FLASH
Shkruar nga Ben Blushi
Driven by curiosity to understand why Tirana's Berlin Wall is still standing, I asked and finally understood the reason. It's comical.
If I were a tour guide, I would show tourists a wall that separates two streets in the middle of Tirana, just as the Berlin Wall once separated capitalism from communism.
The wall I am talking about separates two of Tirana's main streets, Bogdan Street and Embassies Street.
Once these parallel axes were united and the people living in this area passed from one to the other with the ease of passing from the bread room to the living room.
When foreign embassies were located on Skanderbeg Street, which was called the Street of Embassies, the communist state surrounded this space with high walls because of course Albanians could not communicate with Westerners who were enemies of socialism.
Thus, the Bogdans' path was separated from their twin sister, with whom they had lived their entire lives in the same neighborhood.
But when the original Berlin Wall fell, Albania opened up, and people lost interest in entering embassies, the wall still remained in place.
Driven by curiosity to understand why the Berlin Wall of Tirana is still standing, I asked and finally understood the reason. It's comical. The Berlin Wall of Tirana is kept standing by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Albania.
Behind that wall, a director with a name of duralumin gears, DSHTD, if I'm not mistaken, has built a warehouse.
Inside this warehouse there are indeed some duralumin offices and many rusty items that could be benches, portable beds, lampshades or old equipment that once served the foreign diplomatic corps.
A few months ago, the residents of Bogdan Street, together with the local municipality, officially asked the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to partially remove that obstacle and open a pedestrian path for children, tourists, and diplomats.
The Foreign Ministry gave hope and everyone rejoiced that the two roads that communism had separated for 50 years could be joined.
Businesses rubbed their hands and diplomats were pleased that from one road, two would become one. But what happened is unheard of and deserves an award, if the world gives awards to those who invent unimaginable obstacles.
Instead of opening a path to allow pedestrians to cross from the other side, the DSHTD opened an iron gate and put a padlock on it. Since the day that gate was there, it has never been opened.
None of the residents have been able to cross its threshold, and diplomats point their fingers at it every time they want to mock our Foreign Ministry.
People who wake up early say that every morning, DSHTD employees use the gate for their own needs. They open it when they want, close it when they want. So if before they only went to work from one side of the wall, from Embassies Street, now they can also go from the other side, from Bogdan Street, because it's shorter.
After this innovation of diplomatic gear, I lost hope that Tirana's Berlin Wall could be torn down, but when I saw that the state was rightly tearing down private fences, I thought that perhaps I should remind them that in addition to the plaster, tin, and rubber fences, there is also a bureaucratic fence that needs to be torn down.
So if I were a tour guide, after leaving the tourists speechless with this strange story that connects communism with capitalism and urbanization with duralumin chaos, I would take them to the courtyard of the Foreign Ministry as peaceful demonstrators. Maybe then someone would listen and give the key to the Berlin Wall to the citizens of Tirana.
Lini një Përgjigje