Yesterday night I was made aware of the existence of Artur Jaku, an Albanian peasant-film maker and one time contestant in Big Brother. According to the credit lines of his manifesto Albanian Monster, “Artur Jaku is the first farmer in the world, that made Amateur Dokumentary !!!” According to another, autobiographically inclined work, Artur [...]
In the Netherlands, the annual calendar is marked by the singular occasion of what has been named “skirt day,” the spring day on which the collective female population decides — the mode and procedure of this decision are still unknown, at least, to men – to dress in skirts, celebrating the arrival of bearable and [...]
Alright. So, the Tirana Gay Pride parade (which was never to be supposed to be a Gay Pride, but a “Parade of the LGBT flag”) debate has degraded to the predictable game of “personalities” arguing pro and against such a parade, spectres of forced tolerance, reasonable voices of patience and discussion, boredom of let-them-just-do-what-they-want-we-have-bigger-problems-pass-me-the-coke-please, and [...]
So, this riot was to happen at some point, so it happened this year: A senior Albanian official is under fire after reportedly saying that gay-rights activists should be beaten if they hold a gay-pride parade in Albania. Activists on March 23 announced plans to hold such an event on May 17 to mark [...]
Follow-up on the last post. One of my faithful readers cross-fact-checked with a Chinese student of his, and came up with the following original audio recording of the song “Tirana-Beijing,” which, however, seems not to have been written by Mao Zedong himself. I was also informed that the Albanian movies (with Chinese titles) “Underground Guerrilla,” [...]
Yesterday night I was witness to one of these events that (so it feels) can only happen in Albania. The Nanjing Ethnic Orchestra was giving a concert, sponsored by the Chinese embassy in Tirana and the Ministry (I was nearly writing Monostrosity, perhaps this is why) of Tourism, Culture etc. and the Theater of the [...]
As some of you may have noticed, I now and then tend to broach the subject of the perception of homosexuality in Albania, also because me and some of my friends are confronted with whatever society thinks of us on a regular basis. Recently I was shown an episode of the popular talkshow Zonë [...]
Yesterday (December 29), I was celebrating my first year in Tirana anniversary, yes! And to celebrate properly, I made a Tirana Celebratory Bike Tour, which I filmed from a camera mounted on my steering weel and post in full below. It’s shaky, but then again, the Tirana roads are shaky on bike, which was, btw, [...]
Warm. It’s winter and Albanians like to fire up their heaters and air conditioners to tropical temperatures. The living room, filled with a dozen boys and girls was further furnished with a projector and projection screen, showing the movie The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. We watched it for about fifteen minutes, then left. [...]
Browsing through the many videos showing anchorwomen, students, and workers hysterically crying over the death of North-Korean leader Kim Jong-Il, I was reminded of similar videos existing of Albanian leader “Uncle” Enver Hoxha’s death in 1985. I feel comforted by the fact that similar displays of massive mourning are also common in the “Western” world, viz. [...]