Albania -- A Taste Of Forbidden Fruit

CUTLINE: TOURIST GUIDE FATMIR MANI SHOW SVISITORS A 1950S-VINTAGE U.S. MILITARY JET, A SYMBOL OF 45 YEARS' HOSTILITY BETWEEN ALBANIA AND THE U.S.

CUTLINE: THE NATIONAL MUSEUM OF HISTORY, IN THE CAPITAL CITY, TIRANA, CHRONICLES ALBANIA'S HISTORY OF SUBJUGATION, BEGINNING WITH THE ANCIENT ROMANS.

CUTLINE: JACK SCHNEDLER: A SMALL, TINNY-LOOKING TRUCK SITS OUTSIDE A SHUTTERED MEAT SHOP IN TIRANA.

GJIROKASTER, Albania - Like an apparition from the twilight zone, Albania's prime trophy from 45 years of hostility to the United States perches on a terrace of a 14th century citadel overlooking a gray mosaic of slate roofs.

This Cold War relic, looking trim enough for immediate takeoff, is a T-33, an early military jet, with ``U.S. Air Force'' still emblazoned across the fuselage.

As Albania's version of history tells it, the plane was forced down Dec. 23, 1957, while flying a spy mission over this communist Balkan nation.

``Those were the times when your government wished to overthrow Albania,'' said Fatmir Mani, one of two Albturist guides escorting a group of 10 Dutch and five U.S. travelers on a one-week October visit.

For the Americans, the trip would have been almost impossible before this summer. But now even Europe's hard-line hermit is beginning to come in from the cold.

In June, the People's Socialist Republic of Albania dropped its 40-year ban on virtually all U.S. passport holders. The U.S. State Department has said that diplomatic relations may resume soon - though it warns that in the meantime, no consular help is available to Americans traveling there.

It didn't take long for us to realize that this Maryland-sized morsel of formerly forbidden fruit has worms - literally. More often than not, worm holes riddled the apples that were the sustaining theme of desserts during our week of hotel lunches and dinners. Apparently, the orchards of Albania are spared the pesticides that immunize the Western world's apples.

That insect gap - like the antiquated U.S. jet - is a small example of the time-warp aura visitors get in this nation that counts 3.2 million people but only a few hundred automobiles. Nearly two-thirds of Albanians still live in the countryside, where scenes of stooped peasants and twin-yoked ox carts echo the 16th century paintings of Pieter Brueghel the Elder.

In Albania's cities, rush hour is a pedestrian affair. Tirana, the capital, has a mere dozen traffic lights. Many of the wheezing buses, built during some previous decade in China and Czechoslovakia, look like the salvaged losers from a demolition derby.

There are few bicycles, perhaps because the typical Albanian salary - equivalent to $60 or $70 a month - makes nearly all consumer goods a luxury.

Owning a car was made legal this fall, as the regime continued a series of cautious reforms sparked by economic pressures and the popular revolutions that swept communism out of power in the rest of Eastern Europe. The moves were punctuated by July's occupation of foreign embassies in Tirana by 4,500 dissident Albanians, who were eventually allowed to emigrate by ship to Italy.

Also allowed now are alternatives to the communist Albanian Party of Labor and the practice of religion - forbidden in 1967 when then-strongman Enver Hoxha declared Albania an atheist state.

Fatmir, from the official tourism agency, balanced a host's eagerness to enlighten his foreign visitors with an official guide's unswerving adherence to the party line. But he made it clear that these new freedoms exist more in theory than practice.

``My wife and I will never even dream of owning an automobile,'' said the 30-year-old newlywed, an English teacher most of the year in the town of Pogradec. ``It will take us three or four years simply to afford a refrigerator.''

As for competing political parties, Fatmir said that ``up until now, no one has thought to try such a thing, but it is allowed.'' And the revived right to worship, in a country 65 percent Moslem a half-century ago, is unlikely to bring the reopening of mosques and churches, he said, ``because there are no institutions for the training of imams or priests.''

The Albanian language, thought to derive from ancient Illyrian, is virtually impenetrable to foreign ears - as witness the local name for the country: Shqiperia. ``Thank you'' is ``te falemnderit'' - the only phrase I mastered in a week. Albanians shake their head the opposite way from most of the Western world: An up-and-down nod means ``no'' rather than the expected ``yes.'' There's even an antic cadence to the crow of Albanian roosters, which Fatmir mimicked as ``kiku kaku, daggle doo.''

Despite Europe's budding liberalization, statues of Josef Stalin continue to occupy places of honor along main boulevards; secret police still cast a web of fear; the only billboard advertising trumpets the glories of communism, where shoddy or shabby is the norm for products and services.

Until Fatmir and his bride can afford

a stove, they'll have to settle or window-shopping the models on display in Tirana at ``Albania Today,'' an exhibit of the country's manufacturing prowess. We saw an array of four kitchen ranges, presumably the state of the art in Albanian appliances; each was a wood-burning model that might have been lifted from a 1920s Sears catalog.

Wherever you go - from the beaches to the mountains that cover 70 percent of Albania's territory - the landscape is dotted with thousands of military bunkers. They were built in the 1960s and '70s, when Hoxha feared an invasion by Yugoslavia, Greece, the U.S., the Soviet Union or some other foreign army.

These pillboxes, which resemble half-buried concrete igloos, would hold one or two soldiers. They lurk everywhere: in plowed fields, at urban intersections, along river banks, near rail crossings, in schoolyards, outside hotels.

In past years, Albturist guides would berate their foreign charges for sneaking photographs of the bunkers. We were free to shoot all the pillboxes we wished - sometimes with local youngsters posed on the dome.

``The whole life of Albania is under democratic change,'' said Fatmir. ``Some people want the changes as quickly as possible. They will go on and on, but step by step, in a measured way. Albania wants to be like the other countries in Europe, but we will not let the changes be imposed upon us.''

The easing of police-state rigors was evident when we landed at Albania's only airport, 15 miles northwest of Tirana. As recently as this summer, armed soldiers lined the perimeter for the arrival of each day's one or two international flights, while incoming baggage was searched for Bibles, Western newspapers and other forbidden material.

On our visit, we saw more grazing cows than gun-toting guards on the walk from the tarmac up a flower-lined path to the bungalow-sized terminal. Passport inspection was cursory; the intricate customs-declaration forms are no longer required and the quick X-ray of suitcases was done by smiling attendants.

Fatmir, along with fellow guide, Genci, loaded us onto a comfortable Mercedes motorcoach driven by Astrit - oldest of the three escorts and our consensus guess as the secret-police agent in the trio.

The highway into Tirana was paved but narrow, like all roads we used. Rural traffic joined with the derelict public buses, pollution-belching trucks, horse carts, bicyclists and stray flocks of livestock to keep the average speed about 15 miles an hour.

Our itinerary included four nights in Tirana, two in the southern coastal town of Saranda and one in the port city of Durres 25 miles west of Tirana.

Daytime stops included Kruje, 15th century seat of the Albanian national hero, Skanderbeg, who repelled the Turkish invaders; Lezhe, site of Skanderbeg's tomb; Gjirokaster, which preserves the stone architecture and winding lanes of previous centuries along with the birthplace of Hoxha; Butrint, a sprawling archaeological ruin near Saranda dating back to the Greco-Roman era; and Apollonia, a smaller set of ruins, where smashed crosses in a nearby graveyard testify to the ruthlessness of the 1967 atheism campaign.

Sightseeing in Tirana included the Ethnographic Museum, the National Museum of History, the sleek new Enver Hoxha Museum, and Hoxha's 1985 tomb in the Cemetery of Martyrs overlooking the capital.

The history museum offers a crash course in Albania's legacy of subjugation - for seven centuries by the ancient Romans, 10 by the medieval Byzantines, and five by the Ottoman Turks.

Albania gained its independence in 1912, just in time to become a World War I battlefield. Between the wars, it fell under the rule of a grasping politician. Mussolini's armies made it an Italian protectorate in 1939, and Nazi Germany's troops swept into the country in 1943, to be driven out by Hoxha's communist partisans at the end of 1944. Historians believe Marshal Tito might have swallowed up Albania as a seventh Yugoslav republic if he hadn't broken with Stalin in 1948.

In light of past struggles, the paranoia that built Albania's fields of bunkers seems less extreme.

Neither the history museum nor any other conventional attraction by itself would merit a journey to Albania. Nor would the hotels, meals, nightlife or shopping; as in many newly accessible countries of Eastern Europe, luxury amenities are not readily available for tourists, who still fare better than most of the citizens. A bright spot in Albania was the service, surprisingly attentive for a socialist country and, on most occasions, done with a smile.

Our room in the 15-story Hotel Tirana, Albania's tallest building, overlooked Skanderbeg Square, the Champs Elysees of Albania and the venue each evening for what Albturist literature calls the ``slipper parade'' - the promenade of virtually every man in town (and a smattering of women) common to Mediterranean and Balkan societies.

Hotel meals, part of the tour package, were ample and generally edible - but also repetitious and seldom flavorful. Most lunches and dinners featured chewy pieces of beef or lamb accompanied by french-fried potatoes. Breakfasts came with tea, not coffee; Albanians prefer warm milk in the mornings.

Unlabeled wine bottles, we learned by experience, are to be avoided, as is Albanian beer.

Wine usually was about $1.50 a bottle, mineral water - when available - 20 or 30 cents a liter. Coca-Cola and other imported soft drinks was 60 cents a can at the hotel's hard-currency shops.

My wife, Marcia, the family's souvenir sleuth, found very little worth buying. We did bring home five of the cone-shaped white felt caps worn by some older Albanian men. The trip's nightlife consisted of two concerts at the Palace of Culture on Skanderbeg Square. One was an Ed Sullivan-style program of popular songs; the other, a performance by the Albanian Radio and Television Symphony Orchestra. Both began at 6 p.m.; tickets were $2.50.

Rather than sights, food, souvenirs or culture, the principal point of visiting Albania is the opportunity for Americans to see a society astonishingly unlike ours - yet still a part of Europe and at least peripherally a part of the Western tradition.

Foreign visitors - about 20,000 this year - are rare and obvious enough that stares follow them down the street. In my case, the stares were more intense because I happen to sport a beard - a facial adornment rarely seen among Albanians, who flock to barbershops as early as 6:30 a.m. for their daily shave.

Until this summer, the secret police discouraged ordinary Albanians from talking to foreigners. But we were approached by a variety of people curious about life in the West. Fatmir said more people would have talked with me if my beard hadn't made me such a strange and fearsome creature in local eyes.

``In previous years, our regulations would have required the shaving of your beard at the airport,'' he said.

I'm not sure Albania is worth a beard.

Jack Schnedler is travel editor of the Chicago Sun-Times.