[HN Gopher] Bunkers in Albania
___________________________________________________________________
Bunkers in Albania
Author : samclemens
Score : 170 points
Date : 2025-01-16 18:08 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (en.wikipedia.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (en.wikipedia.org)
| mastazi wrote:
| I love Albania, for reasons related to my job I used to travel
| there multiple times a year until around 2010.
|
| Those bunkers are absolutely everywhere, even right in the middle
| of nowhere (I guess that's useful if you happen to get lost in
| the wilderness while hiking).
|
| In towns and cities they have been sometimes repurposed, e.g. I
| remember seeing that someone created a small cafe on the beach
| using one of the larger bunkers.
|
| The problem with reusing them is that the vast majority of the
| bunkers are of the smaller type (mostly below ground level, and
| on the inside there is barely enough room for a couple of people)
| and it's hard to find a new purpose for those.
| euroderf wrote:
| Japan has the famous "love hotels". If the bunkers fit two...
| frereubu wrote:
| "Love bunker" has a certain ring to it.
| walrus01 wrote:
| 'albanian concrete fuck hovel' could be a punk band name
| dibujaron wrote:
| Further down the wiki article, it mentions that the bunkers
| re indeed often used for this :)
| HeatrayEnjoyer wrote:
| Public restroom
|
| Suicide booth
| Spagbol wrote:
| I had never heard of Enver Hoxha until I listened to the episodes
| about him on the Real Dictators podcast. Very wild stuff. I find
| it really fascinating and rather sobering that these invasive
| authoritarian governments can one day take root and control most
| or all of the rest of your life. I fear that people's complacency
| or thoughts that "surely it can't happen here" are part of what
| lets them rise in the first place, and I wonder just how quickly
| you can find yourself inside of one.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| Well, let's look at what was happening in Albania.
|
| Since forever: Ruled by ottoman empire
|
| ...along comes the 20th century...
|
| 1912: We declare independence!
|
| 1914: Let's pick a king...
|
| 1925: Let's pick a new king...
|
| 1939: I guess the Italians are king now...
|
| 1944: Communism, we're all kings!
|
| 1946: Hoxha is the king of kings
| thih9 wrote:
| 1991: nope, let's elect a parliament
|
| 1997: one more time and without pyramid schemes[1]
|
| 2009: nato
|
| 2014: official eu candidate
|
| [1]:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyramid_schemes_in_Albania
| vasco wrote:
| The pyramid scheme one is scary, I wonder what will happen
| when crypto collapses. It's gotten so big that it infects
| the rest of the financial system in a big way already -
| globally.
| Yawrehto wrote:
| "Everyone is a king, but some kings are more kingly than
| others."
|
| Fun fact about World War II Albania: pretty much uniquely,
| especially in the region (Yugoslavia had a death rate of over
| 80 percent, with some regions having death rates closer to 90
| percent[1][2][3]) they came out of it with more Jews than
| they started with.
|
| [1] https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/jewish-
| los...
|
| [2] Technically Montenegro had a death rate of 93 percent,
| but in practice that was 28 out of 30 Jews, so I'm not
| counting them.
|
| [3] Long digression: That was not the worst, by the way. The
| worst was almost certainly Poland, which had 3.3 million Jews
| before the war (for reference: 18% of the Jewish population
| of the _world_ , over 33 percent of that of Europe), killed
| 82-89% of them, and killed many of the survivors who tried to
| return home. A quick estimate, putting Poland's death rate at
| even 80% and 3 million Jews, means that if you said 'death
| rate for Europe except for Poland', i.e., pretending Poland
| wasn't in Europe, the overall death rate drops to 40%.
| Without that, i.e., including Poland, it is at 66%. All six
| death camps were located in Poland. They were 10% Jewish
| before the war and roughly 0.02% of it today even by generous
| estimates (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_population_by
| _country#B...). By literally any measure--even the most
| generous possible for Poland and least generous for others--
| all three of their total population (10,000), percent of the
| world Jewish population (0.048) and numbers per million Poles
| (267) are lower (or equal to) than those for such famously
| Jewish countries as Panama, Spain, Sweden, Brazil, South
| Africa, or Mexico. If you're ever told you're going to be
| teleported to some German-occupied country in World War Two
| as a Jew, _don 't pick Poland_.
| duxup wrote:
| I fear a lot of people are happy to look the other way when "my
| guy" is doing something, especially when it seems to be
| directed at whatever they fear.
|
| That and I fear most people really don't have any principles
| when push comes to shove.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| Exactly. And that lack of principals is what we should be
| punishing as a society, not any particular position. The rest
| will work itself out in time.
| sitkack wrote:
| People with principles are dangerous precisely because they
| aren't bending the rules in support of the body politic.
|
| You want a boy scout that focuses more on the group than
| the ideals.
| tommiegannert wrote:
| Just keep voting for different parties/people. It's when
| they're able to say "I'll be in power for a long time" that the
| upper echelons and the army start backing their person rather
| than the people. Oh, and avoid having loop holes in the
| constitution.
| gpvos wrote:
| As long as you can, see Germany's 1938 "election": https://en
| .m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1938_German_parliamentary_el...
|
| I doubt that that was constitutional, but maybe it was, after
| all they got in power legally in 1933.
| frereubu wrote:
| The Gulag Archipelago by Alexander Solzhenitsyn is a great read
| on that subject. (It's very long, but the abridged versions are
| fine as long as you get a good translation). Into That Darkness
| by Gitta Sereny is also great - a biography from a series of
| post-war interviews with the commandant at Treblinka
| concentration camp, who wasn't any evil genius, just someone
| who didn't have any particularly strong moral feelings and went
| with the zeitgeist. The Lives Of Others is a great film about
| the Stasi in East Germany too.
| Akasazh wrote:
| Into that darkness is pretty grim, to be honest. Great read
| but gut wrenching
| frereubu wrote:
| Totally grim, but it put to bed any queries in my mind of
| "how could anyone possibly end up doing that?" It was
| really clear how easily unremarkable people just go with
| the flow until they find themselves doing horrific things
| without batting an eyelid.
|
| Zygmunt Bauman's _Modernity and the Holocaust_ is really
| interesting (although pretty heavy going - I didn 't finish
| it) on how bureacracy enabled the Holocaust by reducing it
| to a long line of people taking orders from their superiors
| and giving orders to their subordinates so they could
| compartmentalise their actions to inputs and outputs, until
| it got to the people who actually carried out the
| atrocities, which even the Nazis realised not everyone
| could do.
|
| There's also a great book called _transcript_ by Heimrad
| Backer, where he uses cut-up bits of the bureacracy (as it
| sounds like you 'll know, the Nazis were sticklers for
| record-keeping) of the Holocaust in a kind of poetic form,
| where sometimes the things are identifiable, such as
| numbers of clothing items taken from people at the
| extermination camps, and others are just lists of numbers
| or words leaving your imagination to fill in the gaps.
| sitkack wrote:
| I think most large bureaucracies are susceptible to this.
| They form of an overlay psychosis.
| ashoeafoot wrote:
| Also the suffering they cause remains abstract due to scale.
| Everyone of those bunkers financially ruined a few families and
| the future of their offspring.
| dzink wrote:
| The problem with centralized totalitarian/socialist/dictatorial
| governments is that they can be hijacked by an idea and over-
| execute on it with no feedback from the people, until the
| resources really needed are blown out. In capitalism, companies
| specialize on human needs and if a need goes away, investments
| can go down rapidly, unless the feedback loop is guarded by some
| government regulation. But when government is doing the
| investing, the whims or corruption of politicians has no feedback
| loop.
| treyd wrote:
| This is why a lot of the academic work on economic planning
| over the last ~30 years has been on shifting the coordination
| and decision making down on the hierarchy closer to where it's
| relevant and where the people impacted by some decision have
| the most to say about it, and instead aggregating statistics
| and issues upwards for high-level visibility (instead of taking
| a "top down" approach to planning). This naturally involves
| leveraging the communication infra and analysis tools we have
| today that just didn't exist in the past.
| rapsey wrote:
| Academic economics is cargo cult science.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| Being an industry full of people who's mostly worked their
| whole careers in centrally planned institutions I have full
| faith that they'll screw it up. Academia has (to use a broad
| brush) been lusting after various flavors of central planning
| for a century. Why would they stop now?
|
| (That's a serious question, why are conditions different
| now?)
| euroderf wrote:
| > The problem with centralized
| totalitarian/socialist/dictatorial governments is that they can
| be hijacked by an idea and over-execute on it with no feedback
| from the people
|
| This sounds like a political-economic analog of AIs consuming
| AI slop.
| matznerd wrote:
| Not sure why Albanian bunkers are on the front of HN, but I've
| been living in Albania/Kosovo for the last couple of years
| working to use nickel hyperaccumulator plants to mine nickel
| (phytomining), while removing carbon with olivine minerals
| (enhanced rock weathering), with my company Metalplant...
|
| I can confirm the bunkers are real. Albanians are some of the
| nicest people you will meet and are very friendly. Pretty much
| every stereotype you may have heard about them is wrong (except
| that they love Mercedes, that is 100% real). The country is
| beautiful with mountains in the North to beaches in the south
| that are pretty much the same as Greece and Italy (though rocky),
| with 3 Star Hotels for tens of Euros per night (they use a
| currency called Lek which is ~100:1 euro).
|
| Everyone in the country seemingly knows each other and they are
| all like one big family. You'll notice things differ from other
| European countries in that they don't like lock up chairs from
| cafes, or have big like metal gates at bars and open air
| restuarnts. After hours everything is just like wide open its
| kind of wild to see. No one locks car doors, there is almost no
| petty crime, women will get up from the table to go smoke a
| cigarette outside and leave their purse at the table, etc...
|
| The Albanian language is unique as well, look up a language tree
| and you'll see its the only one on its branch, they call it Shqip
| (and never Albanian, which was very confusing to me at first).
| Though nearly all of the young people speak English, and a good
| amount up to middle age, but not the much older people... One
| thing you would never know either is how much Albanians love
| America especially relative to how much Americans know about
| Albania.
|
| Albanians have a deep gratitude to Americans because for 2000+
| years they were stuck between the Roman and Ottoman Empires and
| had been fighting to protect their territory and keep their
| culture alive. But after the Ottoman Empire fell and WW1 was over
| they were occupied by Italy and others, and the "Great Powers"
| were about to carve up their territory. But at the League of
| Nations in 1919, Woodrow Wilson intervened and made sure they had
| a sovereign state.
|
| So back to the bunkers finally, after WWII Albania was allied
| with the Stalinist communists and Enver Hoxha (who they call the
| "Dictator"), became increasingly paranoid about invasion from all
| sides including the Russians and NATO, so he started building
| these 700,000 bunkers. Some of them are small enough for only a
| couple of people, and whats crazy is where we are up in the
| mountains, you see just very small ones up a hill and in random
| spots. Later on, Hoxa allied with Chinese communists to keep
| Russia out, and then it stayed a closed country until the early
| 1990s, which explains a lot about why everyone feels treats each
| other like family and most outsiders don't know really know about
| Albania...Some people compare them to being a North Korea of
| Europe, though I don't like this description, but they were
| isolated and had to become self-dependent including growing
| nearly all of their own food etc.
|
| But again, it is an amzing place that welcomes foreign tourists,
| especially Americans. I first traveled there at the end of 2020,
| during peak pandemic winter, and on the travel map of places you
| could go, it was one of the only countries that was Green and
| accepting Americans...
|
| Okay that's a lot of fun facts about Albania. AMA on any others.
| quasse wrote:
| What is the general view on Enver Hoxha by today's Albanian
| population?
| tamentis wrote:
| My wife is Albanian, I lived there in 2021/2022.
|
| I found that many people think positively of the regime and
| its dictator. The population was ill-equipped to deal with a
| market economy when the regime fell, and many Albanians
| believe the country has gone down a very chaotic path. They
| thought the dictatorship provided more structure. My
| grandmother-in-law (in her 60s), whose family suffered
| greatly when Hoxha took over, is one such Albanian who thinks
| positively of him, despite how the regime treated them. This
| feels a bit like Stockholm syndrome.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| This mass Stockholm syndrome shit that every post communist
| country goes through with their hitler-tier leaders is
| evidence for me that god doesn't exist, and that we deserve
| the leaders we get.
|
| I swear to god, we could liberate North Korea and they'd
| turn around and cry about how good it was during the Kim
| era because apparently we humans are deeply masochistic to
| our core. We want the boot stomping on our face forever.
| thombat wrote:
| That's too bitter. Speaking as a westerner married into
| an East German family, what people seem to crave more
| than anything is stability, which the dead hand of The
| Party delivered. When I talk to them about the comforts
| and freedoms of their post-1990 life there's a long list
| of details but behind it there's a ground state of
| "Ostalgie", gentle yearning for a time when if tomorrow
| wouldn't bring especial wonders nor would it bring
| calamity. And crucially this would be true for everyone
| in your community: with far less latitude for personal
| decisions of consequence nobody was far ahead or behind.
| hoseja wrote:
| What people hate is that every such regime that falls is
| immediately picked clean by western vultures and
| remainders of old power structures in new coats. If you
| wanted people to think positively of liberal democracy
| you'd have the CIA going medieval on all the crooks
| behind the scenes, not apparently precisely the opposite.
|
| If you liberate DPRK and the South Koreans march in,
| "legitimately" buy up all the land and property and
| "fairly" put all the poor inhabitants into functionally
| perpetual indentured servitude there will eventually be
| some resentment.
| mathieuh wrote:
| Plus the current state of North Korea owes a lot of its
| conditions to the Americans. Before someone accuses me of
| being a Tankie I do think the Kim dynasty is absolutely
| deranged and I obviously think that the average North
| Korean would be better off if they were toppled and I am
| an anarchist not an auth-communist.
|
| But let's not forget that the Americans completely
| levelled the territory, including destroying dams that
| provided people's drinking water (a war crime then and
| now), and then gloated about it, and have then proceeded
| to consistently act in bad faith.
|
| So when the comment above talks about "liberating" I do
| wonder exactly what they mean and how it would be
| different to the first time they tried it and how might
| the average North Korean react.
|
| Maybe they would install a new dictator more amenable to
| the "rules-based international order" (i.e. the US and
| people who agree with them) like they did in South Korea
| or countless other countries across Latin America.
| sterlind wrote:
| the same apply to Vietnam and Cambodia. yet those
| countries are far more functional than DPRK. the extreme
| and dynastic cult of personality seems unique to the Kim
| family.
| teractiveodular wrote:
| North Korea was the rich, industrialized half of the
| country, South Korea was poorer and extensively damaged
| by the Korean War. The fact that the South is now 10x
| richer and way better on any measurable metric tells you
| all you need to know about how well Juche and the Kims
| are working for the North.
| antifa wrote:
| Probably has more to do with sanctions and the US
| spending shitloads of money to rebuild and trade with
| only the South.
| etc-hosts wrote:
| I've read a few of these sources, it is my understanding
| that nearly 2/3 of all buildings in
|
| North Korea were destroyed in the Korean War. S3 Sources
| - Blowback https://search.app/8ZBidRZFnNxnWUcG9
|
| I don't think it's too hard to figure out why the US has
| worked closely with the South Korean for decades. They're
| anti Communist.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| The problem is expectation management. In Eastern Germany
| and generally Eastern / South Eastern Europe, many envied
| the West, its lifestyle and wealth.
|
| But once the various dictatorships, be it the USSR,
| Yugoslavia, Hoxha or whoever, fell... it became clear
| that it would take a long time until their life
| materially improved other than not having to be afraid of
| getting gulaged randomly. Corruption continued to exist
| on all levels from small (police "roadblocks" with made-
| up traffic violation tickets) over middle (building
| permits taking years if not "accelerated" with bakshish)
| to large (to this day, most government-owned companies
| are looted by the elites), cost of life expenses for
| everything not produced domestically can be on par with
| Western countries... it's not much in visible improvement
| over the "old days" where you could at least survive as
| long as you kept your mouth shut.
| lormayna wrote:
| I am Italian, I know many Albanians and I visited the country
| too. As far as I know there is still somebody that feel
| nostalgia about the dictator, but 90% of the people are
| really happy about the democracy and they want to join the
| UE. Just to give an anedoct: in front of Berat there is a
| mountain where Oxha wrote with trees his name Enver. After
| the end of communism, they changed in Never.
| rkachowski wrote:
| I was in Tirana last October, he seems to be treated as some
| kind of whimsical amusement and mascot rather than a
| historical tyrant. His residence is still intact and visible
| in the city center and is something of a tourist photo
| opportunity. AFAIK it's fully closed, but from the top of the
| rotating restaurant nearby you can see into it.
| esperent wrote:
| > Pretty much every stereotype you may have heard about them is
| wrong
|
| I went there about ten years ago, walking across the border on
| a small road from Macedonia. The Macedonia border office was
| small but tidy. Then there was a 100m no man's land, then a
| Welcome to Albania sign that was full of bullet holes, and a
| table of Albanian border guards drinking and playing cards.
| Super friendly guys.
|
| We walked about 5km into the local town, passing tons of these
| bunkers. Nearly every single car and truck that passed us was a
| Mercedes, except for the police cars which were tiny battered
| Fiats.
|
| Can confirm the people we met were incredibly friendly, and the
| place felt very welcoming and nothing happened to make me feel
| unsafe.
|
| However, I have heard some crazy stories from another friend
| who travelled there more extensively that make me think, while
| it's a relatively safe country as a tourist, it won't be
| uneventful if you stay there a while, especially if you get off
| the normal tourist track.
|
| Given that most of the stereotypes I'd heard about Albania up
| to that point were "bunkers, lawlessness, and Mercedes but
| lovely people", I'd say that it absolutely did live up to
| these. However, a lot can change in a decade so maybe it's
| different now. Or maybe we just went to different parts of the
| country.
| The_Colonel wrote:
| To avoid confusion, the Mercedes cars are from 80s or 90s.
| Not new ones, which are completely unaffordable by most
| locals.
| stuckkeys wrote:
| Not sure what you mean by that, but my last trip was last
| year, and it was new models also. Mercedes is like the
| Theme there. Most lovable car in Albania.
| The_Colonel wrote:
| Fair enough, I've visited 10 years ago and it was mostly
| old Mercedes cars. (I was mostly in the countryside)
|
| Albania has an (upper) middle class as well, so surely
| there are some new ones as well.
| xenospn wrote:
| Tirana is full of coffee shops that are full of groups of
| 3-4 guys who sit around smoking and drinking coffee all
| day, eventually leaving in brand new 2024 S-Class Mercedes
| or range rovers. There are tons of brand new luxury German
| cars everywhere.
| pitaj wrote:
| I'm visiting Tirana in March. Any must-see suggestions?
|
| What was your favorite Albanian dish?
| lormayna wrote:
| Tirana is nice, I suggest to go around for the Blocku (the
| neighborhood that during the communism was only for the
| nomenclature) it's really cozy. Just outside Tirana there is
| an area with several artificial lakes, you should go there
| for a relaxing day. If you have more time, I suggest to visit
| Girokaster: it's a castle city 2 hours far from Tirana, where
| Enver Oxha was born.
|
| For food I really suggested a restaurant called Oda, not far
| from Skanderberg square in Tirana: it's a traditional
| Albanian house where you can taste all the Albanian dishes.
| xenospn wrote:
| Go to Berat, then Himare, and drive along the green coast.
| Incredible drive. There's also a nice ancient castle by Vlore
| with a great view.
| madjam002 wrote:
| Drive down to Lili's restaurant in Berat and order everything
| on the menu (it's small), and visit the castle while you're
| there. It's well worth it. You will need to make a
| reservation. It's probably the most unique dining experience
| I've ever had, and the food was exceptional.
|
| You can visit Bunk'Art in Tirana and then take the cable car
| up the mountain afterwards.
|
| Lamar Tirana had some incredible sea bass.
|
| Odas Garden is frequently recommended for local food to
| tourists but I found it to be overpriced and the dishes were
| way overcooked, but YMMV. The atmosphere is pretty unique.
| There are far better small time restaurants around for local
| cuisine (can't remember the names).
|
| My fav dish was Lakror, but it can be hit or miss in Tirana.
|
| Do the free walking tour in the main square / Skanderbeg
| square.
|
| There are bakeries everywhere, getting up early and walking
| down to the nearest bakery and getting fresh coffee and a
| pastry / burek and walking a bit in the sun is such a good
| way to start the day.
|
| And I second the suggestion to go to Himare, we went via
| Vlore along the coast and down to Himare. They've built a new
| tunnel, I highly recommend avoiding it (I've heard it's
| closed now for final works anyway) and going over the
| mountain, there's an amazing view point next to Mt Cika.
|
| Get up to Montenegro if you can if you love scenic drives.
| frereubu wrote:
| Rightly or wrongly, in the UK Albians have a terrible
| reputation for organised crime, particularly drugs.[0] How is
| that perceived in Albania, and is organised crime a big issue
| in Albania? You make it sound like everybody is very trusting
| there.
|
| My only direct interactions with Albanians here was a
| restaurant I used to go to regularly in London which was run by
| Albanians, who were all lovely and recommended books by Ismail
| Kadare, particularly The General of the Dead Army, which I
| thought was wonderful.
|
| [0] Rather like the philosophical game "All crows are black,
| but not all black birds are crows" I have a feeling this may be
| due to a majority of illegal drug networks being run by
| Albanians, even though a large majority of Albians in the UK
| have no involvement in it.
| philshem wrote:
| > Albanians have a deep gratitude to Americans because...
|
| Albanians gratitude to the USA continues beyond Woodrow Wilson:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Clinton_Boulevard
| bruce511 wrote:
| I've not been to Albania yet, so I can't comment from
| observation, but I'm surmising that most all off these bunkers
| would be pretty useless militarily anyway.
|
| A bunker, by itself, is not much of a defense. It kinda
| advertises the defender position. Without writing a paper on the
| subject, the short version is that they're useful as part of a
| defensive plan, occupied by troops trained in their use.
|
| Having a random bunker, unsupported, in the middle if nowhere is
| not useful from a defensive point of view.
| esperent wrote:
| > would be pretty useless militarily anyway
|
| There's the commonly shared story about them that it turned out
| soldiers can't shoot from the smaller ones without going deaf,
| even when using ear protection.
|
| I don't know if it's true or not, but having been in one of
| them, it seems likely. A concrete dome is pretty much the
| perfect shape to reflect all the sound waves right back at you.
| adrian_b wrote:
| Today bunkers could be operated remotely (using deeply buried
| optical fiber) or they could be even autonomous, so this
| would no longer be a problem.
| szszrk wrote:
| Ok, but wouldn't that be also true if you substitute every
| "bunker" and "defence" word with "tank" and "attack"?
|
| I don't see a goal of your comment.
| duskwuff wrote:
| Tanks, unlike bunkers, can move. Fairly quickly, in fact.
| bruce511 wrote:
| They can move. They can be repositioned. They can
| congregate to provide mutual support.
|
| More significantly they can be used in attack as well as
| defense.
| szszrk wrote:
| Sure, but my point stands. It still has to be occupied by
| trained troops to make sense, just like those bunkers.
| Both had to be used smart, both can be misused.
|
| That doesn't make them pointless, it makes their use
| cases narrow. Hence a coffee shop in one of them.
| The_Colonel wrote:
| > It kinda advertises the defender position.
|
| Which can be a point. What do you do if you're a foot soldier
| and such a bunker is on your way? First, you stop. Maybe your
| platoon tries to find a way around it, maybe you call
| reinforcements (direct fire) to take it out, maybe you set up a
| heavy machine gun to suppress it while you cross it. But all of
| this takes time, which is one of the main purposes of such
| defensive structures - to slow the enemy down. Interestingly,
| such a bunker will partially work in this role even if it's
| unoccupied, since making sure it is in fact empty will still
| take time. Now consider that there's almost a million of such
| bunkers slowing you down. You also have to consider the era,
| today they'd be an easier target than in the 1970s.
| bruce511 wrote:
| If it's just a random box you move left or right and keep
| going. Sure there might be a conversation, but frankly it's
| not gonna slow the army down more than a smoke break will.
| phil21 wrote:
| The density of these things needs to be seen to truly grasp
| the scale.
|
| Assuming they were actually all manned and able to provide
| interlocking fire as designed (a large assumption) - there
| would be no moving left or right. There would simply be
| another bunker or three in your next chosen path.
| The_Colonel wrote:
| I've visited Albania and their placement seemed quite
| random to me. Possibly there was some system in place
| which I didn't notice (I didn't go to study them
| specifically). They made up their deficiencies in
| numbers, but it's a question of how many would be manned
| and supplied in case of war.
|
| I've also visited one interwar Czechoslovak fortification
| complex, and these were completely different beasts with
| an elaborate design (network of connected fortifications,
| vast underground spaces/infrastructure...). But they were
| also much more expensive to build than the rudimentary
| Albanian designs.
| euroderf wrote:
| > interwar Czechoslovak fortification complex
|
| Got a pointer/URL ? Sounds interesting. Czech design
| always stands out.
| pcvpcvpcv wrote:
| Here it is https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czechoslovak_b
| order_fortific...
|
| Sadly it was never used. Czechoslovak politians just
| decided to give up to Hitler
| ardit33 wrote:
| Most bunkers were in line of 5, and connected by
| ditches/trenches. So, they almost were never by themselves
| (unless in some isolated aerea), but in lines, and connected to
| a network of trenches. As the war in Ukraine shows, trenches
| are still useful.
|
| There was also communication lines, (hard telephone lines), in
| ditches about 1m deep, in order to survive nuclear / emp
| attacks.
|
| When I was a little kid, we'd play hide and seek in those
| bunkers, or we'd play 'castle take over' with self made wooden
| swords, romans vs illyrians as kids. (Or Albanians vs Turks).
| Which team conquered the most bunkers, would win.
|
| They were fun as a kid, but we had to watch out for wild
| animals (or snakes), take refuge on those bunkers.
|
| Now most of them are being scraped, to recoup the metal, so
| there are few left.
| xenospn wrote:
| Are you sure? I just spent two months in Albania and there
| are bunkers literally everywhere. And I do mean everywhere. I
| must've counted thousands.
| ardit33 wrote:
| yeah, I get that 'you see them everywhere', but almost
| 2/3rd of them have been scrapped, and only the large ones
| remain, and some left in tourist areas.
|
| So, you are really seeing the 1/3rd left. The bunker built
| out during communism, was truly crazy.
| InDubioProRubio wrote:
| Counterexample: The swiss defense plans
| PetitPrince wrote:
| But the random alpine bunkers are not so random, as they are
| part of a National Redoubt strategy (doctrine?) that's a bit
| less paranoid than what Hoxha conceived. Reading the actual
| page let me know that Albanian Partisan had similar idea to
| the Swiss (mountain-based guerrilla warfare), but Hoxha just
| said no.
| etc-hosts wrote:
| The opinion among the few Albanian history nerds in Albanian
| that I know is that the bunker project was really about
| diverting the country's resources into busy work to keep the
| population occupied, instead of investing in intellectually
| stimulating pursuits that could result in a threat to Hoxha's
| control.
| qez2 wrote:
| My dad was a military analyst in the Balkans in the 90s. I am
| telling this story second-hand, but I'll try to get it correct.
| While in Albania, my dad shared a taxi with an older Albania
| gentleman. The man recounted his time working in the Albanian
| military in the 60s. His platoon had constructed a large number
| of bunkers, more than any other platoon. The dictator Enver Hoxha
| was slated to visit, to give them an award for building the most
| bunkers in the whole country. When Enver arrived, he walked
| around, and looked at a bunch of the bunkers they had
| constructed. He pointed at the bunkers. "Look! You have not used
| enough rebar! Obviously, you are trying to jeopardize the
| security of our nation, by neglecting to use enough rebar! You
| are traitors to Albania!" He swiftly sentenced the entire platoon
| of young men straight to 30 years in prison, which they
| approximately served. This man, after serving this time, had just
| gotten freed from jail. The taxi was transporting him from the
| halfway house.
| stuckkeys wrote:
| That is wild. Enver was a piece of work for sure.
| fractallyte wrote:
| So was everyone who followed his directives...
| black_puppydog wrote:
| That's simply not true. That example should tell you that,
| if anything, a good part of their motivation was a healthy
| sense of self preservation. This is by the way what we're
| literally seeing play out in the US right now. Tim Cook,
| Zuck, all the other rich guys chipped in for the
| inauguration to signal their deference. Because they know
| Trump and Musk _would remember_ if they didn 't.
| frereubu wrote:
| If you're interested in why this happens, try reading some
| of The Gulag Archipelago by Alexander Solzhenitsyn. If the
| choice is comply or die, fine upstanding morals don't
| really come into play except in very rare cases. And even
| then, what good does getting shot for a minor detail do in
| the grand scheme of things? You're not going to spur a
| revolution to overthrow a dictator because you were shot
| for not following an order to the letter in a Siberian
| concentration camp.
| teractiveodular wrote:
| Vaclav Havel has a few things to say about that:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Power_of_the_Powerless
| frereubu wrote:
| I haven't read that, but I imagine I'd agree with most of
| it having read the precis. My beef was really with the
| idea that everyone who follows orders in that kind of a
| system is a "piece of work". I think that's holding
| everyone to an incredible high - and unrealistic -
| standard.
| fractallyte wrote:
| I _have_ read it, and much more.
|
| That's why I wrote what I did: passive acceptance of a
| Fuhrer's insanity leads to the kind of Stalinist
| nightmare that the Soviets experienced last century.
| (Yeah, I'm blending dictators: this scenario seems to be
| common to them all, throughout history.)
|
| Such behavior needs to be put down immediately, with a
| bullet to the head. I guarantee those soldiers were
| better armed than that POS dictator.
|
| Do I sound angry? Why, yes, I am. We need more
| individuals, not slaves.
| frereubu wrote:
| Interesting that you'd read that and much more (like me)
| and had a very different reaction. I came out of it
| feeling understanding for people caught up in such a
| cruel system. To be clear, not the stoolies or
| collaborators, but the vast majority of people who were
| swept up in a system that they had no control over. I
| just think it's human nature. Slightly hand-wavy figures
| here, but I feel like you have 10% of people who are
| bullies and will absolutely buy into the system, 10% of
| people who are brave and will try to fight somehow, and
| 80% of people who aren't either. And as much as I'd like
| to think you could tip the balance significantly in
| favour of the brave, I just don't think that's human
| nature, so I don't really feel like I can blame those
| people for just wanting to keep their heads down and
| survive. If you don't have it in you, you don't have it
| in you. My reading also taught me that when push comes to
| shove, many people aren't nearly as brave as they think
| they are. The Gulag Archipelago in particular was
| instructive about what happens to people when they're
| starved and worked to the bone. Any notion of humanity
| goes out of the window, and it's the airy-fairy "we
| should all share" people who die almost immediately.
| fractallyte wrote:
| Coincidentally, a comment from a Ukrainian woman in
| Odesa, just yesterday:
|
| "I remember in the 11th grade during an English lesson,
| we discussed how Freud's student saved him and literally
| bought him out from the Nazis. At that time, my teacher
| (she was a child of the war) said one strange phrase:
| "War divides people into humans and non-humans." Thirty
| years later, I can say how right you were."
| (https://x.com/tatyanaodesssa/status/1880920634978386335)
| lormayna wrote:
| A father of a guy that I know was an engineer and he was part
| of the team that designed the highway between Tirana and
| Valona. Enver decided to arrest all of them because they were
| conspiring against the state and the highway was just a landing
| area for US airplanes to invade the country. He was really
| paranoid about this stuff
| UltraSane wrote:
| He seems more like a moron.
| fifticon wrote:
| Good thing people are no longer electing such people to
| high office.
| UltraSane wrote:
| Trump is very stupid be he hasn't (so far) sentenced
| anyone to 30 years in prison for not using enough rebar.
| jajko wrote:
| At one point, every third Albanian had either been
| interrogated by the Sigurimi or they had been incarcerated in
| labour camps, around 25k murdered [1]
|
| Albania was even within eastern communist block considered
| utter shithole run by mad paranoid guy. Well, he certainly
| was.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enver_Hoxha#Political_repre
| ssi...
| lormayna wrote:
| Exactly. You can be interrogated by police and detained
| only to have watched Italian TV or listen Italian radio
| broadcasts. Anyway, this was a very common behaviour in
| Albania and it's the reason why most Albanians speaks
| Italian very well and know a lot about italian culture.
| lqet wrote:
| > Albania was even within eastern communist block
| considered utter shithole run by mad paranoid guy.
|
| I may be wrong, but just across the northern border of
| Albania, things may have already been very different. Every
| time I visit a country of the former Yugoslavia, I get the
| feeling that Josip Broz Tito (the de-facto dictator of
| Yugoslavia from 1943 to 1980) is still respected, even
| idolized by some. As a German, this always surprises me,
| because the leader(s) of Eastern Germany (Ulbricht and
| Honecker) are today mostly ridiculed as bureaucrats without
| a trace of charisma. Tito certainly was an interesting
| character, and was the _only_ leader of the communist block
| to challenge the leadership of Stalin. Again, I really have
| no first-hand experience and may be wrong, but my parents
| regularly traveled through Yugoslavia (mostly through today
| 's Slovenia, Croatia and Montenegro) in the 70ies and
| 80ies. They mostly stayed in cheap private holiday
| apartments, often eating dinner / breakfast with the owner
| families, and didn't get the impression that this was a
| particularly bad place to live in. AFAIK, it was also
| pretty straightforward for citizens of the former
| Yugoslavia to leave the country / travel to the West (at
| least this was explained to us by an older woman in Croatia
| who had traveled through France as a student in the 70ies
| to learn the language).
| zol wrote:
| I've heard this all too. My father grew up and lived in
| the former Yugoslavia. He's since spoken about how well
| regarded Tito was and the opinion many had that he played
| a big hand in keeping Yugoslavia united whilst he was
| alive. He's also talked about how Yugoslavia was sort of
| a buffer zone between the east and west and so a lot of
| freedoms were available to citizens there that weren't in
| the full on communist countries. E.g when he was younger
| he did some work trips to Germany and on top of earning
| deutschmarks had a side hustle smuggling back jeans and
| records to sell.
|
| Oh yeah and my folks gave me the impression growing up
| that Albania was scary as hell back then.
| lqet wrote:
| > Oh yeah and my folks gave me the impression growing up
| that Albania was scary as hell back then.
|
| My best friend for a while in elementary school was a
| girl from an Albanian refugee family. Even _she_ , an
| eight-year old, had only scary things to tell about
| Albania, mostly told to her by her parents and
| grandparents I guess.
| ImageLonging wrote:
| The passport, as Yugoslavia was a non-aligned country,
| allowed its holders to travel very widely, not just to
| the West. That, combined with Yugoslavia's brief economic
| prosperity in the 1960s and 1970s, is why Yugoslavs were
| one of the European nationalities embarking on the
| Istanbul-Kathmandu trail, and in discovering Bali as a
| mass-tourist destination alongside Germans and Nordics.
|
| That everything went to shit around the time that Tito
| declined and died (though correlation is not necessarily
| causation), does much to explain the nostalgia that you
| will still occasionally meet. However, that nostalgia has
| been challenged in recent decades through the wars and
| their aftermath. Serbian, Croatian, and Kosovar
| nationalism regard, for different reasons, Tito's pan-
| Yugoslav project as inimical to their respective national
| interests, and nationalist rhetoric has a firm grip on
| many sectors of local media.
| vasac wrote:
| Things weren't set in stone - Yugoslavia in the 1950s
| (agrarian reforms, Goli Otok, and similar events) was
| quite different from the Yugoslavia of the 1980s. In the
| 1950s, many people escaped to Italy in small boats on
| stormy nights. Ten to fifteen years later, a significant
| number of people emigrated legally to Germany as
| unemployment was high, and the state realized it was
| better to receive hard currency from gastarbeiters than
| to deal with their discontent at home.
|
| And Tito was no ordinary dictator, it would be
| interesting to see how he would navigate the fall of the
| Berlin Wall.
| jajko wrote:
| They were different. My parents (form former soviet
| commie bloc) tried in vain to get approval from secret
| service to travel to Yugoslavia, you literally had to
| have special stamp in the passport on the border or ciao
| or worse.
|
| Traveling of whole family with small child was seemed
| risky due to possibility of family escaping to the west.
| Heck, we couldn't travel easily even within bloc itself.
| renewiltord wrote:
| This is the most terrifying part about China: they're competent
| Communists. Until now, these authoritarian states have always
| ruined their best. The communists of old could never abide the
| exceptional[0]. Nowadays they've integrated the lessons of the
| West's market economy.
|
| 0: the other side of the Kolmogorov option is that you want
| your geniuses silent
| InDubioProRubio wrote:
| Thats the story they tell the world. They are just as inept,
| just as incompetent, but they had a free market engine that
| would pedal on, not because they enabled them but not
| handicapped them enough. Its more a incredible powerful horse
| (the Chinese people) saddled with a impossible useless drunk(
| the party) winning the race so far, while the drunk in the
| saddle brags loudly about what that horse can do. And now he
| decided to trade the horse in for booze.
| rapsey wrote:
| Economists say China needs to move to a consumer economy.
| The export model has run out of steam. But turning to a
| consumer economy is diametrically opposed to the communist
| party. Just like the soviets, their model works for a while
| but the inability to switch gears or relinquish any amount
| of control will be their doom.
| jajko wrote:
| Doom in which way? Russia is not going anywhere,
| population is in complete acceptance of current state
| (despite everybody complaining, but thats nothing new).
| Chinese seem the same, don't take some isolated protests
| from time to time in 1.5 billion population as sign of
| things breaking apart. They will be probably fine,
| whether we like it or not.
| rapsey wrote:
| You are equating the soviet union with Russia. Their
| economic model was quite different and caused mass
| famines and eventual collapse.
|
| As for going away, the demographic picture for both
| countries is horrific. China is in a recession and the
| one thing they need to do is the one thing Xi is
| diametrically opposed to and he calls all the shots.
| InDubioProRubio wrote:
| Sovjet union was a donut empire- all value generated was
| produced in the ring around the empire core and then
| exported to russia.
| antifa wrote:
| There were no famines in the USSR from 1947 to 1991.
| monocasa wrote:
| Xi has been publicly touting how China needs to convert
| to more of a consumer economy for its next phase of
| development.
|
| https://www.chinabankingnews.com/p/xi-wants-to-create-a-
| nati...
| throw310822 wrote:
| Frankly, looking at pictures and videos from China, it
| looks nothing like the Soviet Union- it looks modern,
| rich, technologically advanced, full of people looking
| and acting like westerners. They might need to expand
| their internal markets and consume more, but any
| comparison with soviet Russia is absurd.
| rapsey wrote:
| Classic westerners mistake. Thinking economic development
| means adoption of western values and rationality.
| Ignoring the parallels with the soviet union is
| ignorance. Xi has publicly said the collapse of the
| soviet union is the biggest tragedy of the 20th century.
| Xi has studied the soviet union extensively and thinks
| the state must never relinquish any control whatsoever to
| avoid their fate.
| skirge wrote:
| Isn't China "state capitalism"? There is no "self governance
| of workers" in China.
| roenxi wrote:
| AFAIK we aren't sure what is going on in China. If anyone
| is wandering HN with a sourced rundown of how their system
| is structured I haven't seen it. Given how critical China
| is to the global economy and political situation it seems a
| bit weird how little information seems to leak out into the
| general discussion.
| throw310822 wrote:
| So, the most terrifying part about China is that it's not
| really that terrifying.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Authoritarians are always terrifying to me. But I
| understand if those less likely to fall afoul are unafraid.
| rapsey wrote:
| In a communist country, never under any circumstances should
| you stand out. There are no rewards, only punishments.
| pjmlp wrote:
| In any kind of authoritarian country, sadly this is coming
| back all over the place as fashion, in many countries where
| many folks voting are still old enough to remember how it
| used to be, unfortunately a minority.
|
| I say this as first child out of revolution days that ended a
| dictorship, and sees the rise of such parties.
| varjag wrote:
| We used to live next to a tank division base in USSR. Once a
| conscript soldier was assigned with maintenance work on a tank.
| Trying to be helpful he attempted to remove laser rangefinder
| while the officer was away. But it being a two-person job he
| inevitably dropped and damaged it. He was court-martialed, got
| three years of prison and had the cost of the instrument
| withheld from his future income. The rangefinder cost was about
| 24000 rubles while the average Soviet monthly salary was ~160
| at the time.
|
| Now this was not Balkans but it is always startling how
| fundamentally inhumane and atomized all Communist societies
| are, in very much the same way. Am convinced one could
| transplant a Cuban to Romania or a Bulgarian to North Korea and
| save for the language and cuisine they'd instinctively know how
| the things work. How you should get hold of your groceries,
| when it's a good idea to bribe, who is important in informal
| way, what you shouldn't say and just how much effort you should
| put into your work. This was truly global, Borg-like culture
| like nothing before.
| StefanBatory wrote:
| And yet to this day we have many Westerners who idealise
| communism :|
| ajxs wrote:
| Albania is definitely worth visiting. BUNK'ART in Tirana is an
| easy way to see the bunkers for yourself.
|
| Somewhat related: Famous Russian urbex photographer Lana Sator is
| still stuck in Albania, after being arrested for espionage while
| documenting Albania's abandoned cold war military infrastructure:
| https://archive.is/o7rgB
|
| For what it's worth, she _is_ a well known photographer. I 've
| been following her work since the early 2010s.
| vjerancrnjak wrote:
| Now they're building hundreds of gas stations every 100 meters.
| Gas stations with very unique architecture.
| precommunicator wrote:
| Exactly. I've spend a day in Albania, from Shkoder to ferry
| terminal in Durres. Haven't seen a bunker, but easily saw 100s
| of gas stations. Almost none of them accept card,
| unfortunately.
| matznerd wrote:
| Lol I don't think there are that many, which area? But gas
| stations can be like normal businesses there and often have
| restaurants and sometimes even hotels. I accidentally stayed at
| a gas station hotel once by the airport, when my go to hotel
| was full and I didn't know and booked online, and only when I
| arrived did I realize it was a gas station.
| ImageLonging wrote:
| I wonder if economists regard this as a sign of a bad economy.
| Some years ago lowland Tajikistan (a country where the economy
| is weak outside of remittances from _gastarbeiter_ in Russia)
| saw a sudden wave of building petrol stations one after the
| other to the point of absurdity. A great many of them then went
| bust.
| mastax wrote:
| > The construction of prefabricated bunkers alone cost an
| estimated two percent of net material product, and in total the
| bunkers cost more than twice as much as the Maginot Line in
| France, consuming three times as much concrete.
|
| Incredible.
| jajko wrote:
| There is a reason why Albania was for a long time the poorest
| country in Europe. This is one of the reasons, maybe the
| largest one.
| maxglute wrote:
| Rare Earth - The 750,000 Bunkers of Albania
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSEpkalRgvU
| MichaelRo wrote:
| Since we're at it, I read a theory that Albanians may be the
| descendants of Dacians, from the Roman province:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Dacia
|
| Their language is unique in Europe and probably originates in the
| Thrakian, Illyrian, and Dacian languages. With the important
| mention that one must not apply today's assumptions of a unified
| language when referring to something as "Dacian", think more of a
| situation like in today's Dagestan, where on a surface of 50,000
| square kilometers, 3 million people speak no less than 40
| languages.
|
| The theory is that during the Roman retreat from Dacia, the
| population (estimated to as low as 100,000 and as high of 500,000
| people, so not exactly a Biblical exodus), migrated to south of
| Danube and eventually today's location. The toponymy is strangely
| Albanian, like even the name of the Romanian capital "Bucharest"
| means "beautiful is" in Albanian.
| mathieuh wrote:
| Unique how? It's an Indo-European language, like many of the
| other languages spoken in Europe. There is also a proposal that
| Albanian is closely related to Greek and Armenian.
| etc-hosts wrote:
| Albanian is unique because its the only surviving branch of a
| particular branch of proto-Indo-European languages .
|
| This is a pretty good explanation
|
| http://www.krysstal.com/langfams_indoeuro.html
| ImageLonging wrote:
| Your post is sadly an example of the pop-sci history that
| circulates in Romania,* and it is out of sync with the
| considerable advances made in Albanian historical linguistics
| in recent decades. The evidence is overwhelming that Albanian
| originates from the Central Balkans. While Albanian does show
| signs of belonging to a Balkan Indo-European subgroup deep in
| prehistory, it is not closely related to Thracian - Matzinger's
| 2012 paper "Zur herkunft des Albanischen: Argumente gegen die
| thrakische Hypothese" in the Ismajli Festschrift conveniently
| sets out why.
|
| While Romanian _bucur_ 'happy' and Albanian _bukur_ 'beautiful'
| are indeed regarded as shared lexicon of disputed etymology,
| _Bucuresti_ (Bucharest) does not mean 'beautiful is' in
| Albanian: _-esti_ is a common toponym-forming suffix in
| Romanian. It's certainly not related to the Albanian copula,
| which is _ashte_ with a nasal vowel both historically and in
| many dialects still today (standard Albanian _eshte_ is based
| on the Tosk variety that lost nasal vowels a few centuries
| ago).
|
| * (For HN readers unaware of Balkan quarrels, a cornerstone of
| Romanian nationalism is the idea that the Romanians are
| descendants of a Romanized population in Dacia who remained
| behind when the province was lost to the Roman Empire. This
| would, crucially, allow the Romanians to have been in
| Transylvania before the Hungarians, longtime rivals for that
| land, arrived in 896 CE. That Romanian and Albanian share
| lexical material from the early first millennium is awkward for
| that view - many linguists internationally have concluded that
| the Romanian language was brought to modern day Romania from
| somewhere across the Danube. Romanian pop-sci, in order to save
| the Dacian continuity theory, therefore occasionally makes the
| claim that the Albanians came from the territory of Romania, or
| that the Albanian and Dacian languages were related.)
| ImageLongong wrote:
| > many linguists internationally have concluded that
|
| That's some weaselly wording conflating "opinion" and
| "proof".
| fforflo wrote:
| Shameless plug (who would have thought): I've played hide and
| seek in Albania and used a bunker as a hideout. AMA :D That's one
| of the few experiences I remember when I was 3-5yo.
| fforflo wrote:
| Another Albanian thing worth mentioning is an extensive list of
| oil wells dispersed across residential areas see [0]. Family
| legend has it that my father almost drowned in one [1] when he
| was a kid, and a relative had to pull him by his nose to save
| him.
|
| [0]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oil_and_gas_fields_in_...
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visoka_oil_field
| Theodores wrote:
| We are always fighting the last war, and, as Ukraine has proven,
| much has changed. The situation for Ukraine is dire, mostly due
| to a lack of manpower for the infantry. They are always on the
| retreat, getting holed up in cities where it is the tower blocks
| that become the bunkers. There are no 'big arrow' movements by
| the Russians, they only ever send out small groups of soldiers
| after lots of artillery preparation. Commonly available MANPADS
| mean that big tanks and planes don't go anywhere near the front.
| It is drone warfare.
|
| From the point of view of the Russian side, imagine if Ukraine
| was littered with these bunkers, all of them filled with drone
| operators. I would say that this would be an upgrade on what
| Ukraine has with the trenches they have been building in the East
| since 2014.
| rocqua wrote:
| You need trenches, or something similar, if you are going to
| mount any kind of lasting defense. Specifically, you need a
| safe way to run your logistics (or in military terms: your
| lines of communication, which refers to your supply lines, not
| your phone lines).
|
| A lone bunker is incredibly difficult to resuply, relieve, or
| reinforce. That is the power of trenches. They give protection
| for when you need to move goods, people, or information. If you
| can cut a defensive position off from any of these, it won't
| stand up very long.
|
| You can still use such positions to delay. But Ukraine needs to
| hold territory, not delay it's loss.
| pmontra wrote:
| Ah Albanian mason who has been living in Italy since the 90s told
| me a story about bunkers. I cannot date it to a year nor assess
| its truth but here it is.
|
| A Minister (maybe Defense? Army? whatever) went to check the new
| bunkers. They looked good but he asked to the chief engineer how
| he could be sure that Hoxha would be satisfied with them.
|
| "You know, if he thinks they are not good I'm dead."
|
| "They are very good."
|
| "So you must get in. We will shell the bunker and check if it's
| really as good as you say."
|
| The engineer was not happy with that but the choice was between
| getting in or die immediately. He got in and they shelled the
| bunker all day long. The bunker survived, the engineer eventually
| recovered from the experience (temporary deafness and other
| problems) and the Minister could bet his own life on those
| bunkers.
| sokols wrote:
| Yes this is a widely circulating anecdote. That Minister was
| Mehmet Shehu[0], an interesting character in his own right.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mehmet_Shehu
| gunian wrote:
| The relative ease one could tunnel underground these days are
| bunkers obsolete these days? Could one build a mini underground
| city that is reinforced with all the amenities
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