From Dracula to The Strain : Where do Vampires come from ??

US TV series The Strain features an epidemic of the supernatural beings that have captivated audiences since Dracula. But vampires long predate Bram Stoker, writes Roger Luckhurst.

The first season of the US TV series The Strain ended with The Master, source of New York’s vampire infection and one of the oldest vampires in existence, escaping our human heroes again. And he did so by scampering across roof-tops in full daylight – something vampire lore says most bloodsuckers can never do. We were all left wondering: what fresh hells, what weird mutations of the vampire rules will season 2 bring?

The series is based on the collaborative novels of screenwriter Chuck Hogan and major horror and science-fiction film director Guillermo del Toro. The Strain does a neat update and twist on Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Instead of Count Dracula’s entry via a spectral boat, we get a plane-load of (un)dead plague victims in New York. Instead of Dracula’s lair in Piccadilly, just a stone’s throw from Buckingham Palace, The Master nests in the old tunnels under New York’s Freedom Tower. Instead of Stoker’s vampire hunter Van Helsing, we have the cantankerous Abraham Setrakian, who first encountered The Master in the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1944. And instead of Stoker’s Christian band of brothers who come together to expel the evil from the British Empire, we have a mixed group of antsy New York immigrants – Ukrainians, Jews and Hispanics, men and women.

The Strain is just the latest mutation of the vampire formula established by Bram Stoker’s Dracula, which appeared in Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee year of 1897. The first major adaptation was FW Murnau’s expressionist masterpiece, Nosferatu(1922) – Stoker’s widow sued the studio behind the film for breaching copyright. But Dracula isn’t the only source of the vampire myths. The Strain owes much of its power to an even older tradition of vampire stories in the West that stretches back another 150 years.The word ‘vampyre’ first appeared in English in the London Journalin March 1732. This awkward word had been transported directly from confused reports about a bizarre incident on the far-flung edges of the Hapsburg empire. In Medreyga, a village in rural Hungary, peasants had created a disturbance by demanding the body of their recently deceased neighbour, Arnold Paul, be dug up. It had been a month since his death and burial. They claimed to the local authorities that his unquiet corpse was menacing them and causing local livestock to waste away in the fields at night. The word they used for this ambivalent creature, stuck between life and death, was ‘vampyre’.

On opening the grave, it was alleged that the body of Arnold Paul was witnessed by reliable Hapsburg agents to appear perfectly fresh and undecayed, and also bloated with fresh blood that frothed from the mouth. The peasants pinned the body in the grave with a stake through the heart and then burnt the remains, just to be sure.

A few years later, a Benedictine monk, Augustin Calmet, gathered a lot of similar accounts together in a large tome subtitled Concerning the Vampires of Hungary, Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia. It is from these marginal territories that vampires emerge. Dracula’s castle in Transylvania on the very edge of Europe, was where the light of Christendom flickered feebly against the dark unknown of the Ottoman Empire beyond.

Care for a bite?

Stories of vampires in the 18th Century functioned largely to mock the superstitions of stupid peasants. This reassured a sophisticated metropolitan culture, who circulated these narratives in their new-fangled newspapers and magazines, that London, Paris or Vienna had overcome the tyranny of Medieval beliefs. The cities were full of rational, enlightened citizens who no longer believed such things.In Paris, the rational philosopher Voltaire began his entry on vampires in his 1762 Philosophical Dictionary: “What? Is it in our 18th Century that vampires still exist?” He confidently predicted that although Western Europe “had been infected with vampires for five or six years” in these sensational accounts, “there are now no more.” The silly fashion for entertaining with these uncanny stories was over. How wrong he was.

The peasant vampire of Eastern European folklore was a ponderous corpse that disturbed the peace but was relatively easy to destroy. The seductive, corrupting aristocratic vampire arrived in 1819 with a short story by William Polidori published with much sensation in the London press. Lord Ruthven is the title character of The Vampyre, a bloated, lustful beast who preys on young women, particularly terrifying because he does so in the most exclusive salons of society. The vampire has moved from the folkloric margins of the peasantry to fuse with the melodramatic image of the aristocratic libertine.The added spice was that William Polidori had been briefly appointed as personal doctor to the most notorious aristocrat in England, Lord Byron. The legendary poet had been hounded out of England for his scandalous sex life. During that exile, Polidori had been present at the famous evening at the Villa Diodati near Lake Geneva in 1816 when Byron and his guests Percy and Mary Shelley told ghost stories to each other. The literary vampire was born alongside Baron Frankenstein’s monster. Soon after this occasion, Byron summarily fired his doctor.There is more than a dash of Byron in Lord Ruthven. Some gossip-mongers even assumed that The Vampyre, which appeared anonymously at first, was either a portrait of Byron or an actual confession by the debauched lord. If Polidori had wanted revenge on his boss, this rather backfired. The story only increased Byron’s notoriety and sales. The Vampyre was reprinted and dramatized widely across Europe, but often without Polidori being credited. The doctor died soon afterwards, a failed writer.

Sweetly seductive

The vampire as a louche devil who corrupts through sex and money as much as through his bite has never quite gone away. It was this vision that inspired a long-running 1840s serial, Varney the Vampire, or The Feast of Blood, in which the genre was twisted around to include debauched aristocratic women who bathed in the blood of virgin girls to keep an eternal youth. The most famous literary version of this was Sheridan Le Fanu’s feverish short story Carmilla from 1872, the narrative that launched a thousand scurrilous lesbian vampire fantasies. Le Fanu was also a newspaper editor who gave Bram Stoker his first writing job. The first version of Draculawas set in Styria in Austria, where Le Fanu’s Carmilla had taken place.The Strain shows that the vampire haunts the world’s centres of power. A hundred years ago it was imperial London: now it is the financial and political powerhouse, New York, where The Master’s invasion is aided by the Stoneheart Corporation, run by Wall Street execs seeking eternal life. Almost as soon as the vampyre was named in print in English, it was put into service as an allegory for the ‘blood-suckers’ of bankers and usurers in the City of London. The Strain again borrows from tradition.

The show is also clearly related to the ‘zombie apocalypse’ genre, the first season showing the slow beginnings of a disease outbreak that is a scientific, viral rendering of the old supernatural infection. In the first season, we watched New York decline steadily into chaos and riot, the undead massing in the sewers and killing openly on the streets. In a country that currently simmers with racial tension and fears the consequences of growing economic inequality, it is clear the makers of The Strain trade on this apocalyptic anxiety. If there is a worry that the series sometimes uses imagery of invading vermin that comes from a tradition of demonising the immigrant poor, the story is also working to assemble a multicultural band of heroes who will restore a vision of America as a melting pot. This vision, of a group of disparate individuals banding together to take down an implacable foe and succeeding, is also embedded in two hundred years of vampire stories. Perhaps that’s why vampire tales endure – in the eerie shadows where bloodsuckers creep there is a vision of doom, but also of hope as well.

Roger Luckhurst is a professor at Birkbeck College in London. He has edited the Oxford World’s Classics edition of Dracula and his new book, Zombies: A Cultural History, is out in August 2015.

The seven ways to have a near-death experience

Seeing a light and a tunnel may be the popular perception of death, but as Rachel Nuwer discovers, reports are emerging of many other strange experiences.

In 2011, Mr A, a 57-year-old social worker from England, was admitted to Southampton General Hospital after collapsing at work. Medical personnel were in the middle of inserting a catheter into his groin when he went into cardiac arrest. With oxygen cut off, his brain immediately flat-lined. Mr A died.

Despite this, he remembers what happened next. The staff grabbed an automated external defibrillator (AED), a shock-delivery machine used to try to reactivate the heart. Mr A heard a mechanical voice twice say, “Shock the patient.” In between those orders, he looked up to see a strange woman beckoning to him from the back corner of the room, near the ceiling. He joined her, leaving his inert body behind. “I felt that she knew me, I felt that I could trust her, and I felt she was there for a reason [but] I didn’t know what that was,” Mr A later recalled. “The next second, I was up there, looking down at me, the nurse and another man who had a bald head.” 

Hospital records later verified the AED’s two verbal commands. Mr A’s descriptions of the people in the room – people he had not seen before he lost consciousness – and their actions were also accurate. He was describing things that happened during a three-minute window of time that, according to what we know about biology, he should not have had any awareness of.  Mr A’s story – described in a paper in the journal Resuscitation – is one of a number of reports that challenge accepted wisdom on near-death experiences. Until now, researchers assumed that when the heart ceases to beat and stops sending vital blood to a person’s brain, all awareness immediately ends. At this point, the person is technically dead – although as we learn more about the science of death, we are beginning to understand that, in some cases, the condition can be reversible. For years, those who have come back from that inscrutable place have often reported memories of the event. Doctors mostly dismissed such anecdotal evidence as hallucinations, and researchers have been reluctant to delve into the study of near-death experiences, predominantly because it was viewed as something outside of the reach of scientific exploration.  

But Sam Parnia, a critical care physician and director of resuscitation research at Stony Brook University School of Medicine in New York, along with colleagues from 17 institutions in the US and UK, wanted to do away with assumptions about what people did or did not experience on their deathbeds. It is possible, they believe, to collect scientific data about those would-be final moments. So for four years, they analysed more than 2,000 cardiac arrest events – moments when a patient’s heart stops and they are officially dead.

Of those patients, doctors were able to bring 16% back from the dead, and Parnia and his colleagues were able to interview 101 of them, or about a third. “The goal was to try to understand, first of all, what is the mental and cognitive experience of death?” Parnia says. “And then, if we got people who claimed auditory and visual awareness at the time of death, to see if we are able to determine if they really were aware.”  

Seven flavours of death

Mr A, it turned out, was not the only patient who had some memory of his death. Nearly 50% of the study participants could recall something, but unlike Mr A and just one other woman whose out-of-body account could not be verified externally, the other patients’ experiences did not seem to be tied to actual events that took place during their death.

Instead, they reported dream-like or hallucinatory scenarios that Parnia and his co-authors categorised into seven major themes. “Most of these were not consistent to what’s called ‘near-death’ experiences,” Parnia says. “It seems like the mental experience of death is much broader than what’s been assumed in the past.”

Those seven themes were:

Fear 

Seeing animals or plants
Bright light
Violence and persecution
Deja-vu
Seeing family
Recalling events post-cardiac arrest

These mental experiences ranged from terrifying to blissful. There were those who reported feeling afraid or suffering persecution, for example. “I had to get through a ceremony … and the ceremony was to get burned,” one patient recalled. “There were four men with me, and whichever lied would die … I saw men in coffins being buried upright.” Another remembered being “dragged through deep water”, and still another was “told I was going to die and the quickest way was to say the last short word I could remember”.

Others, however, experienced the opposite sensation, with 22% reporting “a feeling of peace or pleasantness”. Some saw living things: “All plants, no flowers” or “lions and tigers”; while others basked in the glow of “a brilliant light” or were reunited with family. Some, meanwhile, reported a strong sense of deja-vu: “I felt like I knew what people were going to do before they did it”. Heightened senses, a distorted perception of the passage of time and a feeling of disconnection from the body were also common sensations that survivors reported.

While it is “definitely clear that people do have experience at the time that they’re dead”, Parnia says, how individuals actually choose to interpret those experiences depends entirely on their background and pre-existing beliefs. Someone from India might return from the dead and say they saw Krishna, whereas someone from the Midwest of the US could experience the same thing but claim to have seen God. “If the father of a child from the Midwest says, ‘When you die, you’ll see Jesus and he’ll be full of love and compassion,’ then of course he’ll see that,” Parnia says. “He’ll come back and say, ‘Oh dad, you’re right, I definitely saw Jesus!’ But would any of us actually recognise Jesus or God? You don’t know what God is. I don’t know what God is. Besides a man with a white beard, which is just a picture.  

“All of these things – what’s the soul, what is heaven and hell – I have no idea what they mean, and there’s probably thousands and thousands of interpretations based on where you’re born and what your background is,” he continues. “It’s important to move this out of the realm of religious teaching and into objectivity.”

Common cases

So far, the team has uncovered no predictor for who is most likely to remember something from their death, and explanations are lacking for why some people experience terrifying scenarios while others report euphoric ones. Parnia also points out that it’s very likely that more people have near-death experiences than the study numbers reflect. For many people, memories are almost certainly wiped away by the massive brain swelling that occurs following cardiac arrest, or by strong sedatives administered at the hospital. Even if people do not explicitly recall their experience of death, however, it could affect them on a subconscious level. Parnia hypothesises that this might help explain the wildly different reactions cardiac arrest patients often have following their recovery: some become unafraid of death and adopt a more altruistic approach to life, whereas others develop PTSD.

Parnia and his colleagues are already planning follow-up studies to try to address some of these questions. They also hope their work will help broaden the traditionally diametric conversation about death, breaking it free from the confines of either a religious or sceptical stance. Instead, they think, death should be treated as a scientific subject just like any other. “Anyone with a relatively objective mind will agree that this is something that should be investigated further,” Parnia says. “We have the means and the technology. Now it’s time to do it.”

Tirana , Albania

Tirana (Standard Albanian: Tiranë; regional Gheg Albanian: Tirona) is the capital and largest city of Albania.

Tirana became Albania’s capital city in 1920. The population of the city proper at the 2011 census was 418,495, the municipality of Tirana, created in 2015, has a total population of 557,422 (2011 census).

The city is host to many public institutions and public and private universities, and is the centre of the political, economic, and cultural life of the country.

The Municipality of Tirana is located at (41.33°N, 19.82°E) in Tirana County, about 32 kilometers (20 mi) inland. Tirana's average altitude is 110 meters (360 ft) above sea leveland its highest point measures 1,828 m (5,997.38 ft) at Mali me Gropa. The city is mostly surrounded by hills, with Dajti Mountain on the east and a slight valley opening on the north-west overlooking the Adriatic Sea in the distance. The Tiranë river runs through the city, as does the Lanë stream.

The city has four artificial lakes: the Tirana Artificial Lake around which was built the Big Park, Paskuqani Lake, Farka Lake, Tufina Lake, and other smaller lakes or reservoirs.

Tirana is on the same parallel as Naples, Madrid, Istanbul, and New York, and on the same meridian as Budapest and Kraków.

The present Tirana municipality was formed at the 2015 local government reform by the merger of the former municipalities Baldushk, Bërzhitë, Dajt, Farkë, Kashar, Krrabë,Ndroq, Petrelë, Pezë, Shëngjergj, Tirana, Vaqarr, Zall-Bastar and Zall-Herr, that became municipal units. The seat of the municipality is the city Tirana.The total population is 557,422 (2011 census), in a total area of 1110.03 km^2. The population of the former municipality at the 2011 census was 418,495.

Antiquity

The area occupied by Tirana has been populated since the Paleolithic era,dating back 10,000 to 30,000 years ago, as suggested by evidence from tools excavated nearMount Dajt's quarry and in Pellumba Cave. As argued by various archaeologists, Tirana and its suburbs are filled with Illyrian toponyms, as its precincts are some of the earliest inhabited regions in Albania.

The oldest discovery in downtown Tirana was a Roman house, later transformed into an aisleless church with a mosaic-floor, dating to the 3rd century A.D., with other remains found near a medieval temple at Shengjin Fountain in the eastern suburbs. A castle possibly called Tirkan or Theranda, whose remnants are found along Murat Toptani Street, was built by Emperor Justinian in 520 A.D. and restored by Ahmed Pasha Toptani in the 18th century. The area had no special importance in Illyrian and classical times. In 1510, Marin Barleti, an Albanian Catholic priest and scholar, in the biography of the Albanian national hero Skanderbeg, Historia de vita et gestis Scanderbegi Epirotarum principis (The story of life and deeds of Skanderbeg, the prince of Epirotes), referred to this area as a small village.

Ottoman rule and World War I

Tirana Bazaar at the turn of the 20th century

Records from the first land registrations under the Ottomans in 1431–32 show that Tirana consisted of 60 inhabited areas, with nearly 2,028 houses and 7,300 inhabitants. In 1614, Sulejman Bargjini, a local ruler, established the Ottoman town with a mosque, a commercial centre and a hammam (Turkish bath). The town was located along caravan routes and grew rapidly in importance until the early 19th century.

During this period, the Et'hem Bey Mosque, built by Molla Bey of Petrela, was constructed. It employed the best artisans in the country and was completed in 1821 by Molla's son, who was also Sulejman Bargjini's grandnephew. In 1800, the first newcomers arrived in thesettlement, the so-called ortodoksit. They were Vlachs from villages near Korçë and Pogradec, who settled around modern day Park on the Artificial Lake.They started to be known as the llacifac and were the first Christians to arrive after the creation of the town. After Serb reprisals in the Debar region, thousands of locals fled to Tirana. In 1807, Tirana became the center of the Sub-Prefecture of Krujë-Tirana. After 1816, Tirana languished under the control of the Toptani family of Krujë. Later, Tirana became a Sub-Prefecture of the newly created Vilayet of Shkodër and Sanjak of Durrës. In 1889, the Albanian language started to be taught in Tirana's schools, while the patriotic club Bashkimi was founded in 1908. On 28 November 1912, the national flag was raised in agreement with Ismail Qemali. During the Balkan Wars, the town was temporarily occupied by the Serbian army and it took part in uprising of the villages led by Haxhi Qamili. In 1917, the first city outline was compiled by Austro-Hungarian architects.

Capital city and Monarchy

Construction in central Tirana was part of the cooperation package between King Zog and Fascist Italy

Skanderbeg Square in 1943

On 8 February 1920, the Congress of Lushnjë proclaimed Tirana as the temporary capital of Albania, which had acquired the independence in 1912The city retained that status permanently on 31 December 1925. In 1923, the first regulatory city plan was compiled by Austrian architects The centre of Tirana was the project of Florestano Di Fausto and Armando Brasini, well known architects of the Benito Mussolini period in Italy. Brasini laid the basis for the modern-day arrangement of the ministerial buildings in the city centre. The plan underwent revisions by Albanian architect Eshref Frashëri, Italian architect Castellani and Austrian architects Weiss and Kohler. The rectangular parallel road system of Tirana e Re district took shape, while the northern portion of the main Boulevard was opened.

In the political sphere, Tirana experienced such events as intermittent attacks on the mountain pass of Shkalla e Tujanit (Tujan's Staircase) by the army of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes and forces loyal to Zogu. In 1924, Tirana was at the centre of acoup d'état led by Fan S. Noli. Since 1925, when they were banned in Turkey, the Bektashis, an order of dervishes who take their name from Haji Bektash, a Sufi saint of the 13th and 14th centuries, made Tirana their primary settlement. Modern Albanian parliamentary building served as a club of officers. It was there that, in September 1928, Zog of Albania was crowned King Zog I, King of the Albanians.

The period between the 1930s and 1940s was characterized by the completion of the above architectural projects, clashes between occupying forces and local resistance and the coming to power of the communists. In 1930, the northern portion of modern Dëshmorët e Kombit (National Martyrs) Boulevard) was finished and named Zog I Boulevard. Meanwhile, the ministerial complex, boulevard axis, Royal Palace (Palace of the Brigades), former municipal building, and the National Bank were still under construction. The latter is the work of the renown Italian architect Vittorio Ballio Morpurgo. In addition, Tirana served as the venue for the signing, between Fascist Italy and Albania, of the Pact of Tirana.

World War II and Socialism

Partisans entering Tirana in 1944

In 1939, Tirana was captured by Fascist forces appointing a puppet government. In the meantime, Italian architect Gherardo Bosio was asked to elaborate on previous plans and introduce a new project in the area of present day Mother Teresa Square.^[12] By the early 1940s, the southern portion of the main boulevard and surrounding buildings were finished and renamed with Fascist names. A failed assassination attempt was made on Victor Emmanuel III of Italy by a local resistance activist during a visit in Tirana. In November 1941, two emissaries of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (KPJ), Miladin Popović and Dušan Mugoša, managed to call a meeting of three Albanian communist groups and founded the Communist Party of Albania, of which Enver Hoxha would shortly emerge as the leader.

The town soon became the center of the Albanian communists, who mobilized locals against Italian fascists and later Nazi Germans, while spreading ideological propaganda. On 17 November 1944, the town was liberated after a fierce battle between the Communists and German forces. The Nazis eventually withdrew and the communists seized power.

Tirana's car-free main boulevard. In the evening, it turned into a big promenade known as the Xhiro

From 1944 to 1991, the city experienced ordered development with a decline in architectural quality. Massive socialist-styled apartmentcomplexes and factories began to be built, while Skanderbeg Square was redesigned with a number of buildings being demolished. For instance, Tirana's former Old Bazaar and the Orthodox Cathedral were razed to the ground for the erection of the Soviet-styled Palace of Culture. The Italian-built municipal building was detonated and the National Historical Museum was constructed instead, while the structure housing the Parliament of Albania during the monarchy was turned into a children's theater.

The northern portion of the main boulevard was renamed Stalin Boulevard and his statue erected in the city square. As private car ownership was banned, mass transport consisted mainly of bicycles, trucks and buses. After Hoxha's death, a pyramidal museum was constructed in his memory by the government.

Prior to and after the proclamation of Albania's self-isolationist policy, a number of high-profile figures paid visits to the city, such as Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai and East German Foreign Minister Oskar Fischer. In 1985, Tirana served as the ceremonial venue of Enver Hoxha's funeral. A few years later, Mother Teresa became the first religious figure to visit the country following Albania's long declared atheist stance. She paid respect to her mother and sister resting at a local cemetery. Starting at the campus and ending at Skanderbeg Square with the toppling of Enver Hoxha's statue, the city saw significant demonstrations by University of Tirana students, demanding political freedoms in the early 1990s.

Transition

Lana River before cleanup

The period following the fall of communism is often described negatively in terms of urban development, even though significant utility investments were made. Kiosks and apartment buildings started to be built without planning on former public areas. Informal districts formed around the city as internal migrants gathered from around the country.

During this period, Albania was transformed from a centrally planned economy into a market economy. Private car ownership was reinstated and businesses re-established. However poor city lighting and road quality became major problems as mud, potholes, street floods, and dust became permanent features on the streets. However, all buildings and apartments were denationalized, second-hand buses introduced and modern water, telephone, and electrical systems built during 1992–1996, which form the backbone of modern Tirana. Enver Hoxha's Museum (Pyramid) was dismantled in 1991 and renamed in honor of persecuted activist Pjeter Arbnori.

On the political aspect, the city witnessed a number of events. Personalities visited the capital, such as former U.S. Secretary of StateJames Baker and Pope John Paul II. The former visit came amidst the historical setting after the fall of communism, as hundreds of thousands were chanting in Skanderbeg Square Baker's famous saying of "Freedom works!". Pope John Paul II became the first major religious leader to visit Tirana, though Mother Teresa had visited few years prior. During the Balkans turmoil in the mid-1990s, the city experienced dramatic events such as the unfolding of the 1997 unrest in Albania and a failed coup d'état on 14 September 1998. In 1999, following the Kosovo War, Tirana Airport became a NATO airbase, serving its mission in the former Yugoslavia.

Rebirth

Scanderbeg Square view at night

Colorful buildings

In 2000, former Tirana mayor Edi Rama under the Ilir Meta government, undertook a campaign to demolish illegal buildings around the city centre and on Lana River banks to bring the area to its pre-1990 state. In addition, Rama led the initiative to paint the façades of Tirana's buildings in bright colours, although much of their interiors continue to degrade. Public transport was privatized and newer second hand buses were introduced. Municipal services were expanded, a richer calendar of events introduced and a Municipal Police force established. Most main roads underwent reconstruction, such the Ring Road (Unaza), Kavaja Street and the main boulevard. Common areas between apartment buildings were brought back to normality after decades of neglect, while parks, city squares and sports recreational areas were renovated, giving Tirana a more European look.

Some critics argue that traditional houses are being threatened by continuous construction of apartment buildings, while some green areas are being used for the construction of skyscrapers. In fact, Rama has been accused by critics of political corruption while issuing building permits, but he has dismissed the claims as baseless. Decreasing urban space and increased traffic congestion have become major problems as a general construction chaos is observed in Tirana.

In 2007, U.S. President George W. Bush marked the first time that such a high ranking American official visited Tirana. A central Tirana street was named in his honor. In 2008, the 2008 Gërdec explosions were felt in the capital as windows were shattered and citizens shaken. In 21 January 2011, Albanian police clashed with opposition supporters in front of the Government building as cars were set on fire, three persons killed and 150 wounded.

Outlook

Although much has been achieved, critics argue that there is no clear vision on Tirana's future. Some of the pressing issues facing Tirana are loss of public space due to illegal and chaotic construction, unpaved roads in suburban areas, degradation of Tirana's Artificial Lake, rehabilitation of Skanderbeg Square, an ever present smog, the construction of a central bus station and lack of public parking space. Future plans include the construction of the Multimodal Station of Tirana and the tram line, rehabilitation of the Tiranë River area, construction of a new boulevard along the former Tirana Railway Station and the finishing of the Big Ring Road.

Climate

Tirana has a humid subtropical climate (Cfa in the Köppen climate classification) and receives just enough summer precipitation to avoid Köppen's Csa Mediterranean climateclassification, since every summer month has more than 40 millimetres (1.6 in) of rainfall, with hot and moderately dry/humid summers and cool and wet winters. Some snow falls almost every winter, but it usually melts quickly.

[hide]Climate data for Tirana
Month	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec	Year
Record high °C (°F)	19 (66)	22 (72)	26 (79)	28 (82)	33 (91)	37 (99)	41 (106)	40 (104)	35 (95)	31 (88)	25 (77)	22 (72)	41 (106)
Average high °C (°F)	12 (54)	12 (54)	15 (59)	18 (64)	23 (73)	28 (82)	31 (88)	31 (88)	27 (81)	23 (73)	17 (63)	14 (57)	20.9 (69.7)
Daily mean °C (°F)	7 (45)	7 (45)	10 (50)	13 (55)	17.5 (63.5)	22 (72)	24 (75)	24 (75)	20.5 (68.9)	16.5 (61.7)	12.5 (54.5)	9.5 (49.1)	15.29 (59.56)
Average low °C (°F)	2 (36)	2 (36)	5 (41)	8 (46)	12 (54)	16 (61)	17 (63)	17 (63)	14 (57)	10 (50)	8 (46)	5 (41)	9.7 (49.5)
Record low °C (°F)	−9 (16)	−8 (18)	−4 (25)	−1 (30)	3 (37)	6 (43)	11 (52)	10 (50)	5 (41)	1 (34)	−3 (27)	−7 (19)	−9 (16)
Average precipitation mm (inches)	135 (5.31)	152 (5.98)	128 (5.04)	117 (4.61)	122 (4.8)	86 (3.39)	32 (1.26)	32 (1.26)	60 (2.36)	105 (4.13)	211 (8.31)	173 (6.81)	1,353 (53.26)
Avg. precipitation days (≥ 0.1 mm)	13	13	14	13	12	7	5	4	6	9	16	16	128
Mean monthly sunshine hours	124	113	155	210	248	300	341	341	270	217	90	62	2,471
Source: BBC.com: Tirana[18]

This is only a part of Tirana , Capital City of Albania