A migration that combines cosmetic surgery and vacations, with many patients under 25 years old. Italian doctors are paid for interventions. And, in addition to official hospitals, there are also semi-secret clinics, Corriere writes.
They are sons and daughters, but also mothers, aunts, spouses, lovers, lovers, grandparents, separated parents reuniting for the occasion, who accompany (and fund) patients who are candidates for intervention.
This migration occurs throughout the year, and especially now, in August. Thus, aesthetic intervention can be combined with vacations. The price for interventions is affordable, while for vacations it is very low.
From Malpensa to Albania and back. To straighten the nose, eliminate eye bags, transplant hair, lift the cheekbones, plump the lips, shape the abdominal muscles, increase and (especially) reduce the breasts, slim the thighs and the arms...
The right place is in Tirana, in that Albania that young Albanians like very much. The exodus to Italy is already an old story, of parents who crossed the Adriatic and did hard work. A story that is now closed.
Italian language at school? No, now they only study English. "Rai on TV no longer exists to learn Sanremo Festival songs? Now they have Netflix and Spotify and they don't even care about the Italian language anymore.
What else? Nothing else to say: now we (Italians) go to Albania, the patients in the surgery clinics, the pensioners from Lombardy and Veneto who spend the winter in Durrës, on the beaches of families on vacation for 5 euros a day for an umbrella and a sunbed the sun; and of course, we are also the doctors in the same hospitals that provide these interventions.
Italian doctors with temporary contracts in Tirana
For example, in the largest private clinic in Albania, which has an area of two thousand square meters and is run by the 53-year-old professor Skerdilajd Faria, with many specializations in Reanimation in Rome, most of the doctors are trained in Italy and have contracts temporary in Tirana.
Doctors come, perform operations and leave. At Faria's clinic, which distributes bonuses to employees expecting a child, about 4,000 operations are performed a year. In the spaces of this clinic, which resemble a spaceship in appearance and with modern technology, doctors perform the usual interventions, where it is thought that you would find the perfect clinic to treat the consequences of the hair revolution.
Surgical interventions and prices
For example, a rhinoplasty (changing the shape of the nose) costs on average between 3,000 and 3,500 euros, while a hair transplant is around 1,500 euros and a blepharoplasty (eyelid surgery) costs around 1,000 euros, much less than in Italy and other European countries. Prices at Professor Faria's clinic, "Keit", include two flights, transport with an escort waiting outside the airport, a week at the hotel, the operation and the hospital stay.
Half of the patients are under 25, and it's a rhetorical exercise to ask Faria about the reasons for the bodily changes. Everyone acts according to their own wishes, sometimes physical features affect self-confidence and social relationships, sometimes they happen because of the whims of youth, and sometimes because of the insistence of parents who take advantage of special opportunities to pay and complete interventions , or maybe one day we will discover that we are all influenced by the dictatorship of selfies and perfect images.
Clinics in Tirana
Tirana, which is under a frenzy of construction speculation that is transforming the old city center, has a large network of clinics. Exactly how many, no one knows, some hospitals open and close perhaps taking an advance on operations, change, relocate suddenly, and advertise online as big competing brands with which they have no connection; some other clinics appear in buildings from the dictatorship period, tougher than all communist dictatorships, and to find them, you have to explore the underground parking, hope to see the signs written on the walls, climb the stairs with lights that light the lamps and go through dangerous elevators, and then knock on the right door. Opposite official hospitals, this is a (semi)clandestine geography that tries to attract patients to dangers that are very visible.
The coast of Durrës
From the airport named Mother Teresa in Tirana, it is 30 minutes by car. From Tirana to Durrës, one of the first exits to the sea — a kilometer stretch of beaches — is an hour.
In Durrës, the coast furthest from the center is the one of starred hotels, with promenades for bicycles and pedestrians, organized beaches with perfect services, patrolling police in uniform and civilian, play areas for children, and sometimes luxury — which it often degrades into clichés — in the construction of facades and the organization of interior spaces; the area near the harbor is more authentic, colorful, dirty as the pure spirit of the coastal city prevails here, chaotic, noisy and full of intersections of human comedy.
Hotels and restaurants
There are small hotels like "Afa Hotel" that take us back to Milan, the owner of this business who worked for 11 years between via Padova and the Adriano neighborhood, building concert stages: with his wife, daughters and brothers, and with the Calabrese Giovanni as a chef , has recently started the activity. It is characterized by the ability to welcome tourists and make them feel at home, without feeling that they are just customers.
The same thing happens when talking to Albanians in shops, beach bars and restaurants that offer fresh fish. And, although we didn't choose where we were born, it's exciting to see the behavior of the elderly: after a long life where everyone watched each other and reported on those who bothered them, today they look forward to someone foreigners to start a conversation to laugh together and enjoy what the country has to offer.
Competition from Turkey
In the beginning, there was only one Turkish doctor in all of Albania, in Tirana, who offered cosmetic surgery, but due to culture and taboos, no one helped him. Today, the dominance of Turkey, which has been a leader in the field of cosmetic surgery for 20 years in this country, is collapsing. New clinics with Italian and German managers are opening in Albania.
Now the city of Tirana is growing on the outskirts, with apartment complexes to accommodate Albanians from the villages and mountains, the same citizens who are traveling thanks to low-cost flights, among the Italians who return with changed noses, different breasts, cheekbones others, a common counter-migration of the modern era./ Corriere della Sera
