Wednesday, January 15, 2014

I pushed the car as deep as I could in the area between two limits, one of Yugoslavia

Albania opens doors | Reso
"Tell me the truth," said a man in his thirties. "What the outside circo sea life shower curtain world thinks about us? Are we really circo sea life shower curtain so backward? Are things really that bad here compared to overseas? Please tell me the truth. "
He lay down together in the cold inside his black coat and outdated, waiting my answer. It was difficult to say that yes, his country was far behind and terribly poor.
After I left after highway full of traffic and noisy world of Yugoslavia to join in a lost way between mountains, I began to follow carefully the few signs of rusting circo sea life shower curtain roadside while cars leave the desert behind a cloud of dust as he progressed in Naked territory of Albania and tough. After every kilometer potholed road became more and more narrow, more like if I came back in time for several centuries.
If the call path for the sake of the party. I was almost convinced that he had deliberately kept in such poor condition that prevented access invaders, a problem that had bothered Albania since time immemorial. Will suffice only two or three sticks of dynamite to blow up some rocks, and the road will be sealed for all.
It was the eve of New Year 1990. Albania, for the first time, was approached by a mixture of insecurity and fear. I had lived in several communist countries, but to me he had the reputation of the most repressive and paranoid of everyone.
A country slightly larger than Maryland, with a population of 3.4 million inhabitants, Albania had just started to open the borders to the outside world. Under Enver Hoxha, who ruled Albania as a feudal Chiflik from 1944 until his death in 1985, the country became a closed tube of the Stalinist era, one of the most brutal dictatorships in the world, where women convicted of party members urdhëroheshin to share their husbands, where keeping the beard was forbidden, where religion was outlawed, where each credit and foreign business was prohibited, and where are you to criticize the lack of food in the store, could end in jail . You despite circo sea life shower curtain your cousins. Even tourists were not welcome. As Enver had said: "We will not turn our country into an inn without doors, where to enter the sow pig!"
I pushed the car as deep as I could in the area between two limits, one of Yugoslavia's border post Hani Hoti, and stopped. Somewhere here was the epicenter of my world. Behind me, in the mountains of Montenegro was beyond the childhood home of my father. Before me, 30 km to the south was the city of Shkodra, where my grandparents once lived with her mom.
The air was damp, perfumed by the scent of flowers next to the lake. Calm encircling was thwarted by a group of travelers pieces of unwashed, who went from Yugoslavia. They carried bags and suitcases walking circo sea life shower curtain along a lifeless, one-way, to go to some big twist with some barbed wire and guards who kept frowning face Albanian border. circo sea life shower curtain Those passengers he gazed for a long time.
Had my paternal grandmother had not gone in St.Luis circo sea life shower curtain after the death of his grandfather, along with her sons and daughters, I very well could have been one of those people that after prolonged suitcases along the road from the border. But again I could be who I am today? A I was one of them? This question would become my refrain in my journey through Albania, which will be visited six times in 1991, just when the country is making painful separation from communism and the legacy circo sea life shower curtain of Hoxha's gone mad.
Another group of men and women were leaving - the first waves of a river in Yugoslavia legitimate visitors, who went to see their cousins who were separated by 40 years. Without a word spoken, a cop around-30s was leafing through my passport sheet sheet by carefully been watching her every stamp, as if there were hidden circo sea life shower curtain secret codes. Once finished, the document passed another man and shocked when I addressed with an error-free English: "Come to regale with coffee it becomes a passport". He had learned English as an autodidact, listening to foreign circo sea life shower curtain language programs that aired on English radio, circo sea life shower curtain a crime for which this could end in jail at the time of Enver Hoxha.
The policeman gave way, and we began to rrufisnim a sweet coffee, and an Albanian Riesling also sweet in another room. Would not let me pay, a local sense of hospitality, which will meet more frequently during my trip. But neither protested when I left a cigarette on the table pointer. circo sea life shower curtain Just a few minutes after I had entered circo sea life shower curtain Albania, discovered with pleasure that the Orwellian dictator in the world, could not be suppressed entirely human nature can. This place was still hope.
Wishing I was in the middle of things, rushing along the road to the capital, inter

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