His First Hijacking

You may remember that one of the big stories out of Albania recently was the hijacking of a Turkish Airlines plane flying from Tirana to Istanbul. I didn't mention it at the time because there was not much more to be said than was already being reported in the news.

As it turns out, though, one of the passengers was an American guy who was leaving Albania after a short holiday. He wrote up the story of the hijacking from the passengers' point of view which is a lot more interesting than most of what was being reported. You can find his story on his blog, The Chronicles of Chris.

Comments

The PC said…

Oh, thank you so much for that link. I'm still laughing.

8:27 pm

Anonymous said…

this was so funny! well not the incident, the way he described it

5:14 am

Albania and the Perils of the 21st Century

Another article on religion in Albania appeared yesterday. Patrick Poole, writing in the American Thinker , argues that Saudi funding for the construction of mosques and the training of imams is a threat to Albania, since these mosques and imams reflect the fundamentalist interpretation of Islam dominant in Saudi Arabia.

Orthodox Cathedral

These are some pictures of the new Resurrection of Christ Orthodox Cathedral under construction in Tirana. The website of the architectural partnership behind the church has images of how it is planned to look when finished.

Big in Albania

Ask me how much I knew about Albania before coming here and my list would be a short one: Enver Hoxha, bunkers and Sir Norman Wisdom. I have no idea when or how I acquired this extensive body of knowledge, but the association of Norman Wisdom with Albania was by far the most interesting part of it. I remember watching Norman Wisdom's old films on British television. My parents were fans of his wholesome, slapstick comedy, but apparently missed the ideological significance of Pitkin's relationship with Mr Grimsdale. Pitkin, the downtrodden and oppressed representative of the workers, triumphed every time over his capitalist oppressor, Mr Grimsdale - and he got the girl. It took a theorist of Hoxha's insight and profundity to discern this deeper political message. It always seemed tremendously unlikely, yet the story of Sir Norman's fame in Albania has been reported in worthy sources like the BBC , the Guardian and the Daily Telegraph . According to the Guardian, when Wi...

Our Man in Tirana

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