Curious things happen in the capital of a country that used to be called the poorest in Europe, until Moldova took that title. Last year, the opera singers in Tirana went on hunger strike, because Albania's government wanted to pay the divas a lot more than the chorus. This year, the problem is the zoo: the zoo-keepers survived the dark years of the mid-1990s by snaffling the lions' meat rations and feeding some of the weaker creatures to the carnivores. When stocks ran out, the lions were fed with hay: "We have the world's only vegetarian lions," jokes Edi Rama, Tirana's mayor.
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