The Fireworks of the Global Economic Crisis

The economic crunch could have some good side effects after all.

In Tirana’s central Skenderbeg square, every New Year, after the clock’s strikes midnight, the municipality organizes a concert, where turbo-folk queens and local pop artists brave the cold to lip-sync two or three songs.

The ritual is normally followed by a large mob of teenagers that has come out to celebrate the ring of a new cycle of life, of one of the great traditions of former-communist festivities.

In a country where atheism was the national religion for some forty-years, the New Year celebration was the festivity par-excellence. No military parades, few speeches, enough food to compensate a year of rationed yearning, and family and friends under one roof.

What once was a Molotov cocktail of normality, under the harshness of dictatorship, now under the affluence of a pseudo-democracy that stays alive through injections of emigrant cash, has turned into a firecracker of stupidity.  

As the music booms out the speakers, year after year, so do firecrackers thrown on the stage by the crowd, while those poor performers have to jump from one side of the set to another, begging that people stop.

“Please act like civilized people,” would plead singer Eneida Tarifa, while the rampage of firecrackers would intensify at an alarming rate this New Year.  

I never understood why throwing little quasi-bombs, with enough explosive to blow a hand off someone, remains for people in this country their favorite way to ring in the New Year.  

However, what would probably take an army of shrinks to sort out, gives a pseudo-scientific valuation for Albania’s newly found consumerism.

Since very few people spend their money on opera, theater, cinemas and concerts, what better way to measure the entertainment industry and mob-mentality alike than through the consumption of fireworks?

So much money is spent on fireworks in this country, that when you go out on New Year’s, the air you breathe feels like the aftermath of an Israeli airstrike on the Gaza strip. But even this primordial desire to make unwanted noise, is limited by economic laws.

This year Albania imported 400 tones of fireworks compared to the 700 tones the year before.    

It seems that even for a country where consumers have exotic tastes, the global economic crunch is setting in despite the utopian pre-election projections we hear from government bureaucrats.   

If the fireworks-index is correct, that means that tough times are ahead and people in this country will get a little poorer. But that’s not all that bad after all. Let me suggest few activities that the poor man can afford.

Five euro and you can buy a ticket at the Tirana opera house, three euro to enjoy a premiere at the national theater, another three and you could watch a movie once a week. If that is not enough with another five buy yourself a subscription to the national library and its collection of more than a million books.   

If all these so-called civilized activities halved your fireworks budget for next year, don’t despair, at least those poor performers risking their limbs on that New Year stage will be deeply grateful.