The writing of the Swedish tourist who drove the communist authorities crazy in 1988: “Fiery night with Anna, a hotel employee in Saranda”!
– Correspondence between Stockholm and Tirana, about the erotic scandal of the hungry girl with an apple in her hand. As a Swedish tourist, he “played” the highest communist authorities of Albania, who could not find the Sarandio girl of adventure!
Memorie.al / Elsewhere in the world, it would be called a harmless adventure. Of the ones written for one night by tourists, only one ended up on the pages of a magazine. But not in Albania in 1988, where the report of the Swedish tourist, about the “hot” nights in the company of an Albanian woman, would cause a real earthquake. The Swedish tourist, author of the article: “Where the girls are hotter than lava”, visited Saranda in 1988. At that time, there were only a few people who managed to secure a visa, so even the regime found it impossible to identify among them, the foreigner of the dangerous adventure. In this writing, which arrived in Tirana, through our embassy in Stockholm, the name of the author was missing.
He describes in detail his visit to the city of Saranda, where he stayed for several days and where he met an Albanian girl who worked there at the hotel. According to the article and the nude photo published in it, the girl’s name was Ana and from the looks of it, she was very sweet. It was described in detail how, they met by chance and after some dialogues, he invites Anna to his room.
And according to the article, Ana goes to the room of the Swedish tourist, where she spends the whole night there. At the end of the article, the author explains in detail the intimate relationship he had with the Albanian girl, without knowing that his erotic story from Albania would put the authorities of the most isolated country in Europe in great trouble.
Transcript of the Swede’s writing
In 1988, the most Stalinist country in Europe did not show even the slightest sign of deviation from the path of Enver Hoxha. Therefore, one can imagine the scandal caused in Tirana by the intimate writing of the Swedish tourist, in the format of pink magazines. To find the characters of that “sinful” adventure, in a Saranda hotel, would not be easy at all.
Knowing what country he was dealing with, the Swede hid himself and the identity of the Albanian girl, with whom he had spent the night, giving her a false name, so that she would not be under the surveillance of the authorities of time, if they could ask for it.
Reports from Albania in foreign media, even the most insignificant ones, at that time were analyzed a lot and in detail, since the only source from within the country was the official information that came through legal channels, such as ATSH or radios in the language foreigners, who in any case, stuck firmly to the boring communist format.
For many, the country in these years had entered a deep isolation and the ALP had declared war without return, to the whole world. In this historical background, the writing of the Swedish tourist in Albania would raise our embassy in Stockholm, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Everyone started looking for Anna.
The material in question passed into the hands of the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, Sokrat Plaka, who would find it impossible to find and determine who the girl from Saranda was, who had spent a night with the Swede. The story of this event goes even further.
The material was forwarded on March 8, 1988, to the Minister of Internal Affairs at the time, Simon Stefan, one of the highest communist leaders, at the same time deputy prime minister and member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Labor Party of Albania, who was considered one of the most fanatical and indoctrinated people that the senior leadership of the ALP had ever had, during the entire period of the communist regime in Albania.
Stefani, perhaps among the shortest-lived ministers known in the history of the Albanian state, was alarmed by the information and asked his assistant, Zylyftar Ramiz, to investigate and find at all costs who the girl in the Swedish magazine was. Not only that, but for the communist regime in power, the image of the girl, focused by the Swede, was intolerable: hungry, with an apple in her hand.
Meanwhile, investigations will be started by the Sarandë Internal Affairs Branch, to find the girl. Suspicious people are interrogated. All the suspects, employees at the hotel, were women with normal lives. The comparison of photos with the magazine begins. Nothing comes to light. The investigations begin again and the stalemate is the same. The girl was not a hotel worker, but a female from the inferior sections of the country’s population. He had spent one night with her and that was it. The Swedish tourist, in fact, had introduced all the Albanian officials into the game.
The Embassy of the People’s Socialist Republic of Albania in Stockholm has been vigilant in the case of the publication of this article. She immediately made a general translation of the material, without going into the shameful things, and posted this to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
For his superiors in Tirana, the Albanian ambassador to Sweden, writes: “The monthly Swedish magazine “Stop Weekend”, no. 10/1988, with 45 thousand copies, in relation to our country, publishes the article: “Where the girls are hot, like lava”. Memorie.al
