Ringing True?

A quote floating around these days via the self-inflating, patriotic e-mail chains I receive from my dear grandma is the following, which is always attributed to former British PM Tony Blair, in reference to the U.S., but seemingly never confirmed: "A simple way to take measure of a country is to look at how many want in and how many want out."

I do not particularly care whether or not he said it (although a lot of people on Snopes do, if you're curious), or who first proffered this thought; however, I do think that it is uniquely applicable to Albania. In 2001, UNICEF co-sponsored a survey of Albanian youth; the results found that nearly half of young people plan to emigrate from Albania to another country. I'm no expert, but I'm pretty sure that if you were to ask American kids ages 9-17 about living abroad, they would be nearly unanimous in assuming that thought would be followed by something along the lines of "for a semester." Albanian youth want to leave the country for good to make their way in life, and that's troubling-- especially for a country with religious freedom, not at war, and unshackled from communism for over 15 years.

Apparently, a lot of people want out of Albania; meanwhile, not many want in, either. Albania's tourism industry is nascent, at best.

The irony of this is that Albania possesses so many of the qualities that make Greece and Italy, main attractions for both young Albanians and international tourists alike, so desirable. Its Ionian and Adriatic coasts are apparently beautiful, ideal settings for posh resort towns; it boasts Greek & Roman ruins--the very features that people travel to Greece and Italy to see-- in Butrint, and the 2,400 year old Castle of Rozafa in Shkodra; it even has ski-worthy mountains in the north! All of these potential attractions of course, are hampered by the country's rampant crime and lack of a national road system or even unified traffic laws and driver's education.

I suppose that after so many years of oppression, both literally and culturally, some Albanians just want a fresh start. Rather than "If it ain't broke, don't fix it," perhaps their theory is, "If our country is broke, why not go next door where everything is fixed and has been for years?" It's got to be frustrating to feel surpassed by the rest of the world.

Over the past few hundred years, Albania missed out on the rest of Europe's Renaissance when the Turks invaded; went from forced conversions to Islam (the country is 90% Muslim, mostly secular) to being declared the first officially atheist country (according to its former Communist dictator, "the religion of Albania is Albanianism"); would not have been a country were it not for President Woodrow Wilson's inspired intervention upon Italy, Britain and France's plans to partition Albania amongst its neighbors after WWI; suffered through what is commonly described as the most repressive Communist regime ever, establishing a legacy of non-reward for hard work or accomplishment that has proved difficult to overcome; and took in half a million fleeing Kosovars in the 1990s.

Perhaps the city of Baltimore's waste-of-half-a-million-dollars-in-consulting-and-marketing-fees new slogan would be best applied to Albania: "Get In On It." Hopefully somebody, whether internal or external, will decide to do just that.