Tirana, Albania. 20th October 2024.
We ran in Tirana a good course around the Artificial lake and the Great Park. In the streets girls were performing folkloric dances. Could have been a great race but the organization was not up to the standard, with chaos at the starting line.
TLDR; “too long, didn’t read”
- I just want to run! Take me to RACE.
- I have 1 minute. Take me to USEFUL INFORMATION.
- Running is my excuse for travelling. Take me to TRIP.
- Running is my excuse for eating. Take me to CARBOLOADING.
- I want to know what to read in the plane. Take me to ONE BOOK.
🌍 The trip 📷: What to see in Tirana in a couple of days
Arriving on Friday
We arrived very very late at night – 3am!
The flight was supposed to arrive around 2am, but a passenger feeling sick when we were about to depart added to another delay so we arrived at Tirana tired and half asleep.
But I was not asleep enough not to see a cool sculpture of Mother Teresa in the airport, which is named after her.
Funnily enough, we had stayed in a hotel in Skopje right next to the place where she was born, in North Macedonia, just two weeks ago!
Tirana on a Saturday
On Saturday, we were very lucky to enjoy Tirana on an extremely sunny day of October.
Tirana appeared to me as a peculiar city. There were old communist buildings with super strong proletarians waving flags, mosques and many many skyscrapers of a geometric nature: they all looked like gigantic and colorful blocks of a gigantic nature put together. And the pyramid, of course.
There were some beggars in the streets and youngsters who didn’t look very nice, but in general it felt safe, full of locals enjoying their Saturday and not many tourists. A refreshing change from our Barcelona 🙂. The few tourists we saw were mainly italians.
What surprised us the most, though, was how sunny it was! We were expecting a gray day but it was spectacular.
And the traffic lights! They sported the Albanian coat of arms – in red or in green 😂
We had never seen something like that before!
Skanderbeg Square
We started our visit to the city in Skanderbeg Square, where the marathon expo was taking place (see later)
It’s a big, empty square surrounded by landmarks. There was even a Ferris wheel!
The square is named after Albania’s national hero, who led the resistance against the Ottoman Empire in the 15th century.
Naturally, there is a statue of him in the square.
In the square we also saw the Et’hem Bey Mosque, a beautiful example of Ottoman architecture. The mosque survived the communist regime’s atheism campaigns.
And the Clock Tower (Kulla e Sahatit): Dating back to the 19th century, the tower offers a panoramic view of Tirana’s cityscape if you climb the stairs. It was historically used to signal prayer times, blending Tirana’s urban and religious history.
Resurrection of Christ Orthodox Cathedral
Then we saw and visited the Resurrection of Christ Orthodox Cathedral, one of the most impressive religious buildings in Tirana.
It was built, obviously, after the fall of communism, since Enver Hoxha’s regime was one of the most reclusive and rigid communism regimes and prosecuted religion harshly.
It has a striking modern design, with a large white dome and elegant bell tower.
The interior is equally beautiful, with colorful frescoes and grand chandeliers:
Pyramid of Tirana
Then we visited the Pyramid of Tirana (Piramida), one of the city’s most controversial and distinctive buildings.
There were people going up, and we did too, so we enjoyed the view. We liked the Pyramid because it was as peculiar as the whole city!
It was originally built as a museum dedicated to Enver Hoxha, Albania’s communist dictator, and it has a unique, futuristic design, which is a stark contrast to Tirana’s more traditional structures.
Blloku
We then walked to Blloku neighborhood, Blloku was once an elite-only neighborhood during the communist era, where Enver Hoxha and other officials lived.
Today it is Tirana’s trendiest district and we saw that first hand passing by cafes, restaurants and boutique shops.
I liked it although I was surprised at how badly kept were most of the buildings. We found super fancy restaurants serving mochachinos and the likes in buildings that looked like super dodgy neighborhoods.
To get to Blloku we passed by Postbllok – Checkpoint Memorial, an installation to remember how rigid Communism was, which includes a chunk of the Berlin Wall and parts of a former communist labor camp.
Grand Park of Tirana and Artificial Lake
We walked a kilometer more to get to the Grand Park of Tirana, and we were glad we did.
We could rest there, sit down next to the magnificent artificial lake and drink water that we had bought in a local supermarket. Local life 🙂
I couldn’t believe that the lake was artificial!
And, btw, the Grand Park even has a running track! We went there and even ran a little next to a few locals training on that beautiful Sunday morning.
Bunk’Art 2
But maybe what I enjoyed the most was the museum Bunk’Art 2, which offers a unique and fascinating journey through Albania’s Cold War history and the oppressive regime of Enver Hoxha.
Bunk’Art 2 is not just a typical museum; it’s an underground nuclear bunker turned into a historical exhibit!!!
Built in the 1970s, it was intended to protect government and military officials in the event of an invasion. Walking through its tunnels and rooms provides an eerie, tangible connection to the paranoia and isolation Albania experienced during the Cold War.
This museum is dedicated to Albania’s Ministry of Internal Affairs and the infamous Sigurimi, the secret police that controlled, spied on, and oppressed the population under Hoxha’s regime.
We walked around and saw the impressive display of the tools of surveillance, interrogation, and torture used to maintain control, making it a gripping insight into how authoritarian regimes function.
🏃♀️ The race 🏃♂️
📅 The Marathon Expo 🎽
The Marathon Expo was located in Skanderbeg Square, where main events in Tirana happen.
In fact, where the marathon was set to start and end, as we saw.
As I wrote above, it was an extremely sunny day so it all had a ‘festive’ atmoshere. Marathon Expo for the Tirana Marathon 2024
The fair was open on Friday and on Saturday from 9am to 9pm. We went there quite early on Saturday so there were not so many people picking up the “race kits”.
There were three different desks: one for the marathon, one for the half and one for the 10k race.
You were supposed to bring a QR that was sent to you via email, but as they had sent also an invoice for the payment with a QR code, many people (including us) were confused and handed over the invoice QR. The girls attending the desks looked tired when they had to explain the same thing over and over again.
We got our tshirts: Roger’s XL was fine but my S one was very, very big. I tried to get an XS but they told me they didn’t have an XS. The S size was the smallest avaiable.
We got a bag of nuts and a protein bar in our ‘race kit’ as well.
The race
We kind of guessed it was going to be a little disorganised when we could not find anywhere in the Web the starting time.
Finally, we ‘guessed’ it was going to be at 9am looking at the watch counting down the hours 😊
Arriving to Skanderbeg square
We arrived to Skanderbeg square with plenty of time. It was sunny and there were not too many runners: I had read we were going to be 4,000 counting the three races: the marathon, with yellow BIBs, the half, with green BIBs and the 10k, with blue BIBs.
There was a majority of blue BIBs, and we guessed that the marathon one was the yellow when we saw a bunch of Swedish runners who looked very, very fit.
Those, a couple of English ladies and a girl with “Polksa” in her tshirt were the few foreigners that we saw.
We took pictures in front of the landmarks of the Square, including the statue of the guy himself, and I even used a very picturesque carousel to stretch!
The start: big chaos!
The start was, by far, the worst part of the marathon. There were no boxes, or any distinction between the races, and it was open to the public…
So, in consequence, we waited while people not even running were going back and forth. And many were… smoking! Yes: a minute before a sport race was about to start.
We heard a countdown but, as nobody was moving, we did not realise that the marathon and the half marathon had already started.
At minute 16 approximately, Roger heard the speaker announcing the start of the 10K race, so we made our way to the start line to see if we could start. We had to push and yell “twenty one!” and most people let us through… but we ended up in a very very crowed start and we couldn’t go further.
Plus, some ‘nice’ Albanians were saying: “ah, 21 already gone! You missed it”, “Try again next year”. Not very funny.
So, we started with the 10k, amongst people going very fast … for the first 10 meters.
Chaos!
The first kilometres by ourselves
After 50 meters there was a split between the 10k and the other two, so all of a sudden, all the 10k runners turned left and we headed a wide and very empty street in front of us.
For more than a kilometre, we ran like we were in the Vanilla Sky movie: just us.
We saw runners going back in the other side of the street and we ran quite fast.
We turned at kilometre 1.5, a place that had no BIB check, so… if we had known, maybe we could even have cheated!!!
There we were given bottles of water (that was good) and kept running.
Back and forth avenues, 5 times
The half marathon course was not too bad, all in all. You ran up a wide street 1.5 kilometre approximately, and then 1.5 back.
And then you repeat this 5 times!
At least there were many music stands, in which young girls dressed in ‘street clothes’ or in traditional clothes were dancing to folkloric songs.
We kept being given bottles of water, and there were police officers in every pedestrian crossing to prevent people from crossing randomly.
At about kilometer 5, we overtook the last runners of the 21k /42k who had started at 9am, and then we relaxed.
We were in the game!
Heading to the Great Park
Slowly but steadily, we kept overtaking runners.
We saw one very old Swedish runner, with a patriotic tshirt, who was running very painfully (kudos to him!!!), and Roger said: “I do not want to end up like this one… so I will do more strength training from now on”.
We passed by a dance stand that played “Be my lover” next to a statue of a very strong soldier (a must in all ex-communist countries: the statues of very masculine fighters…)
I was feeling ok and finally enjoying the run!
The Great Park
That was, by far, the best part of the run. At kilometre 13 you enter the Park and run around the Artificial Lake.
We had visited the park the day before, and in fact I saw a bench where we had seated and told Roger.
Running by the lake was amazing. Beautiful scenery. Not very often you run in a place like this in a urban marathon.
It felt like a “Park run” and I ran in a trail next to the concrete pavement, which gave some relief to my back.
Last kilometres
At kilometre 18, when we were almost leaving the park… we were overtaken by the first runner of the marathon!
We left the park with 3 kilometres to go, and were overtaken by the second and the third marathon runners.
I joked: “They started 20 minutes before us!”, which was actually true 😊
Roger was struggling so we slowed down.
We took a couple of videos in front of a nice building with an Albanian flag and took it very, very easy.
The finish
Although we went very slow at the end, we finished running and holding hands.
But I was a little upset I didn’t like the organisation, which was again proved by the fact we were not given anything at the finish line.
There were bottles of water, but you had to go to stand to find them.
Roger was “threating me” with “I am going to faint”, so I went to get some redbull. Well, it was finished already.
So the poor marathon runners who had still a lot of kms in front of them… would have nothing.
And there were a lot of people smoking (like the photographers).
We took a few pictures with our medals in front of the landmarks of the Square again, and, happy because we had finished without injuries, we headed to the hotel.
P.S. When, at 14:30, we were walking to get a taxi, we saw one guy who was walking the marathon and who we had overtaken at kilometre 7… still running. He was approaching the finish line… in the middle of the traffic!
Poor guy. They had opened the streets to the traffic regardless of runners still trying to finish…
🍜 Carboloading 🍝: What to eat in Albania if you are a runner
Albanian cuisine has a variety of dishes rich in carbohydrates, reflecting the country’s agricultural heritage and Mediterranean influences.
And, also, with so many Italian tourists and the country being so close, there are plenty of Italian restaurants that offer pasta.
We choose to carbo-load the typical way with 🍝 pasta 🍝 at one of the restaurants in Rruga Murat Toptani street.
This is a really recommended pedestrian street to go for a stroll, eat in a terrace or have an icecream, next to the “Tirana Castle”.
In Tirana there are many stray cats and dogs in the streets, so we had lunch with two curious guests in the tables next to us!
But we also had a typical Albanian dish called Byrek (here a post with a lot of info about it!). This is a savory pastry made with layers of thin phyllo dough, filled with ingredients like cheese, spinach, or meat. The dough and the layers make byrek a carbohydrate-rich dish, similar to other Balkan pies.
And in case you need more, here are three other typical Albanian foods that are high in carbohydrates:
- Flia: Flia is a traditional dish made of multiple layers of crepes, each brushed with cream or butter and baked in a special pan. It is typically served with yogurt and is high in carbohydrates due to the flour-based layers.
- Pite: Similar to byrek, pite is a pie made with phyllo dough and can be filled with a variety of ingredients, such as potatoes, leeks, or cheese. It is a hearty, carbohydrate-heavy dish, commonly enjoyed in Albanian households.
- Kulaç: Kulaç is a traditional Albanian bread often prepared for special occasions. It’s a dense, round bread made from wheat flour, sometimes with the addition of cornmeal or other grains.
Useful information
🏆 Tirana Marathon, Half Marathon and 10k.
🌐 Website: https://tiranamarathon.com/
🏃 Number of runners: 4,000.
🗓️ October in Tirana, Albania.
👟 Urban: bring shoes for asphalt.
✅ The course is well designed, and you have the opportunity to run in a big and beatiful park as well as around the major landmarks of Tirana.
✅ Cheap to enter and well communicated from and to major European cities.
❌ An organisational disaster. No controls, random people without bibs making it difficult to get to the start line…
❌ All instructions were given in albania and there was utter and complete chaos. We didn’t get our results officially counted as we couldn’t get to the start line for the half marathon and had to run with the 10k!
Map
One book
“The Successor” by Ismail Kadare
Ismail Kadare is a renowned Albanian author and has written numerous works that delve into the history, culture, and politics of Albania. “The Successor” is a political thriller that explores the mysterious circumstances surrounding the death of a high-ranking government official in the Albanian regime, reflecting the oppressive and paranoid atmosphere of the time. The story is set in the capital city, Tirana, and provides a vivid depiction of life under the communist regime.
Plot Summary: A powerful political novel based on the sudden, mysterious death of the man who had been handpicked to succeed the hated Albanian dictator Enver Hoxha. Did he commit suicide or was he murdered? That is the burning question. The man who died by his own hand, or another’s, was Mehmet Shehu, the presumed heir to the ailing dictator, Enver Hoxha. So sure was the world that he was next in line, he was known as The Successor. And then, shortly before he was to assume power, he was found dead. “The succesor” is simultaneously a mystery novel, a historical novel-based on actual events and buttressed by the author’s private conversations with the son of the real-life Mehmet Shehu-and a psychological novel. How do you live when nothing is sure?
