In a world addicted to statistics, rankings, and PowerPoint patriotism, there once lived a man so magnificently uneducated that he couldn’t tell the difference between GDP growth and a sourdough recipe. He didn’t know what “macroeconomic stability” meant and assumed “structural reform” was something you did to your spine.
Yet—here lies the scandal—when he walked into a hospital, doctors treated him without first asking for an envelope thick enough to cause spinal reform. He had never heard of the Hippocratic Oath, but the doctors behaved as if they had sworn it in blood, not forgotten it in a drawer marked optional ethics.
He had never read the Code of Hammurabi, but he lived under the bizarre illusion that courts existed to deliver justice rather than to auction it off like vintage wine. Newton’s laws were foreign to him, but when earthquakes struck, his house remained standing—mostly because the concrete hadn’t been watered down to finance a contractor’s cousin’s summer villa.
In short, he was catastrophically bad at being a modern cynic.
The Great Mirage of Meritocracy
This man lived in a dangerous fantasy: normality.
He believed that by working honestly and paying taxes, he was somehow entitled to a functioning society. He believed hospitals were meant to heal, schools to educate, courts to judge, and buildings to stand out of basic respect for physics.
Most offensively of all, his children attended the same public kindergartens and schools as the children of mayors, ministers, and even prime ministers. No VIP wings. No gated classrooms. No elite oxygen.
He didn’t realize how unfashionable this was.
In a truly sophisticated Balkan-style society, elites would never allow their offspring to share playgrounds with the children of ordinary taxpayers. Equality is inefficient. Separation is tradition.
The citizen believed he was protected by an invisible force. He called it “civilization.” He thought perhaps it was God, fate, or common sense. In reality, it was something far more fragile: a political choice that temporarily worked.
The Funeral That Ruined Everything
The illusion died on the day a prominent leader died.
Flags lowered. Speeches multiplied. Television anchors whispered as if gravity itself were under investigation. Out of mild curiosity, the citizen watched the funeral and later read the leader’s biography—someone deeply connected to the very city that had given him such a comfortable, boring, dignified life.
That’s when the dots connected.
- The kindergartens.
- The schools.
- The hospitals.
- The bridges.
- The absence of bribes.
None of it was accidental. None of it was divine. It wasn’t “just how things are.” It was the result of a leader who had insisted—almost rudely—that public money should be used for the public.
And then, as if scripted by Balkan realism, the leader died.
When the Albanian Special Begins
Almost immediately, reality corrected itself.
The citizen’s salary, which once supported a life, now barely survived the electricity bill. “Free healthcare” revealed itself as a poetic phrase meaning bring your own bandages and €200 for the surgeon. To get decent treatment, he learned a new medical term: informal payment.
Education followed suit. His children didn’t need better teachers or better schools—they needed connections. Or a party card. Or at least a family friend who knew someone who knew someone.
Honesty, he discovered, had become a luxury item.
Meanwhile, Albania (1990–Present): A 34-Year Groundhog Day
If our accidental citizen looked east, he would recognize the pattern instantly.
Since 1990, Albania has perfected a rare political discipline: permanent transition. The plot never evolves, only the lighting changes. Power rotates neatly between Democratic Party of Albania and Socialist Party of Albania—blue today, purple tomorrow, déjà vu forever.
The faces remain the same, only slightly more wrinkled and considerably wealthier. The fights are loud on television, theatrical, emotional. Behind the scenes, the agreements are calm, polite, and remarkably durable.
You govern for a while.
I govern for a while.
We accuse each other of corruption.
We never dismantle the system that produces it.
Development exists—but mostly in speeches, donor reports, and billboards. Real progress remains a myth, like an honest public tender or a politician retiring voluntarily.
The only industry that truly thrives is youth export.
Young Albanians do not leave because they hate their country. They leave because they understand mathematics:
- Effort versus reward
- Salary versus rent
- Integrity versus survival
Why stay in a rigged game where you can only win by becoming corrupt, politically obedient, or invisible—when you can move to Germany and build houses that actually follow Newton’s laws?
The Moral (If We Still Believe in Those)
Our citizen finally understands the truth.
The invisible force that once protected his family was not a miracle. It was simply the absence—temporary and fragile—of a political class treating the national budget like a personal ATM.
Now he knows his options:
- Learn the art of the bribe
- Join a party formation
- Or learn the lyrics to the German national anthem
And so the longest-running comedy in Europe continues. Same actors. Same stage. Same promises of “Change,” now in their 34th season.
The only difference?
The audience keeps leaving the theater.
And those who remain are no longer laughing—they’re just waiting for the lights to go out.