Tirana is the capital and the largest city of Albania. Modern Tirana was founded as an Ottoman town in 1614 by Sulejman Bargjini, a local ruler from Mullet, although the area has been continuously inhabited since antiquity. Tirana became Albania's capital city in 1920 and has a population of over 600,000. The city is home to many universities and is the center of the political, economical, and cultural life of the country.
Republic of Albania, Republika e Shqipërisë. 3,154,000. National or official language: Tosk Albanian. Literacy rate: 85%. Blind population: 2,000. Deaf population: 204,565 (1998). The number of individual languages listed for Albania is 7. Of those, all are living languages.
For a long time, roughly half-a-century, celebrating a religious festivity was a pure act of rebellion in Albania. Former dictator Enver Hoxha in his attempt to create the homo-sovieticus had banned anything from Christmas to Carnivals. Any challenge to the rule and you could be drop-shipped to the gulags as priority mail.