Our Man in Tirana

On the menu at Sofra i Ariut: the Laura Bush veal fillet.

Another article from the Economist .

While searching for decent news stories about the President's visit - without success - I did come across one more interesting piece on the Uighers from Guantanamo (available in Albanian here ). It's a shame the media mob who follow the President can't come up with more interesting stories like this one. Yesterday, while sitting at the Opera House cafe waiting for the motorcade to arrive, an older man at the next table spoke to one of the friends I was with - an Albanian man in his twenties. My friend told me that the man had said that when he was my friend's age he had been thrown into prison by the Hoxha regime. Now as an old man he was sitting watching the American President visiting his country, driving through a square where the former site of the statue of Enver Hoxha was sheathed in banners bearing the American and Albanian flags, and proclaiming their partnership. Wouldn't that have made a great story? Perhaps by the time they get to be White House correspo...

Yesterday we visited the Tirana International Hotel where the Press were holed up. In one room there were ranks of them sitting at their laptops but few of them appeared to be doing any work. Some were watching the television which was broadcasting most of the visit live, others were watching the other television which was showing a football match. On the balcony the TV people were sitting around in the shade of their umbrellas chatting. The unremitting lack of activity might explain why news coverage of the President's visit which I've been checking this morning is so relentlessly bad. The same set of quotes from Bush and Berisha - presumably taken from a press handout. The same predictable summaries about Albania - poverty, pro-American, corruption. The same voxpops, for which most of them seem to have found one person to talk to and then gone back to the hotel. In case you missed the press conference given by Bush and Berisha a full record is available at the White House we...

The streets were empty, the air was clear, the city was quiet. Why can't every Sunday be like this? Waiting... Some of the barriers sealing off the road had an improvised look... The sun shines on the partners... Checking Skanderbeg Square before the President's motorcade arrives... The head... The tail... The very hand of President Bush, waving from the back window... Look closely: Could this ghostly image really be the legendary President? Or is it mysterious reflection?

It's just after 10am and we've been watching the gun salute from our balcony - I assume it was 21 but I lost count. None of that feeble blank ammunition here - this was the real thing.

Saw three military helicopters yesterday afternoon flying in line in that looping pattern that the always did when Tony Blair was coming to Belfast. I assume it was a practice run of some sort. Also yesterday it seems that the poor bloody infantry were performing the heroic and noble task of shoveling all the garbage from the side of the Tirana-Durres highway onto trucks - presumably to be dumped somewhere else. Presumably they also stopped when they got to the airport turn-off. The press are beginning to appear on the streets with their satellite dishes and big cameras, getting in everybody's way as they usually do.

More loud explosions today. I just happened to be out and saw a few flashes and plumes of smoke in the mountains as they were going off. I still don't know who it is or why they are doing it though. You can just see the smoke rising in the distance. Sorry about the quality of the picture - it was taken with the phone and then cropped tight.

I heard lots of booms this morning. I don't know whether it was the military practicing for an emergency, or practicing a 21 gun salute or what. I suppose it might have been someone doing some very intensive dynamite fishing. Either way, it was a little reminiscent of Belfast in the bad old days. I was almost nostalgic. Almost. Meanwhile, having missed week 3 somewhere along the way I'm happy to say that in week 4 Tirana's only fantasy cricked team put up a fine performance. While we haven't breached the 2000 barrier since the glorious days of two weeks ago we are now at 2745 - a jump of about 600 on week 3. A strong performance from my all-rounder Trego helped, but this week it was mainly a team effort. Unfortunately, on the strength of the first two days of the current round of matches I don't think we will be making any more progress this week. Indeed, unless some of my team start to come good in the next couple of days we will probably be slipping back down the ...

BIRN reporter Bisar Likmeta reports that a Euphoric Welcome Awaits Bush in Albania .

People have been busy over the last few days putting up more signs and posters and banners for President Bush's visit. The Pyramid now had an illuminated welcome sign on top. A small but significant change has been made to the banner over the entrance. See if you can spot the difference between the banner as it is now in the picture above and as it was a few days ago. Posters proclaiming the message Proud to be Partners have been appearing across the city and a huge version of this was being put together when I passed the University in Nene Teresa Square yesterday. Today the Citizens Advocacy Office released the results of an opinion poll regarding the Bush visit. According to this poll, the two areas where people expect the visit to have a positive impact concern the final status of Kosova (61.7%) and Albanian membership of NATO (71%). The President himself touched on both of those issues in his television interview with Andi Bejtja of Vision Plus. There is a English transcript...

To coincide with President Bush's visit there is going to be a photographic exhibition at the Pyramid (or the Pjeter Arbnori International Centre of Culture as it's officially known these days) starting this Sunday and continuing until 10 June.