At the height of the communist regime, the infamous paranoid and isolationist dictator Enver Hoxha closed Albania’s borders
Tirana (CNN) – If you pass the house of Enver Hoxha, Albania’s former communist dictator, in the center of Tirana, you might not even notice it. There is no sign to mark its historical significance. The two-story residence, humble by the dictator’s standards, appears to be being renovated rather than preserved, with its wide windows crossed by strips of tape. The house was briefly opened to the public only once, in 2018, and few have entered since.
The current state of Hoxha’s residence sums up how many Albanians feel about the years of communism. Having suffered a collective trauma of cruelty, many prefer to forget it ever existed.
During the height of the communist regime, the infamously paranoid and isolationist Hoxha closed Albania’s borders, shot those trying to leave, and built enough bunkers to house every family in the country. Its regime’s distrust of communist allies, resort to state surveillance and Stalinist-style brutality earned Albania the unflattering (but not inaccurate) nickname of “Europe’s North Korea”.
After Hoxha’s 44-year reign of terror ended in 1985 – and communist rule ended in the 1990s – Albania inherited 221,143 bunkers and military objects, which for decades served as solemn reminders of darker days – until recently.
Today, Albania is experiencing a tourism renaissance, supported by businesspeople and emigrants who are giving a second life to communist military structures, once used to store weapons of war.
To reclaim their history and traditions that were stolen from them, Albanians are now reusing bunkers and former military barracks as restaurants serving traditional food and wine, unique settings for guesthouses, art and history museums, and even tattoo parlors.
While Albania is clearly still picking up the pieces from the consequences of the communist era, it is clear that some are determined to take back control of the narrative and not let their country’s dark past define them.
“Old is gold”
This former military barracks on the outskirts of Tirana has been transformed into a fine dining destination, Kazerma and Cerenit. Henri Koci/Kazerma and Cerenit
If you drive for 16 minutes through the mountainous slopes on the outskirts of Tirana, past uneven farmland with grazing sheep, down some narrow zigzag streets, you will be greeted by a mannequin dressed in military fatigues and a gas mask. Welcome to Kazerma e Cerenit, a former military barracks and complex transformed into one of the city’s newest restaurant and agritourism destinations.
This is the idea of Ismet Shehu, a chef UK-educated Albanian who once served lunch to the late Queen Elizabeth II, and who has now returned home to build a growing restaurant empire, his latest project being Kazerma (which means “military barracks” in Albanian), which he opened just a year and a half.
He leads the way through the imposing door of the dining room, the preserved main entrance of the original barracks, and proclaims, “The old is gold,” as he gestures to sweep his surroundings—the brick walls washed with ivory, the original concrete columns with the dates 82 and 76 engraved on them, and the green grenade crates that now contain wine glasses.
What is currently a two-story dining room was once a cavernous, spartan garage for military trucks. It is almost unrecognizable from its former incarnation, with the exception of the original iron gutters supporting the wooden roof and holes drilled into the brickwork that have been left intact.
“Kazerma is farm-to-table,” explains Shehu. “It’s about helping Albanians and our neighbors. When people come here they say, ‘Wow!’, this place used to be for soldiers, it used to be for tanks and TNT and grenades. Now it is a place of peace, people serve with a smile; there is good food and very good desserts. And that’s a big change, isn’t it?
Shehu enters a hallway where he has framed photographs of what the abandoned complex looked like before he managed to obtain a 100-year lease from the government to renovate it.
One of the framed souvenirs is an old soldier’s ration list on a piece of paper, browned and wrinkled with age, which reads: “120 grams of meat, 200 grams of bread, 100 grams of pasta…”
In the spirit of the soldiers who were once stationed here, Shehu maintained a military mess decor, serving guests traditional Albanian dhallë (in canteen aluminum cups and using trays and pans from military field kits to serve duck, pasta and flija, a traditional Albanian dish consisting of countless layers of crepes, typically cooked slowly over a wood fire.
Waiters wear military clothing, sometimes with a red communist party scarf around their necks.
“My team is dressed like soldiers,” says Shehu, “and they do the job with a smile – and sometimes with fake weapons.” To end the meal, guests receive their bill in a fake grenade bag.
The military installation at Kazerma is vast, spanning greenhouses, a duck farm, former military bunkers now used for wine and cheese tasting, a small museum of military memorabilia, and several guest houses where people can spend their time. night.
It is a unique hotel experience, worthy of note.
In the rooms, Shehu placed large cylindrical concrete blocks to replicate the showers in the barracks. Additional decor includes antique military radios, wooden shotgun butts and canteens used as flower vases.
Although Shehu admits that the years of communism were painful, his goal is for people not to fear the past but to move forward from it.
“At the time of communism, I was very young,” says the 35-year-old. “But I know my father fought a lot. I never want to forget what was there before, but now history has changed. We are doing new things, this is the new Albania.”
“On the brink of starvation”
A stone’s throw from the Ottoman-era Et’hem Bey mosque in Skanderbeg square in central Tirana lies another Hoxha-era military bunker. Bunk’Art 2 is the country’s most important museum, cataloging the atrocities committed during the communist regime in Albania, and is located in a preserved nuclear bunker that once connected the central government’s political offices.
The vaulted entrance to the underground bunker serves as a grim warning of things to come.
All 360 degrees of the interior of the gray dome are covered in photographs that remember the victims killed at the behest of a leader so paranoid and cruel that simply knowing him could put his life at risk.
One of the faces above the stairs is that of Sabiha Kasimati, a former high school friend of Hoxha who urged him to stop killing innocents, only to later be extrajudicially arrested.
Bunk’Art 2 found that around 5,500 people were killed by political executions during the Hoxha years, but unofficial estimates suggest that around 100,000 disappeared into government custody. This means that countless bodies were never found, leaving Albanians to await the eventual discovery of mass graves.
“Albania had one of the harshest communist regimes in the world,” recalls Eni Koco, 50, founder of the Albania My Way tourist group, who lived during those years.
“We compare ourselves to North Korea because the government created a cult of personality, telling us that they were gods and that we had to worship them, creating a system of border control and killing anyone who tried to escape or enter the country. .”
Deep in nuclear bomb-proof tunnels, exhibits explain what happened here during all the years Albania was isolated from the world. “The Sigurimi, or local surveillance police, controlled everything and prepared people to spy on their family and friends,” says Koco. Among the objects on display is a wooden broomstick with a listening device secretly implanted in its head, a tool that allowed neighbors to spy on their neighbors.
“In 1990, we were on the brink of starvation,” Koco recalls. “Even clothes and shoes were scarce. There were only five models to choose from and they were all the same.”
In another parallel with North Korea, Albanians were told they had nothing to envy the outside world.
“We received constant propaganda that said we were the only country in the world that was building true communism and that we were the shining star,” says Koco. “This contrasted profoundly with what we experienced every day, which created a certain syndrome of lying and dissimulation of reality. Nowadays, we are still too afraid to express our true feelings.”
The Ottoman-era city of Gjirokaster in southern Albania has its own connection to Hoxha’s legacy, being the dictator’s birthplace. Currently, the building where he was born is officially known as the “Gjirokaster Ethnographic Museum”. Only a solitary marble plaque on the floor of a sparsely decorated room commemorates Hoxha’s arrival into the world on October 16, 1908.
Right at the end of the street, in the center of Gjirokaster, Manushaqe Zhuli, 65, has assembled a private collection of Albanian antiquities in a cramped tunnel. The collector displays objects dating from Byzantine times to the communist years and charges a small fee to visit them.
The venture is private and has not yet received any support from the local government. In Albania, confronting the harsh realities of the past appears to be still a work in progress.
“The world’s opinion of us was damaged by the events of the 90s when we opened up,” says Koco. “We were totally unaware of the values we carry and felt inferior to other countries. It took more than 20 years for a considerable number of tourists to come to see Albania as a destination worth visiting.”
“Reconnect with our roots”
The isolated farming village of Fishtë is a place many Albanians couldn’t even find on a map. It was like this until the birth of the agritourism destination Mrizi i Zanave, which transformed not only these lonely farmlands, but also Albania’s historic gastronomic trajectory.
The rolling hills that now provide restaurant patrons with fresh vegetables are centered on a complex that was once a communist-era prison.
Today, instead of incarcerating people, the complex’s various rooms welcome groups of tourists, showcasing once-lost Albanian traditions of cheesemaking, viticulture and even pine cone syrup – an ingredient, typically used in cheese spreads, that tastes like air. deep in a pine forest.
“The idea here is to reestablish the connection with our roots,” says Altin Prenga, an agricultural engineer who, together with his brother, is the head chef at Mrizi i Zanave. “We became disconnected because of communism. We worked in the fields, but we were state workers and not farmers. We lost all our traditions and started using communist techniques. The food became white and square. Bread, white and square. Cheese, white and square. It’s a food without an identity.”
On a hill above the restaurant, which serves as a lookout for the surrounding farmland, Prenga points out the property’s main guest houses. These feature an unusual architectural feature – a piece of brick wall missing. Prenga proudly says that these gaps represent the missing part of Albanian traditions, which it is his life’s mission to revive.
“We opened this restaurant with the dream of rebuilding these paths (to our traditions),” says Prenga, proudly pointing to the fact that he employs local grandmothers and people of Roma ethnicity, a minority that has long been marginalized in Albania.
“Step by step, we rediscover what we lost with communism.”
