European menu with Albanian salaries: Tirana, the city that teaches you to count on an "empty stomach"

Eating a meal at a simple restaurant in Tirana costs 1,000 lekë . Affordable on the surface, but not for a minimum wage of 40,000 lekë .

The monthly expenses estimated by Numbeo for a single person are 66,429.8 lekë, excluding rent. If a tailor, construction worker or a supermarket cashier eats out, then he has to... just eat out. With the salary he receives, he has to forget about rent, water and electricity bills, clothing and entertainment expenses.

European Menu – Albanian Salary

A McMeal (menu with burger, coca cola and fries) in Tirana costs an average of 900 lekë . For example, in the US or the Eurozone a McMeal can cost 25-30 euros/dollars. Converting this into lekë, it is calculated to be approximately 3,348 lekë. A small lunch that costs a young Albanian approximately two days of work.

There are people who cannot start their morning without a coffee or cappuccino, and the latter in Tirana costs 172 lekë . Calculated every day, the expense adds up to an amount almost equivalent to electricity bills.

To drink a beer at dinner you have to spend 250 lek if it's local, while imported beers cost 350 lek . So, you should think twice about having dinner and consuming a beer or better yet, beer next time.

Luxury at prices that 'bite'

Even getting drunk in Tirana is more expensive than in Western countries. A bottle of mid-quality wine in Tirana costs 1,000 lekë . Based on Numbeo data, Tirana is more expensive than Rome, where a bottle of the same quality wine costs Italians €4 rather than 391 lekë.

In Barcelona, ​​a bottle of wine costs €5.95 or 582 lekë, in Thessaloniki €7.00 or 685 lekë, in Amsterdam €6.29 or 615 lekë. So, even getting drunk once for fun in Tirana costs so much that you sober up just from the prices.

The luxurious panorama that Tirana serves mainly to foreign tourists and a very small local minority, they do not have the opportunity to enjoy it all. The vast majority of citizens who live and work in Tirana have to choose between mandatory expenses (rent, electricity, water, transportation) and entertainment and relaxation. Because if a young Albanian chooses to have dinner, take a trip or drink a glass of wine with dinner, he must take a pencil and paper to calculate what he must deny himself in order not to leave the bills unpaid.

So, this is the promised European capital, where life has become a mathematical challenge that denies you "pleasures" even when sometimes, due to tiring commitments during the day, they are more than necessary. Tirana, the city that everyone sees as hope for the future, is teaching us to live with the compromises of a difficult reality, where salaries come out of your pocket before they come in .