Leaving on a train

ita eng
11 April 2011

They are an open-air museum of the Albanian eighties. They have remained as they were when the regime collapsed. The Albanian railways. An efficient railway network is what the country would really need. A picture story [April 2011]

Where are you going?
I have decided to make a journey by train. It's 20 years since I last took one in Albania. When I told my friends, their reaction was one of disbelief and curiousity. "Have you gone mad? It's dangerous", "Will you squeeze in among all those farmers and mountain people?".
Small vans
Nobody takes the train anymore in Albania. Everyone has private cars, or people travel together at irregular times, in vans which are often modern, new and comfortable.
At the seaside
As a child, however, I often used to travel by train. I have many memories of trains, red and green tank engines, grey stations of reinforced concrete, the smell of fuel and people coming from places unknown to me. We used to go to the seaside by train, with beach umbrellas and cloth bags containing cheese burek and fresh vegetables.
The Eighties
Today trains and railway stations are not part of modern Albania. Everything has remained as it was then, in my childhood. An open-air museum on the communism of the late 80s.
Intercity
There are still the old Intercity trains given to Albania by the Italian government when the country opened up to Europe. I remember the first times I travelled on those trains: to me they represented a qualitative leap and the materialisation of the political and economic changes I had heard adults around me talking about.
Faces
Now most of the windows have broken glass. The crowds that used to gather to go to the seaside no longer exist and the faces of the few remaining passengers and railwaymen are tired, dull, crushed by the weight of the wild Albanian-style capitalism.
The ticket
Tickets only cost a few Euro, 4-5 times less than a van ticket. The journey however lasts two or three times longer. Sometimes animals stop on the rails, other times objects prevent the railway engine's movement. Children from the new built-up areas in the suburbs may enjoy throwing stones against the windows. And sometimes the train stops only because the rails are so damaged that it can't continue the journey. This happened to me last December, during a cold winter night.
Voluntary work
On the other hand, railways don't seem to have never been taken seriously in the country, not even during communism. The railway network is very limited, it only connects about twenty places inbetween Tirana, Vlorë, Shkodër and Pogradec. Their construction started in 1946, as part of a joint Albanian-Yugoslav project, while the intention was that of making Albania the sixth Yugoslav republic. Afterwards the building was based on the voluntary, but mandatory work of young Albanians.
It will solve everything
An efficient railway network would, however, be of fundamental importance for the country. Not only for environmental reasons, but also in order to reduce the current chaotic road traffic and the extremely high accident rate which in the years has been among the highest in Europe. Station employees – persons on the edge who haven't been able to 'reinvent' themself since the fall of communism – are convinced that in the near future the railways will be privatized in order to improve them within Corridor 8. “This will solve everything”. But the authorities prefer not to talk about it.
Credits
Photos and texts by Marjola Rukaj