Tirana I

The top picture is of the Lana River, looking east toward Mt. Dajtë, although I can't see it in this picture.  The river is usually contained in the concrete flue, and the city has landscaped and keeps up the banks.  After communism people built houses along the river, sqatters, of which there is only one left which you can see in the picture.  It is three storeys, unfinished on the first and third floors.  We call it the blood feud house.  According to the most reliable version I've heard, it is occupied by four women, one of whom shot and killed her husband.  So her husband's family is entitled to kill her.  And then her family would be entitled to kill whoever killed her, and so on down through the years, like the Hatfields and McCoys, or the Israelis and Palestinians, ad infinitum, because by the time the families are amenable to settling the whole dispute it's hard to remember the facts surrounding how it all got started.  This is Albanian custom, especially in the mountain north and east.  The rules for blood feuds are codified in the Kanun of Lekë Dukagjini, I think in the 15th or 16th century.  It is referred to as just the Kanun, and contains many other rules for hospitality, honor, etc.  It also contains guidelines and rules for settling feuds, like paying money, which were negotiated.  Blood feuds were only made illegal in Albania this year.  When the government decided to bulldoze all the squatter houses along the Lana, they had to leave this one because the family had nowhere else to go.  It is a signpost for our neighborhood -- Go down the Lana and take the first left past the blood feud house.

When Edi Rama became mayor of Tirana he disliked the drab communist era apartment buildings, and ordered they be painted.  He was an artist, and his father a sculptor.  So he ordered something a little more elaborate than "paint."  I don't know exactly how to describe the color scheme, or to what art "school" these belong.  But it does liven up the town a little.  The one green building with the yellow arrows is at the end of the divided street.  From this direction the arrows point toward the airport; from the other direction (on the opposite side of the building, not visible in the picture)  to downtown.   Good landmark for newcomers.

I kind of like the big vine at the end of one apartment building.  The uneven lines in the purple building make me dizzy.