Llogaria ime 
Se vi trovate a Tirana e volete provare un ottimo kafe turke, il mio consiglio è di andare da Kafe Mehmeti, un delizioso bar costruito nei pressi del Pazari i Ri, il nuovo mercato di Tirana ristrutturato circa due anni fa e divenuto in breve tempo uno dei punti turistici più in voga della capitale albanese. I proprietari, Fjolla e Rezart, sono una giovane e simpatica coppia che, dopo diversi viaggi a Istanbul, rimasti affascinati dalla cultura del caffè della capitale turca, ha deciso di aprire il loro bar nel cuore di Tirana. Qui propongono ai clienti non solo dell’ottimo caffè turco o espresso (di cui vanno molto fieri e a ragione: è buonissimo, cosa niente affatto scontata quando si è fuori dall’Italia!), ma anche dolci tradizionali dell’area, tra cui il baklava (quello fatto da loro è uno dei migliori che abbia mai assaggiato in tutti i Balcani), e tè turco. Caffè turco ed espresso, dunque: Kafe Mehmeti è un posto dove est ed ovest si incontrano, un po’ come l’Albania stessa.
The exact number of military bunkers strewn across Albania is a matter of debate. Depending on who you ask, the tally ranges from around 175,000 to some 750,000 of the burrowed, cement-and-steel, pod-like lookouts meant to protect this country on the Balkan Peninsula in southeastern Europe. The reason for this discrepancy is cryptically sinister: The mushroom-shaped cabins were built with Cold War secrecy, in the 1970s and 1980s, by a paranoia-fueled regime. That was then. Today, three decades removed from Communist dictator Enver Hoxha, who ruled from 1944 to 1985, citizens see the omnipresent bunkers as painful reminders of a difficult past, to be sure. However, Albanians, resourceful by nature, are flipping the script, and giving the objects new lives as restaurants, bars, cafés, and even museums.
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From the air, the turreted bunkers look like braille characters spilled across the landscape—embossed dots scattered in every corner of the country. The structures hide in valleys, blossom from mountainsides, and sprout along shorelines, slapped over and over by the Adriatic Sea. (A commonly used figure estimates 2.2 bunkers per square mile. Albania is nearly half the size of West Virginia.) They come in an array of sizes. A few dozen acted as command centers with mazes of rooms to wait out any war. Many served as tiny one- or two-person sentry posts. Nominally, the “pillboxes” were constructed to keep an eye on an ever-changing list of potential exterior enemies. The reality: Their raison d’être was to solidify a collective, internal, national fear.
