Here are my parents during their honeymoon in the Albanian Alps around 1989.

The strange thing is that the picture is in black and white because color photos weren’t used until after the fall of the communist regime in the 90s. Until then, TV, photos and movies were in black and white.

I was always fascinated by this fact. While in Europe everything was modern, in Albania the isolationist dictatorship held the state back in time by almost 30 years.

Hearing the stories from my parents is like hearing the stories from older European grandparents. Life was simple and passed between school, work in cooperatives and occasional social obligations. My parents’ entertainment was folk parties and radio (often tampered with to tune into European bands like the Beatles and Abba) and excursions with friends.

Despite some bad memories, extreme poverty and denied freedom, my mother remembers the years of her youth with a nostalgia and a sweetness that I think I’ll never feel for my own youth.

My parents immigrated to Italy in the early nineties, during the civil revolution. They were considered traitors of the Albanian state until 1992 when the regime finally fell. ~shared by @loblackt