The parking and traffic in the city center of Tirana is what you would expect, especially considering the explosive growth of the past few years.
I was waiting on a street corner near my son's apartment for a delivery of some light fixtures. The delivery vehicle of choice in this town is a moped, and there are plenty whizzing by at all times of the day.
After a couple of coordination phone calls where I only understood maybe 10% of what was said, I sent a picture of the cafe I was sitting at in hopes of guiding the driver to my location. Given there's a cafe on every corner in Tirana, that didn't seem to do the trick, so I sent a picture of the restaurant next door. There's one of those on every corner as well.
As I waited, I evaluated each moped in the distance as waves of them rippled past me. After a while, a pattern started to form. Nearly all were food deliveries, with an emphasis on a long flat area for steaming hot pizzas.
As I continued to wait, I was wondering what else I could take a picture of. Then suddenly, out from behind a small truck, emerged a slightly larger, totally black, two-wheeled beast. As it took form, I was struck by its asymmetrical nature. The only thing that came to mind was that perhaps it had been rejected from the set of the original Mad Max film.
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Among the many accessories I didn't understand, there was a long thin PVC pipe jutting out from the rear right side at about bumper level. My brain had to solve this riddle. The only thing I could come up with was that it kept vehicles from riding too close to the rear exposed tire.
The driver was very tall, certainly by southern Albanian standards. I was having a hard time understanding because of the helmet he was wearing. It was only when he flipped up the visor which also served as a windshield, that I grasped the full beauty of it all.
There was a hinge connected to a band wrapped around a cap on his head. But the real magic was the visor, which wrapped around his face and came down well below his chin.
The makeshift visor was crafted from a five-gallon plastic water bottle, the kind that gets thrown away by the thousands in this town. I quickly realized he would never have to clean it. Given his ingenuity, I was sure he had a quick way to attach a replacement.
In a city whose design culture is stuck in the mid-90s, this driver and his vehicle were truly hideous.
Then it hit me. In a city full of conforming people, nobody was more free than this guy. He didn't give a centi-fuck what anyone thought. He didn't care about being late. He wasn't concerned about tips or customer satisfaction.
The universe had given this man gilded black wings and no rearview mirror, and he was flying. Godspeed, my friend. Godspeed.
