General Archives ⋆ Page 19 of 43 ⋆ The Passenger

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.

April 6, 2019June 4, 2019

Halitplatz

If you’re visiting the north of Kassel, Germany along the Holländische Straße you might wonder about a strangely named place: the Halitplatz. It is a public space with a small memorial in front of a flower shop and it is named after Halit Yozgat, a former inhabitant of the city and owner of an Internet shop.

February 17, 2019December 17, 2023

Baracken

When you walk from the Löwenburg castle at Kassel, Germany down the road back to civilization you might wonder about two barracks standing near Anthonistraße and Panoramaweg. These are the last remaining buildings of an outpost of the concentration camp Buchenwald near Weimar, Germany. The one with the words ‘Jedem das Seine‘ at the gate. About 288 people were brought from Weimar to Kassel between 1943 and 1945 – many of them political prisoners.

January 13, 2019December 24, 2022

Rainy weekend

LWL-Museum für Kunst und Kultur, Münster in Westfalen

Sometimes I just decide to visit a city I’ve never seen before and find out more about it. In the past I’ve often selected cities that have a bad reputation. And most often I learned how beautiful these are and how much they have to offer. But this time I just went to a city that many people know – because a lot of people go their to study: Münster in Westfalen.

December 30, 2018April 22, 2022

Adam von Trott zu Solz

When you reach Hann. Münden, Germany by train you might recognize that the train station is located at the Adam zu Trott von Solz-Platz. Or you might not. But if you do you might wonder about this strange name (if you’re not an expert in German history) or you might wonder which connection this member of the resistance against the Nazi regime might have with this small city.