From Stalin to saints


Tom Blass
Published 01 May 2008



Tom Blass finds jaunty funeral parlours and newly restored monasteries and mosques in rural Albania

Hurtling along the Drino Valley floor, my taxi driver forced me to repeat after him the names of the villages that we passed through. It was a torture of sorts and to change the subject I pointed out a rash of bunkers, the concrete pimples that polka-dot the countryside, and from which Albania's former dictator Enver Hoxha believed his loyal citizens would one day defend the motherland unto their death.

The driver transferred his energies to a pantomime of machine-gun spraying and the steering wheel was left to trace the contours of the contorted road by itself. I wondered whether I had made a fatal error. But within an hour he had deposited me alive at my destination, planted a (manly) kiss on my cheek, and given me back half the fare.


It was a generous, kind gesture but, had the journey proved terminal, the likelihood is that I would still have remained well catered for. Funeral parlours in Albania are commonplace, jaunty establishments. They leave the door open and the radio on and are more ubiquitous, say, than fast-food restaurants, and about on a par with pet shops, lending the impression that Albanians die more often than other people (having eaten fewer hamburgers and bought many canaries). Statistically this is highly improbable, and the more likely explanation is that both private enterprise and public mourning, in a ceremonial sense, were denied them for so long.

more: http://www.newstatesman.com/print/200805010034