Delights of Tirana, Albania #1

In which I rant happily about how much I like the TREES here.

I moved to Tirana from Thailand. Thailand is home to vast, incredible jungles, glorious beaches, and spectacular wildlife. Thailand’s cities are home to concrete, concrete, bad smells, and more concrete. My last few months in Thailand I didn’t have my own transport, so I spent waaayyy too much time walking up and down crowded roads with tiny sidewalks, occasionally navigating around sad trees whose roots had managed to break the stone caging them.

So when I first drove down this street on my way to my AirBnB in Tirana, I thought I was somewhere heavenly.

Every time I remember to do so, I delight in Tirana’s trees. In the city center we have plenty of trees: young and old, lining the roads, hovering over the cafes, and sometimes crowding pedestrians right off the sidewalks.

Nature is important for human thriving. It just is, there’s plenty of science to back this up: looking at nature makes people feel better, makes bodies work better, makes minds calm.

And even in the most urbanized part of Tirana, there are trees. They provide shade during the blistering summer months. They remind me of where I am: the Balkans, Southern Europe. Land of olive trees.

The trees, when I let them, remind me of my geography. I stand in a particular place, at a particular time. Where the seeds of this particular type of tree could sprout. Where the roots were allowed to grow. Where the branches were tended. A spot of earth where someone, for whatever reason, cared enough to make sure a tree would be allowed to thrive.

In a city, trees connect us not only to nature, but to other people. They provide a mark of the past, they send us a message: “this mattered to me.” No one cut that tree down for firewood, no one decided the flow of traffic would be more efficient if this tree were removed. Having the tree mattered. And now, I get to enjoy it. To rejoice in the unique pattern of its bark, the gentle shelter of its branches.