Albanian Connections

Over the last several months I have spent a number of days in Tirana, Albania. It is not a place I ever imagined I would find myself, so I was surprised by how pleasant it is. It is a small town with a city center that can be walked from any point to any other. Lots of trees, green spaces and modest high rise buildings compliment a quaint atmosphere.

In fact, it reminded me much of Chisinau. Moldova and Albania share the unfortunate distinction of being the two of the three poorest countries in Europe (per capita GDP). So prices for almost everything are low and there is little exotic to be had. The basics are all available in abundance. Just few high priced ticket items or entertainment outlets. A nice place to raise children would be a good assessment. Not too flashy, yet wholesome. Kind of like the kids on the gas-powered ATVs driving the downtown center square.

Like the Moldovans, the Albanians take pride in the little they do have; primarily their history and culture. In learning about it, I was struck by how often I continue to find relationships between events and places which you would think have no bearing on one another.

Consider, for example, that the hotel where I stay when in Cairo is a converted palace built by the son of Ottoman ruler who conquered Egypt and created its modern national identity. I had no idea Mehmet Ali was an Albanian. You certainly can't tell from the palace design.

Or consider Albanian languages. I understand Albania has a Vlach minority. I had hoped to test my Romanian on these speakers of a different form of the language while wandering the countryside, but it did not happen. I was however able to read some Albanian, as some of the vocabulary is from Turkish as is some Romanian.

Simiarly, some Albanian-speaking Roma in Albania called themselves Egyptians and claim to originate in Egypt. It is odd that the Egyptian connection should surface again on the shores of the Adriatic. I saw some "Egyptians" at a cafe in Tirana one afternoon. They are indeed strikingly different, though they do not look like any Egyptians I have ever seen.

Fortunately, I was able to handle the menus because they were in Italian. The Italian puppet state under King Zog in Albania, and then Fascist Italian occupation of Albania, left a mark on cuisine and urban life in Tirana which remains to this day. The Italians rebuilt the main street of the city in a distinctly Roman style and all the major restaurants serve Italian food. Lucky for me, as I can read and order from an Italian menu. English is a rarity in Albania. Italian and French are far more common second languages.

As if this isn't coincidence enough, then there are the Bektashi. Bektashi is a gnostic form of Islamic faith in Albania based on variety of sufism. As if by design, I happen to be reading a book on the origins of Gnosticism in Central Asia at the time and was able to slip into this important element of Albanian national identity fairly easily.

Where Old School Buses Go To Die

I have made several trips to Haiti over recent years. Given the country's desparate poverty and rampant kidnapping activity, I don't get out much while I'm there. Most of what I have seen has been from behind the locked doors of an SUV, or wandering a quiet back street of a rural village.

However, I have seen enough. Haiti has a per capita annual GDP of USD 1316, making it one of the poorest places on Earth. It has been stripped bare of vegetation for consumption and fuel and the Haitians have resorted to digging chalk out of hillsides on the side of the road to thin construction cement to make it go further. Some of the poorest Haitians make a dish which is essentially cookies made of mud which they sell on the street.

Consider for example this map of Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti, which I took from my hotel room at the Villa Creole. The seashore is on the left. As you move to the right, or uphill, the roads simply end in a giant blank area. This would be where the core of the city lives. Houses are built of whatever material is at hand and roads are unpaved tracks which cannot be mapped.

Until you arrive on the right-hand side of the map, which is Petionville. While we see pictures of starving children, mud cookies and schools buried in mudslides due to deforestation, what we do not hear about is the 5% of the Haitian population which lives very comfortably in relative wealth in Petionville on the mountainsides. These are the educated elite, often with relatives in the United States or France.

For most Haitians though, daily life is difficult. Use of public transportation is common, generally consisting of tap-taps, shiny tricked out vehicles painted with religious slogans very much like the Jeepney used in the Philippines. Where tap-taps aren't available, almost anything imaginable gets pressed into service. Seeing large trucks with people piled on top careening down the street is not uncommon.

This includes our old schoolbuses which are pressed into service as mass transit vehicles. Who knows how their old bones arrive on this impoverished island, along with all the other 10-20 year old cars of US manufacture. But there they are, with their Haitian routes painted on their doors next to their original cities of US ownership. I remember pulling up to my first one and seeing "Petionville-Centreville" and "W. Berlin, NJ" juxtaposed on the same panel. Their drivers make good use of the flashing signals at night; they simply leave them running as they drive as there are no street lights in Haiti.

Haitians are nothing if not enterprising. They have to be to survive. On my last trip I was hustled by a taxi driver at the airport who was looking for a fare. When the airport security guards came to push him out the door, he kept asking if he could have the "blanc" fare; "blanc" being the lone white man in the airport (me). I understand enough French (or Creole) to have figured that one out.

Driving down a street in Port-au-Prince, or over the 6 hour mountain road to Jacmel, is never dull. It is usually a riot of open air markets blocking the road, grade school children in uniforms skipping about, burning trash, tap-taps loaded with bodies, chickens, goats and graves. I have yet to see any signs of voodoo, but I know its practiced by 60% of the population from my survey work. Perhaps next time?

Eight Hours In Rome

I recently had the opportunity to enjoy a 8 hour layover in Rome. Rome is a big place, so I picked something to see which could be thoroughly covered in 8 hours minus taxi time. St Peter's Basilica and the Castel St. Angelo were the selections of the day.

St. Peter's sits at the heart of the Vatican City; independent country, seat of the Pope and heart of the Catholic Church. The city, in turn, sits in the middle of the city of Rome. It has been independent of Rome and Italy since 1929. It is the smallest country in the world, by any measure.

The Vatican City consists of far more than just St. Peter's Basilica and Square. There are delicious museums, well manicured gardens, an art gallery and of course offices of the various bodies of the Holy See. But the Basilica and Square are the heart of it all.

St. Peter's Square, in front of the Basilica, is by tradition the site of the crucifixion and burial of St. Peter in 64 A.D. Interestingly, at the time it was a Roman circus, Nero's Circus, of which the stolen Egyptian obelisk from Heliopolis still remains as the focal point. More recently, the actual burial site of St. Peter has been unearthed north of the circus in a pre-Constantinian necropolis. I intend to visit him on my next opportunity.

St Peter's Basilica itself is immense. It is the second Basilica, having been built on top of the original which Emperor Constantine consecrated in 329 A.D. The interior of the building itself is magnificent. It is hard to grasp just how big it really is, even when standing inside the dome and looking down.

Constantine's original basilica was built over the traditional tomb of St. Peter. For me, the tomb of Pope John Paul II in the grottos under the Basilica was perhaps the most moving moment of the visit. While I can remember the Pope and his moral leadership in life, I was struck by the emotional reverance of a Filipino man who was kneeling in tears, praying in front of the tomb. He was surrounded by a shuffling, oblivious crowd of tourists who parted around him as they passed. This man was however so committed, so absorbed by his passion, that he had closed his eyes and blocked these hundreds from his mind. It was moving just to see him.


The Catholic Church has of course not survived for 2000 years on faith alone. The Pope has a personal bodyguard of 134 Pontifical Swiss Guards. Since 1506, the Guards have been recruited from Catholic males with prior service in the Swiss military to provide personal protection for the Pope. To this day the Guards continue in this tradition, wearing the uniforms and carrying the weapons of the 16th century.

The guards played a role in protecting the Pope at the Castel St. Angelo. The Castel is attached to the Vatican City via a raised fortified passage over the streets along an old city wall. The Castel itself was originally the tomb of the Emperor Hadrian. It became a virtually impregnable fortress from the later Roman period onwards. I had the good fortune to arrive during a festival week of Roman culture and history, so the Castel was open late and free of charge. Wandering the tunnels and chambers, I could see the complexity of an assault.

For those who are opera lovers, the final scenes of Puccini's Tosca should come to mind. The Castel had come to have a reputation for torture and political imprisonment at the time of the opera's setting. Those final scenes are set on the ramparts of the Castel and the opera closes with Tosca throwing herself from the battements to her death on the rocks below.

The St. Angelo bridge in front of the Castel was built in 239 A.D. across the river Tiber to lead from the city of Rome to the tomb. It was originally called the Elian Bridge. Apparently in later periods, its statues were added depicting scenes from the Passion of Christ and were adorned with the heads of prisoners executed in the Castel, hung to serve as reminders to the living.