Section 01 — Sleep
Blloku was fenced off for the party leadership and nobody else was allowed in. It now rents by the night to anyone with a card, which tells you most of what you need to know about how this city has gone. Here is where to put yourself, and what each choice costs you in noise.
Four addresses
The whole centre fits inside a twenty-minute walk, so no central choice is wrong — you're really choosing how loud your street is at one in the morning. Rates sit well under most European capitals, and apartments undercut hotels again once there are three of you.
The district that was once sealed off for the party elite now rents by the night, which is a joke the city enjoys telling. Small design hotels and serviced apartments above bars that stay open as long as anyone is still ordering.
Big international names and solid mid-range hotels within a few minutes of the square, the museum and the mosque. You pay a little more for the address and save it back in taxis you never take.
The restored market quarter is the best-fed corner of the city, and sleeping above it means breakfast is a decision you make forty seconds before eating it. Mostly apartments and small guesthouses.
Neighbourhoods
Cafés, bars, boutiques. Central, lively, and the reason some people never leave a four-block radius.
The civic centre. Museums, the mosque, the opera — and every bus and taxi knows where it is.
The New Bazaar: produce by morning, grilled everything by evening. Eat here even if you sleep elsewhere.
Trees, a lake and actual silence, ten minutes from the noise. Where to stay if you sleep lightly.
Straight answers