10/16/2004: Rainbow-colored Albanian building

[Undertoad]

This building is in Tirana, Albania, and it was painted that way by the Tirana City Hall to make up for the fact that it didn't have any street address.

It turns out that Albania's government is so useless that... well, how useless could it be?

"I live in a green building," explained one resident of the capital Tirana, whose street literally has no name.

Another patient Tirana local describes his house as the one which "faces the bridge." For another, home is "that big brown building behind the bakery."

Some 40 percent of Albanians have no street address, according to at least one official.

"But what would happen if the bakery is closed, or its owner changes his line of business, or the brown facade turns into grey after long rains?" asked sociologist Mentor Kikia.

Servete Lohja, a doctor in a Tirana emergency hospital, said "most of the inhabitants of big Albanian towns don't know where they live."

And so, in order to identify this big apartment building, just paint it in rainbow colors.

I'm just glad there are sociologists who are capable of asking the hard questions.