Visiting Albania

15 August 2021

Today was my first full day in Albania. My brother Rudi and his family were leaving for Pogradec and Korce and returning on Tuesday evening. Rudi’s party includes Elda, Sophie, Klea and her boyfriend Austin. They will stop for lunch in Pogradec by Ohrid lake before reaching Korce where they’ll stay the night. No doubt, I’ll have plenty of photos of dishes from the restaurants they’ll go to.

The day started with a walk towards Tirana centre and Rudi and I stopped at Pazzari i Ri (New Market) and had a paçe and pilaf breakfast at a greasy spoon place which was clean and cheap. We had a coffee nearby before I headed to find a cab to go to the open air swimming pool near Tirana’s great park.

Just as you exit Pazari i ri, you’ll find plenty of yellow cabs waiting for customers. As we got closer, Rudi said, ‘don’t take the back seat, but sit in the front. And make sure you ask first how much the fare is to the swimming pools, otherwise they’ll fleece you’. I, of course, knew all that.

The first cab I approached had all four doors opened wide, bur there was no driver. I approached the second one in the queue and asked the guy, how much was it to the swimming pools by the lake. He looked me up and said, ‘600 lek’. My Tilley hat, Ray Ban sunglasses and rucksack may have given him the impression that I was the right sort to try his luck on. ‘That’s a bit too much’, I said, and pretended to walk away. ‘All, right, he quickly replied. 500 (£3.50). I’ll take it, I said and not because I can’t afford the extra 100, but I don’t want to be taken advantage of’. He laughed and beckoned me to get in the car.

After reaching the swimming pool he handed me his card and said ‘call me if you want a lift back’. I did, three hours later when I had had enough of lane swimming and lounging around an empty swimming pool. He promised to be there in half and hour and never turned up, so I hailed another cab home.

The swimming pool complex is similar to many Lido ones in the UK. It has a large family pool, a deep Olympic size one and a shallow one for children, all set among pretty grounds with restaurants and pool bars to match. I chose the Olympic size pool and was the only the customer, apart from two swimming classes of about ten teenage swimmers and their coaches. They were all good keen swimmers, but as all teenagers everywhere were keener at chatting with their friends when the coaches were not looking.

I started chatting to one of the coaches who said the youths were doing swimming classes as a hobby or to get fit or lose weight. These are not the ‘proper’ swimmers he said. Still, they worked them hard and the teenagers were very obliging.

I told the coach I liked swimming too and that I was training for a long distance swim, hopefully next year, from Ksamil to Corfu. He correctly guessed my age and I was astonished to find out he was 77. He then proceeded to tell me take it easy and stick to no more than 1500 metres swimming a day. ‘That is good distance for your age’, he said. That would put me out of contention for the Corfu swim, so I may have to ignore him.

‘Do you think any of these kids, or the ‘proper swimmers’ you train will ever get a medal for Albania at the Olympics’, I asked him.

‘No chance’, he said. ‘We don’t have the right conditions, the right coaches and the hunger to win something’.

‘Why not, I said. You are an experienced coach. This is a good pool and these are enthusiastic enough kids’.

‘Yes’, he said, ‘but we lack investment from the state and we need ‘proper’ coaches who can push the kids to international level’. And in a moment of honesty, he added, ‘look at me, I’ve coached swimmers for 50 years, I can only take them up to this level’, holding his hand up his chest level. ‘They’ll need someone else to push them higher’.

I hope they find one. I’m going back to the swimming pool tomorrow and will update you on what happens next.