More Than 160 Characters

It occurs to me that lately I've been Twitter-ized, or Facebook-ed, shoehorning my thoughts into small bits of text, rather than actually writing anything.  Not that the public's been out there clamoring for SSSBlog posts (no one seems to care), but I'm afraid that my brain will become unable to think of anything longer than a demi-paragraph.

Ironic, given that technology has opened up a huge pipeline of information, that our writing has reverted to the days of the telegram:  "Arrived London.  Deal on.  Return tomorrow."

So today, something a bit longer, a whole 20 minutes, perhaps, on Albania.

When I was younger, Albania -- a small country on the Adriatic Sea lying between Greece and Macedonia -- was in the grip of a dictatorship that originally was aligned with the former USSR but later formed strong ties with China.  As a result, I always thought of it as a sinister and threatening place, a nest of oppressive communist evildoers, even though, in fact, I really knew nothing about it.

My view of Albania changed last year when met and became friends with a young woman from Albania at the Alliance Francaise in Paris.  To the extent I had a mental image of Albanians, she was the antithesis of it:  smart, funny, informed, interesting, engaging, open, friendly, pretty (perhaps even beautiful), and sweet, with a big, generous heart.  She was studying French because she wanted more than anything to be an architect, and that path wasn't open to her in Albania, so she came to Paris, 18 years old (though she seems much more mature than that) to study French and enroll in a university.

On the face of it, we were unlikely friends, this bright young Albanian woman and me, an older fairly stodgy American, but we became friends, and we'd sometimes we'd sit in the cafeteria and she'd tell me stories of her family in Albania.  Times were hard sometimes; political changes would impact them in a way that wouldn't happen in the U.S.  But it became clear that Albania, like many other Eastern European countries, was now on its way to becoming more free, more open, more a part of the rest of Europe.  And although she didn't perhaps recognize it, my friend -- and the rest of her Albanian friends in Paris -- were part of the vanguard of that change.

Sunday Albanians voted in parlementary elections, an election that seems to have been conducted peacefully, openly, and fairly.  My friend's Facebook posts were election-related; I wished her country courage and good luck.

Albania joined NATO last year and is hoping to join the European Union soon.  I hope it succeeds.  Amidst all the crises we are facing, there is good news out there.  My young Albanian friend has given me a peculiar interest in that country.  I know it continues to have problems (the countryside, I think, remains backwards and very poor), but if it has many young people in it like my friend, its future is bright.