Oh, Albania, grant me Thy greatest honour - let me be called an Albanian.

... is probably the one verse from a poem that every Albanian remembers from school, including me, despite having lived in the United Kingdom longer than anywhere else. Undoubtedly, the UK has played a key role in shaping my worldview, my relationships, and my professional life, yet being an Albanian man from Kosovo has always been an integral part of my identity, never in a nationalistic demagogical sense but as a cultural foundation stone upon which everything else was built.

Moj Shqipëri, më jep nder, më jep emrin Shqiptar!

A NEW LIFE? I TRULY HOPE SO....

Moj Shqipëri, moj Zonjë e vjetër, unë pas teje s'dua tjetër!

Tirana

Finally, I made the big leap and left London to start a new life in the Albanian capital. This section aims to document this new chapter. Tirana is unique... it is very vibrant and full of contrasts that you will not find in any other European capital. I invite you to have a peek and share my experience in this loving city that does not know how great it is.

The Colours of Tirana

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'të lumtë dora' incident

Now, many (so-called) Westerners will complain that, in Albania, people don't hold the door for you and that they don't say 'thank you' when you hold it for them. Ok, fair enough. I have caught myself being annoyed about this too, even though I AM Albanian... However, this is not a case of people being rude, it is just a thing that they don't expect you to do for them because they are perfectly able to open a door, so, ou holding it for them may even irritate them...

Then a moment comes when a guy is holding his son with one arm and his son's toy with the other. You hold the door for him, of course. And then he says something utterly beautiful and Albanian: 'të lumtë dora' - you melt. You realise how much you have missed this language and culture. It is impossible to translate it into English, but a rough translation would be: 'may your hand be blessed' or something like that. Albanians can say all that with ONE verb - an ancient grammatical feature that most languages lost. I am so glad we didn't. We can express wishes and desires in a totally unique way, which gives them so much more weight, somehow.

Farka Lake - A Playground for Millionaires?

Of course, Albania will not escape the virus of Capitalist inequality, spreading from the West like a plague! The lake is a great escape from the bizz of Tirana for a nice walk or for cycling around it on a paved pathway for walkers and a separate cycle path, wide enough for two bikes to travel in both directions! However, although the houses and the resort that are being built around it look impressive enough, it will be exclusively for the very rich by the looks of it! Tirana, or Albania for that matter, never had a history of huge inequality, but this Western disease is spreading fast in the land of the eagles! Let's hope we won't lose our souls in the process, as the Westerns have lost theirs!