Thursday, March 15, 2012





Celebrating 14th of March in Tirana: For Albanians, 14th of March is the spring day and it is quite an experience to see how they celebrated it ! Was a wonderfull sunny day. The main Boulevard of Tirana (boulevard of the Martyrs of the nation) was closed and only for pedestrians and bicycles like during communism time (no cars :-)! A lot of people walking, enjoying music and fanfare parade. Others were selling the traditional cookie made only for this day , the famous and delicious "Ballokume" (a cookie made of corn flour, butter and sugar). Me as a French girl, originaly from Vietnam and living in Tirana since 2 years, i was the curiosity of the people ! Why ? Just because for this special day, many Albanians were coming from the countryside and many of them have never seen an Asian girl ! Then, they all said "oh Chinese chinese" and try to speak English with me , saying "hi, hello" ! They were so friendly, not with any kind of discriminations or things you can find in an other European country. My 6 years old boy (half vietnamese/half German) was surprised and amused because he didn't understand why they said Chinese as for him he is not Chinese ! We were laughing a lot and enjoying the spring day with all Albanians ! Attached, some pictures and videos from me or from my friends !

2 comments:

  1. Nice pictures!
    Thanks for sharing :)
    I'm glad they left the decorations for a while on the boulevard.

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  2. Thank you for your comment Nousha :)

    ReplyDelete