As I write this I sit in the Tirana Airport. Alrica and I are leaving Albania for the foreseeable future. And yet, even as I say that, I feel pretty confident we will come back to Tirana. It will likely be a few years hence, but also likely that it will happen.
Why am I so sure? Because of all the cities we have visited and lived in since leaving Reno, this one feels the most like home. I don't mean it feels the most like Reno, but that it feels like a city in which I could really enjoy living longer term. I don't want to speak for Alrica (which is a lie, I would love to speak for Alrica, but I know the consequences if I do, so I won't,) but I think she feels it too. Tirana has enough variety in foods and entertainment, it isn't overwhelming, it is very friendly, and the cost of living is quite affordable. Add to this list that Albania allows U.S. passport holders to stay for one year without a visa and it is a super attractive place to make a home base the next time Alrica and I want to travel around Europe.
There is a saying "you can't go home again." And I agree. Tirana is growing right now, growing a lot. Albania is opening up and trying to be more tourist friendly. There are so many buildings going up (amazing quirky buildings). And I wonder what this will do to the city. Will it lose its inherent Albanianity? Will it become expensive? Will it feel like some smaller version of a Western European destination? I hope not. I want Tirana to hang on to itself and for Albania to hang on to itself.
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| That's a picture, not an actual building, but how cool would that be! (Not to live in though.) |
There is an irony that some cultures which can't be crushed by war and persecution can suddenly be overturned by prosperity. Declare that we are others, that we are inferior, try to crush us, and we resist, we thrive. But let us become successful and comfortable and we let the assimilation begin.
I see it in my own heritage. I am Jewish by heritage, but personally I no longer believe in the tenets of the religion nor in the supreme being associated with it. (I haven't replaced that supreme being with any other who is more or less or equally supreme. I'm reasonably content with no higher power at all.) But why can I make that call and previous generations didn't? I think when Jewish people were othered and tormented by the majority, they had to cling together and the religion became all the more important to their identities. But welcome us into your society and let us become mathematicians and goofy bloggers, and then we don't feel the need to only associate with other Jews or to take refuge in the sanctuary of our sanctuaries.
That's just one example, but the one I can most personally relate to. I'm sure there are many others and that some readers will have a similar experience or family history with a similar experience.
Coming back off my tangent, I wonder if a new prosperity, a flourishing of a tourism economy, will have that same affect on Albania. I hope not, because the next time I return to Tirana, I would like to find it much as I left it.
Dorothy said (repeatedly, while clicking her heels,) "There's no place like home." But I don't entirely agree. I think there are other places like home. Not identical, but other places that could easily become home, a different home, but equal in its homeness. So I would reply to Dorothy, "Well, not everyplace is like home. But I wouldn't go so far as to say, 'There can be only one!'" (I know that I just mixed movie references that are decades apart. Eh, there are worse things I could do. Third movie reference!)
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