Sleek new airport marks Albania’s transformation
TIRANA (Reuters) – Albania inaugurated a new glass-and-steel terminal in the capital’s international airport on Wednesday, replacing the squat concrete building that for 15 years served as a depressing reminder of Stalinist rule. The new building at Mother Teresa Airport, built in green glass and local stone, has a roof shaped like the wing of an aeroplane. «This terminal is more than a symbol, it makes Albania more beautiful, more modern,» said Prime Minister Sali Berisha at the ceremony, noting it resembled «a giant bird.» «The best airports of Europe and the world will envy it.» Businessman Jeff Griffin, a frequent visitor to the old terminal, said passengers used to wait for their suitcases to be shoved through a hole in the wall by hand. «My trunk was too big and wouldn’t go through, I had to show them a door nearby and get it out that way.» The modern terminal and a new road to Tirana mark the first stage of an -85 million ($113 million) public investment program, one of the largest projects since the end of Stalinism in 1991. The isolationist outlook established by the dictator Enver Hoxha before his death in 1985 meant that Albania had no state carrier. The only travelers allowed in were communists who came to study Hoxha’s idiosyncratic brand of communism. Around 1 million passengers are expected to pass though the airport in 2007.
