Albanians are increasing, and the Great Beach of Ulcinj remains as it was!

By Kim Mehmeti

There is no summer I don't come to Ulcinj, because I love him and he is part of my biography. But its Great Beach has never seemed to me with so few vacationers, without the childish lazdran, as sluggish and tired of itself.

"Skillful" experts immediately show the reasons for the decline in the number of vacationers: high prices! Meanwhile, Ulcinj, which has a sea, is almost nothing more expensive than Pristina, which does not even have a river, than Tirana, which is reeked of by Lana, and Skopje, which the Vardar passes through, almost only to divide its Albanian part where you can hardly breathe from the Macedonian one with full of greenery and where only palm trees are missing.

So, I say to myself, maybe the question is not the high prices, but the increase in the number of Albanians who want to eat meat and fish, but who only have enough money to pay for what they eat in their homes: bread, tomatoes and cheese!.

However, even this year, like many years ago, I have the feeling that I don't come to Ulcinj to rest, but to get "tired" thinking about the past. For example, the years of youth, when for us Macedonian Albanians, Ulcinj was much more distant than today, because we had to go around Albania and because we were expected to sell ice cream and pancakes to German vacationers, and not to bathe in the sea.

Some of us even at that time came to Ulcinj as vacationers. But with 'our bread' and with the guesthouse 'reserved' under the shade of a pine tree at Plaži i Madh. And where did we get to the famous egg-shaped car, called 'FIço', which was an Italian invention and made in Yugoslavia and which did not even have enough room for its driver, let alone for the four of us who were not sure if it it would take us to Pazhi i Madh, or to the small workshop of an auto mechanic from Ulcinj.

And when we got there, we didn't forget to approach Buna, dreaming that one day we would cross the river, where we had our motherland and where 'Albanians' and not 'Serbians' could rest. But without knowing that while on this side of the river, that is, as far as the Great Beach of Ulcinj, the Germans rested, over there, on the beach of Velipoja, donkeys grazed.

Otherwise, we young people of that time, just like these people today, were photographed jumping into the sea. And the photos at that time were taken quite differently and were black and white, but we saw them in color. Maybe because in their background, our youthful hopes for a bright future were seen, and not like these today made with mobile phones, which are in color, but which radiate loneliness.

Later, when I was the age my children are today, and when they were as old as their children are now, the Great Beach of Ulcinj could barely accommodate all those who wanted to sunbathe on its shingle. And at that time, I felt sorry for the Albanians of Macedonia who fed ice cream and pancakes to almost the entire Yugoslav coast, but without being able to taste the salty sea water.

Unlike then, today I feel sorry for the people of Ulcinj, who were probably wrong when they started to believe that they no longer need the Albanians of Macedonia, that they themselves will be able to make delicious pies like the one of the Octovarians, and that ice cream is made from frozen water. and not from milk.

As I walk along the seashore, I can hear the distant calls of the newspaper vendors, in which, just like today, the news about the wars that have started since the world was populated by humans, and that will end when this man is gone, dominates. on the ground. So they also announced about the war in Palestine, where it was clearly stated that Israel is the occupier and the Palestinians are the victims, not only because Tito and Arafat were like brothers from the same mother, but also because the media of that time were not edited in a capital of the world.

So, there is no summer I don't come to Ulcinj. Maybe not all to rest, but so that my family members can rest from me, who, as I am unemployed, for every day I annoy them with the description of what used to be. As well as tiring them with explanations that the number of vacationers falls everywhere, and not only in Ulcinj. And maybe not because of the high prices, but because the number of inhabitants of the world and that of Albanians increases, but the land and the Great Beach of Ulcinj are the same as they have always been. So they don't have enough free food to feed all the scoundrels of this world!