Albanian Diary – Part 3

We woke up rather late. The lack of sleep on the overnight bus had really messed up our sleep cycle. By the time we got up, the sun was already out in full force – not exactly the most ideal condition to walk around in.

Luckily, there is Bunk.Art – an old decommissioned bunker turned into a museum about the communist era in Albania on the northeastern edge of Tirana.

Entrance to the bunker

One memorable factoid about Albania: during the Communist era, the supreme leader Enver Hoxha was extremely paranoid about possible nuclear or chemical attacks by the Allies or Soviet (Enver deemed Khruschev “not a true Marxist” and broke off relationship with Soviet Union) and went on a bunker building spree. From 1960s to 1980s over 100,000 bunkers of various sizes were built.

The museum we went to was one of the larger underground bunkers built during that time. It’s tucked in the hill and so well-covered as the entrance to the site was no more than a non-descript dirt tunnel with just enough room for one car.

Tunnel to the bunker site

On the other side of the tunnel we encountered a leafy open area with a few office-like building and a ticket office. It’s not until we walked up the road behind the ticket office that we came upon the bunker entrance dug into the side of the hill.

The bunker itself was a large, multi-level subterranean complex with four levels and a few large common areas including a dining hall and a movie theater! There were a few dozen rooms on each floor; some are no bigger than a jail cell, others are the size of a comfortable apartment with en-suite bathroom.

It was damp, dank and humid in the bunker. The cool air smelled fetid even though they had engineered a system that continuously supplied fresh air from the outside (it could be halted in case of chemical attacks). All the rooms were tiny and low-ceilinged, and the atmosphere felt eerie. I supposed it befits its purpose as a safe haven for end-of-the-world scenario. In the end, there were no wars, and this bunker was just used by the army for training.

Triple concrete doors on each floor

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