Everything I wrote in my “Extreme Makeover Tirana” post was true - for me. The murals and painted buildings make every walk an adventure, and the brave new architecture is literally fantastic. But fading rainbows and optimistic green arrows can’t mask the continued hard times for the average Albanian. The young woman in the photo above is as strong yet subdued as the old building she graces.

When I glibly celebrate the cheap prices here - our first seafood and homemade pasta dinner for two cost $15 - what that really means is that the local economy is worse off compared to my western budget and dollar. The average family lives on $800/month, and pensioners survive on $150. While I’m indulging daily in $2 cream-filled pastries, Roma women with their babies outside the bakery are grateful for the 10-cent coins people share, or are selling individual cigarettes to Albanians who can’t afford to buy a whole pack.

The medical system is likewise cheap for us (and thankfully mostly free for Albanians) so we’re doing our routine old people check-ups. With a dental clinic at one end of town (full cleaning and check-up for $45) and an English-speaking medical clinic way at the other end ($30 for check-up, $90 for a full suite of blood sample lab work) I log 10-20 km of walking each day, deliberately taking different routes each time.

On these walks I continue to discover murals, painted buildings and new architecture.  I had worried that perhaps they were just in the central city core and I’d exhausted the treasure trove, but as you’ll see from the 36 photos below, they are everywhere.  But this week I try to notice the context of the artwork. The $80,000 cars parked in front of buildings with laundry drying outside the windows - income disparity is, not surprisingly, multiplying exponentially in this economic transition. The low number of air-conditioner units in a city that gets unbearably hot and humid in the summer. The bold beautiful mural on the street-facing wall of a building that has peeling paint and black-mold sun shades along the sides. 

So please join me on this second Tirana walk-about, this time with a wider-angle lens. Appreciate the beauty and the grit, the hope for the future and the heaviness of the past. They’re all woven together into the tapestry of this newly rebuilding Albanian nation.