General Archives ⋆ Page 18 of 42 ⋆ The Passenger

April 21, 2019April 19, 2022

Silent capital

Yes, Podgorica is the capital city of Montenegro. But it doesn’t feel like a capital city. It is a town with 150,00 inhabitants and rather a silent capital. It has many green places, the buildings like in many areas very old and gray. The name means ‘at the foot of the hill’ but a lot people still know the city under another name: Titograd. Between 1918 and 1992 Podgorica belonged to Yugoslavia and was named like this to honour Josip Broz Tito who was communist prime minister and president of Yugoslavia.

April 20, 2019June 24, 2023

Soccer abroad

If you’re a real soccer aficionado you’ll have to watch the games also while on the road. Unless you fell in love with the really big clubs in the world this is sometimes pretty hard. As a fan of the SV Werder Bremen I’ll sometimes have to search a little bit more until I find a bar that shows Bundesliga and the matches of my club. But it is always worth the the effort – watching German soccer in another country is always fun.

April 18, 2019June 19, 2019

Town of cats

If you like cats then Kotor, Montenegro might be a good destination for you. They are everywhere in the old town, the citizens love their cohabitants and care about them. They add their special cuteness to the atmosphere of this nice place. Additionally the Italian name for the town is Cattaro – a funny coincidence.

April 18, 2019June 20, 2019

Bus from Albania to Montenegro

I did not use long distance busses very often in the past. Within western Europe you would simply take a train. Only once I went by bus to Zagreb, Croatia because it was cheap and I wanted to try it. If you’re on the balkans the situation changes totally and as there are only a small number of railway tracks the long distance busses become means of transport #1. And I must admit I also enjoyed it.

April 17, 2019April 19, 2022

Surrounded by mountains

Getting to Tirana, Albania was a great experience. I selected this place as I was last time in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina and it felt as the logical next step. Western Europeans have strange prejudices about Albania, most often connected with organized crime and corruption. And some days before my flight a plane of my chosen airline was blocked at the airport of Tirana and the money transported with it was stolen. Not a good omen.

April 17, 2019June 18, 2019

Enver Hoxha

At Tirana, Albania it is hard to not get into contact with the history of former communist dictator Enver Hoxha. He was born in 1908 at Gjirokastra and as his family was wealthy he studied at France and Belgium. There he got in contact with communist ideas and when he returned home he first worked as a teacher for the French language.

April 16, 2019June 25, 2019

Street art

If you’re arriving at Tirana, Albania and know other cities of the balkans than you immediatly recognize a big difference: you don’t see the typical gray of concrete, but many colourful houses. That is the result if you make an artist the mayor of a city. Edi Rama from the socialist party was mayor of Tirana between 2003 and 2011 and supported to make the city a colourful place.

April 15, 2019June 6, 2019

No import/export

The Albanian lek (ALL) is the current currency of Albania. It was introduced in 1925 and one lek was formerly divided into 100 qindarka (this subunit was removed in 1990). The lek has two specialities: it isn’t a freely convertible currency and its value is held stable against the Euro by the national bank. And (what I never had before) you are not allowed to import or export the currency.

April 15, 2019May 21, 2019

Bunkers

If you’re coming to Albania you can’t overlook the massive amount of bunkers built by the communist regime between 1972 and 1984. Even in Tirana these mushroom-shaped bunkers can be seen everywhere in parks. Special companies led by the communist party organised their creation and throughout the country there were once 168.000 of them – that’s one bunker for every eleven inhabitants.

April 11, 2019November 30, 2022

QWERTZ

All around us in cities there are illuminated letters: company names, advertisements, signs. But where do they go when they’re not needed anymore? Some of them have a second life, get refurbished and decorate the homes of people. A nice place where you can buy your initials in different shapes, colors and sizes – from twenty centimeters to two meters – is the QWERTZ-Buchstabenladen in Hannover, Germany.