Wow.
More later.
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
Thursday, April 12, 2007
Ashiana
I finally went to Albania's first Indian restaurant last night. It's not easy to find unless you know where you should look (it's in a basement on a side street near the river), but is totally worth tracking down. There's no tandoor (because they're in the basement, I guess), but the palak paneer and channa masala are great. Actually, everything was great except for the onion bhaji, which had no spice at all. Also, they make "chicken lollipops." I see myself returning often. Next task: finding the Mexican restaurant.
In other news, the new Ulrich Schnauss album has been released, so I'm enveloped in a warm blanket of electro-shoegaze. Also, the weather is amazing. Hopefully it'll stay like this for my trip to Montenegro next week.
In other news, the new Ulrich Schnauss album has been released, so I'm enveloped in a warm blanket of electro-shoegaze. Also, the weather is amazing. Hopefully it'll stay like this for my trip to Montenegro next week.
The Power Out
I spent the best part of last month struggling with my apartments' drains, which suddenly stopped draining and started doing the reverse. After two days of consultations with the landlord, several visits from plumbers, and using the bathroom at the bakery downstairs, we figured out that the pipes in the building (which was probably built in the 1940s) weren't designed for toilet paper.
This is something I've come to realize over my time living in Albania: even the most modernized parts of the country rest on an infrastructure that's shaky at best. In the southern parts of the country, the power is out for 2 hours a day in the winter; in Tirana, the outages can last eight hours or more (according to the power company, half of the country's electricity is stolen before reaching its destination, which doesn't help things). My neighbourhood has power almost all of the time, but the water's turned off at 10pm every day. So the ultra-modern office building down the street relies on a diesel generator to keep its escalators moving; the pub around the corner may or may not have running water; and my newly-renovated apartment in downtown Tirana is incompatible with toilet paper.
For me, these things are minor annoyances, but for foreign investors who might bring some badly needed money and employment into the country, they're major considerations. A supermarket can't operate without 24/7 electricity for its refrigerators and freezers; a medical clinic needs water. The few foreign companies (like Mercedes and Italian supermarket chain Conad) which have opened branches in Albania have had to work around the infrastructure, adding generators and water tanks to their stores. Most multinationals, however, seem to have decided that it's not worth the effort (there's no McDonald's in Albania).
The relative absence of multinational corporations may not be an entirely bad thing (like I said, there's no McDonald's), but locally-owned businesses are affected by the same factors that keep foreign investors away.
This is something I've come to realize over my time living in Albania: even the most modernized parts of the country rest on an infrastructure that's shaky at best. In the southern parts of the country, the power is out for 2 hours a day in the winter; in Tirana, the outages can last eight hours or more (according to the power company, half of the country's electricity is stolen before reaching its destination, which doesn't help things). My neighbourhood has power almost all of the time, but the water's turned off at 10pm every day. So the ultra-modern office building down the street relies on a diesel generator to keep its escalators moving; the pub around the corner may or may not have running water; and my newly-renovated apartment in downtown Tirana is incompatible with toilet paper.
For me, these things are minor annoyances, but for foreign investors who might bring some badly needed money and employment into the country, they're major considerations. A supermarket can't operate without 24/7 electricity for its refrigerators and freezers; a medical clinic needs water. The few foreign companies (like Mercedes and Italian supermarket chain Conad) which have opened branches in Albania have had to work around the infrastructure, adding generators and water tanks to their stores. Most multinationals, however, seem to have decided that it's not worth the effort (there's no McDonald's in Albania).
The relative absence of multinational corporations may not be an entirely bad thing (like I said, there's no McDonald's), but locally-owned businesses are affected by the same factors that keep foreign investors away.
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