Note: THE ROYAL COURT STROLLS THROUGH TIRANA... - President Berisha and the government, get ready! Vacations in the north have reached the unemployed! For us nostalgics! At midday, Tirana seems unusual, with the same slow rhythm, but with an odd addition of people moving along all the city sidewalks. At least that is how it seemed to me yesterday morning. After a hurried coffee I decided to walk along the boulevard. It was as if the latest government notice had already been felt, the one lately spreading early in the morning through apartment blocks, markets, bus stations and shops. Recently there have also been lines at bank counters and many people wandering around with bags in their hands, perhaps trying to secure a place. Without even speaking to any shopkeeper, I understood that people only wanted to know whether they had seen them or not. Most often there was talk of some “arrivals” descending into the city as if in an unnamed parade. And just when I was asking myself whether this was another sad story of transition, or simply a way of filling the emptiness of Sunday, a friend told me they had gone out for a stroll. For these people, he said, there were even people waiting to see them. I did not need long to understand that the talk was about the royal family, or more precisely what is usually called the “royal court.” They were passing through Tirana with all the seriousness of a ceremony, with several cars and people around them, arousing curiosity, surprise and some smiles. In front of this strange spectacle, Tirana remained ordinary, with its dust, its street vendors, its people calculating the month’s expenses and its children running after ice cream. But as I watched this small cortege, it seemed to me that the city was staging a scene taken from an old novel, brought in the most unsuitable way into today’s reality. I watched the faces of passers-by: some laughed, some shrugged, others followed the cars with their eyes trying to identify some known figure. There were also those who took this as a sign that in Albania anything could still happen, even the symbolic return of the past. In the end, all this remained a walk through Tirana. But not an ordinary walk. It was a reminder that politics, symbolism, poverty and spectacle coexist on the same sidewalks. If someone wants to read this as a warning, let them do so. President Berisha and the government should get ready! Because in this country, where people can barely afford vacations in the north and where former owners and former political prisoners still await justice, the royal court always finds a path to go out strolling.