throes, it had not officially fallen, and so nobody from the West had been in the capital, let alone rural areas, for decades
Passing through the now modern Skanderbeg Square with a tour group from Greece, Kaplan, who was no stranger to the Balkans, then saw a very different image from what one sees strolling down Tirana’s center today: a number of gangs, made up of ten-year-old boys, harassing and pickpocketing around old stores, most of which poor, empty and surprisingly standing despite the cheap quality everything was made of.
“It was like going backwards in time,” says Kaplan now, 28 years later, “and I hadn’t been back since. It is different, like coming to a new country, but having the advantage of having known how far it’s come.”
For Kaplan, renowned American author whose books on foreign affairs and traveling are read from university students to former US President Bill Clinton, distinguishing the sometimes subtle causes and effects of the Hoxha regime in Albanian society makes up part of his life’s work.
“I can see the incredible change and although I have read about it, what strikes me, with people asking my impression of Albania now, etc., is that the worst, the more oppressive the communist system, the harder it is to recover from,” he says, drawing parallels with Romania, from where he was reporting until the 1980s. Romania, Kaplan notes, was by far the worst communist system in Eastern Europe – apart from Albania. Throughout the 90s, the country was far behind Hungary, Poland and Czech Republic and, although you could still enter Romania and leave its borders, it took 20 years for it to reach normality.
Read the complete story on tiranatimes.com
Robert D. Kaplan: Europe, the US and early-stage globalization
by Sidonja Manushi
The first time Robert D. Kaplan was in Albania, the country was still isolated, deprived and unknown. Although communism was in its final throes, it had not officially fallen, and so nobody from the West had been in the capital, let alone rural areas, for decades
Passing through the now modern Skanderbeg Square with a tour group from Greece, Kaplan, who was no stranger to the Balkans, then saw a very different image from what one sees strolling down Tirana’s center today: a number of gangs, made up of ten-year-old boys, harassing and pickpocketing around old stores, most of which poor, empty and surprisingly standing despite the cheap quality everything was made of.
“It was like going backwards in time,” says Kaplan now, 28 years later, “and I hadn’t been back since. It is different, like coming to a new country, but having the advantage of having known how far it’s come.”
For Kaplan, renowned American author whose books on foreign affairs and traveling are read from university students to former US President Bill Clinton, distinguishing the sometimes subtle causes and effects of the Hoxha regime in Albanian society makes up part of his life’s work.
“I can see the incredible change and although I have read about it, what strikes me, with people asking my impression of Albania now, etc., is that the worst, the more oppressive the communist system, the harder it is to recover from,” he says, drawing parallels with Romania, from where he was reporting until the 1980s. Romania, Kaplan notes, was by far the worst communist system in Eastern Europe – apart from Albania. Throughout the 90s, the country was far behind Hungary, Poland and Czech Republic and, although you could still enter Romania and leave its borders, it took 20 years for it to reach normality.
Read the complete story on tiranatimes.com
Robert D. Kaplan: Europe, the US and early-stage globalization
by Sidonja Manushi
The first time Robert D. Kaplan was in Albania, the country was still isolated, deprived and unknown. Although communism was in its final throes, it had not officially fallen, and so nobody from the West had been in the capital, let alone rural areas, for decades
Passing through the now modern Skanderbeg Square with a tour group from Greece, Kaplan, who was no stranger to the Balkans, then saw a very different image from what one sees strolling down Tirana’s center today: a number of gangs, made up of ten-year-old boys, harassing and pickpocketing around old stores, most of which poor, empty and surprisingly standing despite the cheap quality everything was made of.
“It was like going backwards in time,” says Kaplan now, 28 years later, “and I hadn’t been back since. It is different, like coming to a new country, but having the advantage of having known how far it’s come.”
For Kaplan, renowned American author whose books on foreign affairs and traveling are read from university students to former US President Bill Clinton, distinguishing the sometimes subtle causes and effects of the Hoxha regime in Albanian society makes up part of his life’s work.
“I can see the incredible change and although I have read about it, what strikes me, with people asking my impression of Albania now, etc., is that the worst, the more oppressive the communist system, the harder it is to recover from,” he says, drawing parallels with Romania, from where he was reporting until the 1980s. Romania, Kaplan notes, was by far the worst communist system in Eastern Europe – apart from Albania. Throughout the 90s, the country was far behind Hungary, Poland and Czech Republic and, although you could still enter Romania and leave its borders, it took 20 years for it to reach normality.
Read the complete story on tiranatimes.com
Robert D. Kaplan: Europe, the US and early-stage globalization
by Sidonja Manushi
The first time Robert D. Kaplan was in Albania, the country was still isolated, deprived and unknown. Although communism was in its final throes, it had not officially fallen, and so nobody from the West had been in the capital, let alone rural areas, for decades
Passing through the now modern Skanderbeg Square with a tour group from Greece, Kaplan, who was no stranger to the Balkans, then saw a very different image from what one sees strolling down Tirana’s center today: a number of gangs, made up of ten-year-old boys, harassing and pickpocketing around old stores, most of which poor, empty and surprisingly standing despite the cheap quality everything was made of.
“It was like going backwards in time,” says Kaplan now, 28 years later, “and I hadn’t been back since. It is different, like coming to a new country, but having the advantage of having known how far it’s come.”
For Kaplan, renowned American author whose books on foreign affairs and traveling are read from university students to former US President Bill Clinton, distinguishing the sometimes subtle causes and effects of the Hoxha regime in Albanian society makes up part of his life’s work.
“I can see the incredible change and although I have read about it, what strikes me, with people asking my impression of Albania now, etc., is that the worst, the more oppressive the communist system, the harder it is to recover from,” he says, drawing parallels with Romania, from where he was reporting until the 1980s. Romania, Kaplan notes, was by far the worst communist system in Eastern Europe – apart from Albania. Throughout the 90s, the country was far behind Hungary, Poland and Czech Republic and, although you could still enter Romania and leave its borders, it took 20 years for it to reach normality.
Read the complete story on tiranatimes.com
Robert D. Kaplan: Europe, the US and early-stage globalization
by Sidonja Manushi
The first time Robert D. Kaplan was in Albania, the country was still isolated, deprived and unknown. Although communism was in its final throes, it had not officially fallen, and so nobody from the West had been in the capital, let alone rural areas, for decades
Passing through the now modern Skanderbeg Square with a tour group from Greece, Kaplan, who was no stranger to the Balkans, then saw a very different image from what one sees strolling down Tirana’s center today: a number of gangs, made up of ten-year-old boys, harassing and pickpocketing around old stores, most of which poor, empty and surprisingly standing despite the cheap quality everything was made of.
“It was like going backwards in time,” says Kaplan now, 28 years later, “and I hadn’t been back since. It is different, like coming to a new country, but having the advantage of having known how far it’s come.”
For Kaplan, renowned American author whose books on foreign affairs and traveling are read from university students to former US President Bill Clinton, distinguishing the sometimes subtle causes and effects of the Hoxha regime in Albanian society makes up part of his life’s work.
“I can see the incredible change and although I have read about it, what strikes me, with people asking my impression of Albania now, etc., is that the worst, the more oppressive the communist system, the harder it is to recover from,” he says, drawing parallels with Romania, from where he was reporting until the 1980s. Romania, Kaplan notes, was by far the worst communist system in Eastern Europe – apart from Albania. Throughout the 90s, the country was far behind Hungary, Poland and Czech Republic and, although you could still enter Romania and leave its borders, it took 20 years for it to reach normality.
Read the complete story on tiranatimes.com
Robert D. Kaplan: Europe, the US and early-stage globalization
by Sidonja Manushi
The first time Robert D. Kaplan was in Albania, the country was still isolated, deprived and unknown. Although communism was in its final throes, it had not officially fallen, and so nobody from the West had been in the capital, let alone rural areas, for decades
Passing through the now modern Skanderbeg Square with a tour group from Greece, Kaplan, who was no stranger to the Balkans, then saw a very different image from what one sees strolling down Tirana’s center today: a number of gangs, made up of ten-year-old boys, harassing and pickpocketing around old stores, most of which poor, empty and surprisingly standing despite the cheap quality everything was made of.
“It was like going backwards in time,” says Kaplan now, 28 years later, “and I hadn’t been back since. It is different, like coming to a new country, but having the advantage of having known how far it’s come.”
For Kaplan, renowned American author whose books on foreign affairs and traveling are read from university students to former US President Bill Clinton, distinguishing the sometimes subtle causes and effects of the Hoxha regime in Albanian society makes up part of his life’s work.
“I can see the incredible change and although I have read about it, what strikes me, with people asking my impression of Albania now, etc., is that the worst, the more oppressive the communist system, the harder it is to recover from,” he says, drawing parallels with Romania, from where he was reporting until the 1980s. Romania, Kaplan notes, was by far the worst communist system in Eastern Europe – apart from Albania. Throughout the 90s, the country was far behind Hungary, Poland and Czech Republic and, although you could still enter Romania and leave its borders, it took 20 years for it to reach normality.
Read the complete story on tiranatimes.com
Robert D. Kaplan: Europe, the US and early-stage globalization
by Sidonja Manushi
The first time Robert D. Kaplan was in Albania, the country was still isolated, deprived and unknown. Although communism was in its final throes, it had not officially fallen, and so nobody from the West had been in the capital, let alone rural areas, for decades
Passing through the now modern Skanderbeg Square with a tour group from Greece, Kaplan, who was no stranger to the Balkans, then saw a very different image from what one sees strolling down Tirana’s center today: a number of gangs, made up of ten-year-old boys, harassing and pickpocketing around old stores, most of which poor, empty and surprisingly standing despite the cheap quality everything was made of.
“It was like going backwards in time,” says Kaplan now, 28 years later, “and I hadn’t been back since. It is different, like coming to a new country, but having the advantage of having known how far it’s come.”
For Kaplan, renowned American author whose books on foreign affairs and traveling are read from university students to former US President Bill Clinton, distinguishing the sometimes subtle causes and effects of the Hoxha regime in Albanian society makes up part of his life’s work.
“I can see the incredible change and although I have read about it, what strikes me, with people asking my impression of Albania now, etc., is that the worst, the more oppressive the communist system, the harder it is to recover from,” he says, drawing parallels with Romania, from where he was reporting until the 1980s. Romania, Kaplan notes, was by far the worst communist system in Eastern Europe – apart from Albania. Throughout the 90s, the country was far behind Hungary, Poland and Czech Republic and, although you could still enter Romania and leave its borders, it took 20 years for it to reach normality.
Read the complete story on tiranatimes.com
Robert D. Kaplan: Europe, the US and early-stage globalization
by Sidonja Manushi
The first time Robert D. Kaplan was in Albania, the country was still isolated, deprived and unknown. Although communism was in its final throes, it had not officially fallen, and so nobody from the West had been in the capital, let alone rural areas, for decades
Passing through the now modern Skanderbeg Square with a tour group from Greece, Kaplan, who was no stranger to the Balkans, then saw a very different image from what one sees strolling down Tirana’s center today: a number of gangs, made up of ten-year-old boys, harassing and pickpocketing around old stores, most of which poor, empty and surprisingly standing despite the cheap quality everything was made of.
“It was like going backwards in time,” says Kaplan now, 28 years later, “and I hadn’t been back since. It is different, like coming to a new country, but having the advantage of having known how far it’s come.”
For Kaplan, renowned American author whose books on foreign affairs and traveling are read from university students to former US President Bill Clinton, distinguishing the sometimes subtle causes and effects of the Hoxha regime in Albanian society makes up part of his life’s work.
“I can see the incredible change and although I have read about it, what strikes me, with people asking my impression of Albania now, etc., is that the worst, the more oppressive the communist system, the harder it is to recover from,” he says, drawing parallels with Romania, from where he was reporting until the 1980s. Romania, Kaplan notes, was by far the worst communist system in Eastern Europe – apart from Albania. Throughout the 90s, the country was far behind Hungary, Poland and Czech Republic and, although you could still enter Romania and leave its borders, it took 20 years for it to reach normality.
Read the complete story on tiranatimes.com[:]
