I knew that as soon as I started devoting my free time to editing videos, that the blog would go away, and it really did. Kinda sad because I feel like now I’m missing some detailed memories about important things that the videos might not capture.
Anyways.
This week I moved the video release day to Wednesday to see if that makes a difference. Our three biggest days view-wise were all Wednesdays, but I am a little worried about the timing of my edit schedule. I honestly am usually just half-poking at a new video on Monday and that will probably need to change if I intend to stick with the Wednesday upload.
(I’m also going to go back and add blog entries for the videos that happened between today and … holy sheesh the beginning of May?)
No blog posts about this, so I guess let me write a little here.
To start with, the important statistic: 170,000. That’s the number of bunkers and fallout shelters that the Albanian government built during the Communist regime. Enver Hoxha was so terrified of having his little fiefdom obliterated by an atomic bomb that they built underground bunkers and giant facilities inside mountains and throughout villages across the country.
This one, just southeast of Skanderbeg Square and attached to the Ministry of the Interior building, was supposed to be a crowning achievement, but ultimately Hoxha never even got to see it, since it wasn’t completed until after he died. Now, instead, it’s a museum dedicated to the brutality and repression of the government and the secret police during Communism.
It’s a cool museum. Some of the rooms are crazy — they’ve definitely taken some artistic liberty with the displays, but you definitely get to a point where you might understand why so many people lived in fear of the police, and why some of the displays are about citizens turning on each other. The layout and the cramped quarters definitely ramp up the paranoia a bit, so by the time you get to the “don’t let this happen to you” part of the museum, the big room and the big escape out to daylight comes as a relief.
Video’s up! Check it out!