Our Man in Tirana

Mark Mardell, the BBC's European editor, has made his first visit to Albania and is blogging about the country on the BBC website .

And now the end is near and so i face nanananana... Never did like that crappy song. But it's true nevertheless. Tomorrow in the wee hours of the morning we will be heading for the airport for the last time. I suppose it was too much to expect that I could have kept this going while getting ready to leave. So apologies for the lack of postings over the last weeks. This is post number 380 something so I suppose one post every two days is not a bad average. There were probably 380 more in my head or scribbled down on scraps of paper, but many of them are perhaps best left there. I suppose I should be penning - or typing - my final thoughts and reflections on two years in Tirana, but right now I don't have any. Maybe in a month or two though I might come back with something. Thanks to all of you who have read this blog - especially those of you who have become regulars. Thanks also for linking and thanks to all who left comments. As for the other stars of the blog, Bella now has h

When we first arrived it seemed that I heard it everywhere. Now, as we get ready to leave I'm hearing it everywhere again. In the last three days I've heard it three times - on Wednesday in Juvenilja, on Thursday somewhere I can't remember, on Friday at an open air festival in Mother Tereza Square. The latter was a kind of ersatz reggae version - pleasingly different. I tried it once myself at Flares on karaoke night, but I couldn't hit the high notes. Maybe I ought to give it one more go.

On Saturday, we were at the Rogner meeting with an expat friend who was leaving Tirana. It was breakfast time, and as our friend was finishing his tea the breakfast room started to fill up with over-dressed (or under-dressed) young women wearing blue sashes. These were the contestants for the Miss Globe 2007 beauty pageant being held in Tirana tonight at the Palace of Congresses. High heel boots and mini-skirts - or in a couple of cases micro-skirts, or possibly just belts - have never struck me as obvious breakfast attire, but the girls seemed happy enough tottering and wobbling around with their tea and toast. I'm not sure why they were wearing their sashes - perhaps in case they forgot which country they came from. As we were leaving they were boarding a large coach which I had seen a number of times around the city in the last few days for their next trip. I'm not sure how some of them made it up the steps, or how they managed to sit down, but perhaps these are the ki

Apparently it's World Tourism Day and European Heritage Day. I only know this because the Ministry of Tourism, Culture Youth and Sports is organising a series of events to mark these. In Tirana, most of the events are taking place at the National Art Gallery on Thursday 29th. There is a exhibition of photographs running all day, and in the evening there is the 'Albanian Tourism Destination Mini-Fair'.