The money will be paid out starting in August, but without interest. Soon, 170 percent The three-week break taken by the moneylender has ended. Queues began forming at the company’s counters during the night page 7

Rocks are coming down into the centre of Tirana. Along with advertising cylinders, stones placed over manholes and utility pits have appeared at the city’s intersections. Open for several years, they have sent dozens of people to hospital. Now even the newly elected mayor, Albert Brojka, risks falling in one, which would force us to go to the ballot boxes again, although we have no desire to do so, since Brojka’s party would steal our votes for the third time. This large stone, against which dozens of cars have collided so far, has blocked the mouth of a manhole opposite the luxuriously named “Hollivud” restaurant, where food is expensive, and behind the “Unknown Soldier” monument. This is not the first time that Stone Age tools have been used to replace iron and steel. In the worst cases, Tirana’s manholes have been left open; the one you see in the photograph is the best-case scenario. Over four years, the Tirana Municipality left quite a few holes open in the city’s streets. The staff of that time contributed significantly to their increase. The question now is how to close them, but this is precisely where everything seems to get complicated. Several years after manhole covers began being used for all kinds of purposes, only a few remain on our streets, while nobody is thinking of installing new ones. The television has not even announced a tender for manhole covers. Apparently, we will have to wait for some foreign company to remember. Preferably not one of those that undertook to clean up Tirana’s rubbish. The new mayor must not forget that he won votes with the slogan “A European Tirana, a Tirana of the year 2000.” There is no doubt that this chunk of mountain being used as a cover in the middle of the capital does not befit the name of the local municipality, which has every kind of ambition. So he is kindly asked to remove it, before other rocks lie in wait for cars, perhaps even right outside his office. This place is known by the name “Barricade Street,” but the barricades there date back 50 years. Now we are, as Mr Brojka’s slogan says, on the threshold of the new millennium. K.J

One of the many stones on the streets of the capital photo G. SHKULLAKU

page 5 Italian crime “tourist” in Tirana page 2 Gjirokastër, consulate blocks

page 13 VEFA, 5 years among artists page 21

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