While most of Europe has been experiencing a very cold winter, here in Tirana the winter has been rather mild. Only these past few days the temperatures have gotten below the freezing point during the night. The snow is always held back by the mountain ranges surrounding the city and it rarely snows in. Only back in 2003 it was a rather colder winter where it snowed for a couple of days, just enough to make a small snowman.

In fact for several years now the cold has rarely shown its bite and I suppose people like it that way. However, though not scientifically proven, every time the winter has been like this the summer seems to have gotten hotter. At least that is my impression.

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The New Year’s Dinner tradition continues to be one of the major times of the year when Albanians like to eat a lot and gorge themselves on all sorts of foods and drinks. Though it has diminished somewhat, I have to admit that this is true in my family as well. But most importantly, recently I’ve come to realize that some of the eating has another, more sentimental value to it.

My Dad and the Turkey

The other day my parents went out to do some New Year’s food shopping, and upon my return to the house I discovered that they had bought a large 7 kg turkey. As I looked at the massive amount of poultry meat that my dad was cleaning, I became even more cognizant of the painful fact that someone would have to consume it all somehow, though not me! So, respectfully, I asked my dad to explain how the turkey would be consumed since I was not planning on eating it, nor where the other members of the family, as far as I knew. Read the rest of this entry »

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In the past few weeks I’ve had a couple of people write to me to ask about the costs of living in Albania. While, I am not the expert in this case I did a little bit of research to put together some information on the living costs for a single person living in Tirana. In needs to be said that Tirana is the capital and the main city in Albania to do business. About 90% of all major enterprises are based here, while over 80% of foreign companies are here as well, according to the Tirana Municipality site.

Based on several estimates this is a summary of major annual expenses in USD for a single person living in Tirana.

I need to stress that these are not the most accurate estimates, since I only spend very little time putting them together, so with your input, suggestions and corrections I would like to update them.

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Yes, I was born on November 24 and today it’s my birthday. I love the messages that people send me and each one of them makes me more appreciative for the great family and friends that I have here in Tirana, in Albania and around the world. Speaking about the world, a good friend of mine started something that I’m want to expand even here.

What am I talking about? Well, the friend I’m talking about is a US citizen, whom I’ve met here in Tirana, but is now working and living in the Far East, more precisely, Japan. And as he is learning that language, he very kindly wished me “Happy Birthday” in Japanese. I thought that was so cool that now I have started asked all those who want to wish me Happy Birthday, to try and do that in another language, possibly in one that no one else has done already – Japanese, Albanian and English are already taken (read them at my profile in FB).

You may post your message here, or go directly to my profile at Facebook and post it there. Go ahead and make the world even smaller…

Update 1: Norwegian is also taken

Update 2: Spanish, Arabic, Dutch, Italian, French, Russian, Italian, German…

Update 3: Greek, Rumanian, Portugese, Turkish, Welsh, Finnish, Chinese, Mongolian…

Update 4: Ukranian – which makes it over 20 languages in all. Awesome

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I was appalled when I learned about the beating of a well known journalist in Tirana by a well known businessman with ties to the current government. The incident was condemned by all major public and international institutions in the country. For more info I’ll just post the text of the article published by BalkanInsight.

A group of Albanian journalists and civil society activists protested on Wednesday in front of the office of Prime Minister Sali Berisha against the brutal assault of Tirana publisher Mero Baze by oil magnate Rezart Taci.

Following the symbolism of the Iraqi journalist that attacked U.S. President George W. Bush with a shoe, the protesters threw shoes at the office of the prime minister, while accusing him of being responsible for the violence against the journalist.

Baze was beaten late on Monday evening in Tirana, following a series of reports in the publisher’s media accusing the businessman of tax evasion.

According to witnesses present in the Capriccio Bar in the center of Tirana’s upscale Bllok neighborhood, Rezart Taci and his bodyguards attacked the journalist, kicking and beating him for roughly four minutes, leaving him unconscious. Read the rest of this entry »

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If you are Albanian or someone working on learning the Albanian language then I would encourage you to delve a little deeper into understanding the roots and the development of this ancient language.

To help you with this process, out of the many different sources out there I would direct you to one scholar whom many would recommend highly for his wonderful work, translations, study and research regarding the Albanian language and literature. His name is Robert Elsie and is one of those few people that has contributed and continues to contribute so much to this ancient language that I is my mother-tongue.

A most recent and very interesting development on one of his websites is the publication of audio recordings of the Albanian language spoken in different dialects in all the major areas where Albanians live today.

This is how Robert Elsie introduces the Albanian Dialects section, “This website offers the listener audio recordings in Albanian from various regions where the language is spoken. Though the dialects of Albanian are usually mutually intelligible to the listener with an ear for language, regional differences, deriving largely from the historical development of the language, can be substantial, and they are quite fascinating. You can thus listen here to people speaking in a wide range of Albanian dialects. Some of these individuals are good dialect speakers, others were recorded at random to give an idea of how modern Albanian is used in various areas.”

To listen to the recordings please visit: Albanian Dialects on AlbanianLiterature.net

Do you think this kind of research is worthwhile? Post your comments below. Thanks.

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As I do every morning, even today I was roaming around the net to some of my preferred sites when I stumbled upon this post by Seth Godin, who is well known marketer. Anyway, the topic of his blog post was “the problem with cable news thinking”. In his post he goes on to give an example of what cable news channels do often, then provides a list of how such channels “amplify the worst elements of emotional reactions” in their viewers!

Here is the list:

Focus on the urgent instead of the important.

Vivid emotions and the visuals that go with them as a selector for what’s important.

Emphasis on noise over thoughtful analysis.

Unwillingness to reverse course and change one’s mind.

Xenophobic and jingoistic reactions (fear of outsiders).

Defense of the status quo encouraged by an audience self-selected to be uniform.

Things become important merely because others have decided they are important.

Top down messaging encourages an echo chamber (agree with this edict or change the channel).

Ill-informed about history and this particular issue.

Confusing opinion with the truth.

Revising facts to fit a point of view.

Unwillingness to review past mistakes in light of history and use those to do better next time.

My first reaction was to agree with him. Though I do not live abroad any more, the issues that he points out are so reflective of the pervasive reality conveyed everyday by the media in Albania. Now there are variations, and while I cannot say that no. 5 is always true, the rest the topics seem to be right on the money.

Just some food for thought!

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