An Albanian Winter Holiday

Out & About with the Ruins, Turkeys, & Bunkers

carpefeline — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 18:59:33 +0000

Day 3 Thursday Dec 29, 2012
Today we are moving to a new hotel tonight but we are starting to Durres which is a port city very close to Tirana. Many people in Tirana have summer homes down here or weekend homes. We saw that there was a train that goes between Durres and Tirana but our guide said most people do not use it as it takes 1 ½ hours to go the distance and you can drive it in ½ hour. I would imagine that you could only make that ½ hour drive if you are going in the middle of the night without traffic. Certainly took us more than ½ hour to get there and we are not in the middle of the summer beach season.
Durres is a large port town and was once the largest port on the Adriatic and during Albania’s struggle for independence, this port town led a fierce resistance and the men who died are regarded as martyrs and the first ones in the War of National Liberation. So Durres is still regarded as an important town of independence and freedom. As we are driving through the town, there are large congregations of men on a few street corners near where a ferry must dock. These are the local money changers and each one of them held a large stack of money in their hands. Some more freedom and independence right here!
Durres has½ million people, on the coast, with Byzantium walls around the old part of the city that were built around 500-700 A.D. with the oldest known excavation dating around 600 BC by the Greeks. Unfortunately, they cannot excavate anything else because too much has been built on top of the ancient ruins. We are going to see the amphitheater which was used for gladiator fights only, the theater which was used for plays and musicals and part of the agora which was the shopping part of ancient towns. Odeon’s were half circle stages covered with a dome where literature and poems were staged. Durres does not have a Odeon that has been excavated that we saw.
There wasn’t much left of the agora, just a few lines of foundation rock, a circle of floor stone and a dozen or so columns left standing. We are in the middle of a neighborhood with apartments and shops around us. The modern city is crowded right up to the fence protecting the ruins. I believe the modern city would be into the ruins except for the fence. Have to have a good imagination on this one. We could see there was nowhere left to excavate though because the ruins that are left are rather “ruined”
Next we drove to the amphitheater. It is in a bit better shape with a bit more to see as far as having more shape and slope to its sides. On the far side of the amphitheater from where we were looking was a small turkey flock. As it is almost New Year’s everyone is anxious to have their flocks out and about so they can be purchased. Someone was whistling to the turkeys and after each whistle, the turkeys would gobble. Whistle, gobble, whistle, gobble, whistle, gobble. Quite funny. My husband tried it but I think he was too far away. There is a small church in the amphitheater but it is under cover and we can’t see it. Some of the amphitheater stones are in the more recent ruins of shopkeepers stores and houses that are in the foreground of the amphitheater. And it wouldn’t surprise me if we went across the street and found some of the shopkeeper stones in the houses of today. Later we walk around parts of the old walls and look at the massive guard towers that jut into the park.
Our guide asks me if we want to go to the beach for a coffee and snacks or if we want to go for a panorama view. I ask to do both and he says “of course, why not?” We drive up a hill with some switch backs and cobbled streets. We are passing concrete bunkers in the ground. Klodi says there are some 70,000 bunkers all throughout the country. We believe him and can usually see bunkers everywhere we go. These were built by the Germans during WWII and were kept in use during the Communist period. During the dictator’s reign, everyone had to do some training in a bunker. These bunkers come in all sizes from being set into the ground with just a viewhole above the ground to huge platoon sized bunkers in the middle of a field. Often I would look on the map to see why a bunker was placed where it was because it sure didn’t look to me like that area was in any danger of attack from across a border or river. Found out they were everywhere partially to avoid attack from above.
At the restaurant, we park, walk further up the hill then have to take an elevator up to the restaurant. We go outside for the view and it is magnificent. We can see across the Adriatic Sea, across the town, and if it had not been hazy, probably would have been able to see Tirana. There is a house in the trees close to the restaurant and it was the former house of the former king, King Zog. Don’t know anything about his time or reign and we never got any more information than that. There is a small carnival close to the waterfront with one of the cars that rocks back and forth getting higher with each rock until you are almost looking straight down at the height of the pendulum rock.
We could see part of the port and several buildings are being constructed close to the seaside that looks to be apartments or condos. The sun is up and high enough to cast a golden sheen over part of the water. It makes a nice backdrop for a tanker going out to sea Klodi wants to get a cup of coffee and my husband is eager every time to join in so we sit outside in the sun and it’s pleasant enough. No need to drive down to the beach because the view from up here is superb. We finally finish and head off to Berat where we will spend the night and see the old town which is a UNESCO World Heritage site.
Several things to see and note as we are traveling around the country. Turkey is the traditional dinner for New Year’s. But this is not a country where you get your turkeys in the grocery store but you pick one out of a flock and carry it home, live, and then do the deed yourself. I don’t think I could wring its neck as 1), the birds are huge and I think getting a grip on it would be doubtful; 2) I’d be pretty squeamish, 3) just not into killing animals. 4) I’d never get all the feathers off it. I want my meat on a tray, laid out and ready to cook and not looking like anything recognizable other than meat. But it is a hoot to see turkeys being carried in sacks, upside down, by the feet, under the arm, and transported by car, bicycle, donkey cart, bicycle cart, and walking. So I am always on the lookout for turkey photos.
We notice a lot of unfinished houses as we travel too. Like many countries, they build when they can buy the supplies. Usually, the bottom floor is for their shop, business, car washing (there were MANY Lavazh or car washing places everywhere. No one should have been driving a dirty car), garage, and supplies. The order of the next floors built depended on the family I suppose. Some houses looked like they were being built from the top down and others from the bottom up. Throughout the country, we saw houses in all stages of construction from a slab being poured to roofs being tiled, walls going up, support columns poured, one floor finished, two floors finished, only the shop or garage finished, etc. Again, the youngest son stays with the parents and his wife comes into the home. Usually they take the top floor while the parents stay on the middle floor. It takes years to build a house like this as the materials are purchased piecemeal. You have an extra 10,000 lek one week so you buy a pallet of bricks. Maybe you don’t have any extra money for the next three months or whatever but you eventually get enough bricks to use them in a wall. And so it goes. There doesn’t seem to be any zoning either as it appears you can put anything you want on the bottom floor next to a house that maybe isn’t used as a business next to a business of car rental or a grocery shop. Hodgepodge and higgelty piggely.
On our way to Berat, we are going to stop by Cobo winery for a tasting. Before we reach the winery, a wedding parade pulls out in front of us. The lead car has a sun roof and a videographer is standing up in the car facing backwards to film the bridal couple in the next car as they are driving. Looked a bit dangerous to me and I’m not sure how interesting to anyone, even the bride and groom, a video would be of them in the front seat of a car driving down the highway. I’d get tired real fast of smiling and waving at the videographer.
Pulling up to the winery, there are a number of cars parked along the road and a policeman directing traffic and a lot of people walking out of the winery. There was a party there for 300 people just before we arrived and it was at the end of the party now. We wouldn’t have been able to get in otherwise. The party debris was still all over the tables and the wall ledges. There were still a few party goers tasting the last of the wine and eating the wine snacks including a couple of uniformed policemen. Guess they felt they were due some wine after all the hard work tangling up the traffic and parking cars. We parked and Klodi chatters with the owner who is still willing to take us on a tour and let us do some wine tasting. Nobody is in a hurry. It takes a few minutes to get the owner away from his other guests as the VIP who threw the party is still taking photos of the owner with him but then we head down the ramp to the vats and wine cellars. They have only been producing since 2000. He is not speaking English so Klodi is translating everything. As usual, there is a lot of chatter that seemingly takes 3 or 4 minutes then a sentence or two translated that takes about 30 seconds. Where are our magical powers that let us understand all languages or our universal translators at least.
We don’t spend a lot of time in the cellars as it is cold out of the sun. We go upstairs to the wine tasting room and get a seat with some glasses. Some plates of snacks come over, some olives, some really tasty bread that his mom made that morning, and some chicken and some cheese. There are sample bottles on the racks where people have ordered a special wine with their own photos on the labels. That would have been cool for our wedding. We are going to taste 3 reds, a white, and then Raki that is made with an infusion of nuts.
The red wines are actually fairly tasty but the one that the owner likes the best is the one that we choose not to buy. We end up with a white and two reds and the Raki. Even I liked the Raki with nuts. Ate some of the great bread and would have loved to take it with us. The cheese is also delicious. All the snacks have been made by the owner’s mother this morning, including everything for the earlier party of 300. We have tasted everything and decided what to buy and the owner comes up with a last bottle that is still quite young and is not anything blended. He and my hubby got into a short “discussion” on whether or not to blend this wine. My hubby thought it would taste better if blended but the owner “I Like it Like it IS!” adamantly. And suddenly he could understand English too!
Finally we have our 4 bottles for which we paid $48 and we all take a quick toilet break and back in the car to go to Berat. As it is winter, the light is going fast. We pass many fruit stands along the way but no one seems to have strawberries. At one of the crossroads, there are also men with turkeys waiting for buyers. We pass several donkey carts and sometimes the carts propelled by the single stroke engine that was so common in Korea.
We were supposed to have time to view parts of the castle but as we get to the castle the sun is setting and shadows are darkening and we are insisting on food before anything else. We drive up to the castle/citadel anyway and walk into the grounds. There are some 40 families still living inside the citadel walls. One family is working hard on their basement area but they have a restaurant on the first floor and we go in there. It is not a restaurant where they have menus but rather a restaurant where you ask them what they have cooked today and ask for a serving of that. We learned the very first night that grilled vegetables means eggplant and peppers which our daughter doesn’t like so she doesn’t order that anymore. We have started carrying around vegetables with us so we can ask them to boil it for her. Still took a while to get our meal even though it was supposedly already cooked.
We check into Hotel Mangalemi and the people are very happy to see us and also quite concerned. We walk through the building, out the back to a courtyard and into another building with an unheated hallway to our rooms. Our host tells us that he will bring us a portable heater as it is possible that the heat will go off in the hotel if the outside temperature gets below 0C. We find out with this hotel that most of the hotels do not bother to heat the rooms that are not occupied. It is very cold in our room and we can’t take off our coats yet. We get the portable heater and if we stand directly in front of it, we are a bit warmer.
I haul out the tripod and my hubbyl and I decide to try and take some photos of the old town parts in the lights. On the side of the river where we are is the old Muslim part of the town. Across the river is the Orthodox side of town. We find a spot to put up the tripod and my fingers are so cold I can hardly work the camera. We move over to the bridge to see the other side of town and take a few photos. It is really too cold to try and take any more photos and we go back to the hotel. Our room has not warmed up much and it appears that the central heating has already gone off. One of us calls for blankets and they bring us more blankets. Nobody wants to go out for dinner so we manage to do with what we have which is enough.
Our daughter is in her room wrapped up in her blanket with her feet on the heater. We are both wrapped in our blankets and not getting a whole lot warmer. A knock on the door and it is the host with another heater. He said they just went out and bought them and while it is much smaller, it is a much stronger heater. We put the original heater on the floor because the dresser was getting pretty hot underneath it. We keep them both going full bore all night long. Per my thermometer on my alarm clock, it warmed up to 16C but it never got over that. When we finally went to bed, we had all the wool comforters over us and both heaters blasting away. It was not an unpleasant night as long as we didn’t have to get out of the covers

First Day Traveling

carpefeline — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 15:05:03 +0000

Day 2 Wednesday December 28, 2011
We have some touring today! Hit the breakfast room on the second floor around 8. It’s a buffet and no one in the room except us and a lady behind the bar and one waiter. He asks for our coffee order and indicates we can go to the buffet. It is pretty much the usual selection these days of almost inedible eggs, some type of mystery meat sausage, some pastries, some cheese, lunch meat, a few vegetables, cereals, and yoghurt. We didn’t ask if we could get any cooked special. Somehow we always forget to ask this. My daughter stopped in and took some hard boiled eggs for later. The yoghurt was quite tasty but everything else was just mediocre.
Ready to go and down to the lobby to meet Klodi. We are traveling to Kruja today. It was an Ethnographic museum, and Scanderbeg Museum, and an old fortress of Kruja plus a bazaar. It is not too far out of town although we have to go back out towards the airport and through all the traffic jams again to get out of town. We get to Kruja and drive through the town and up the sides of a cliff almost. A good part of the town is perched on the hillside and this seems to be the case with most Albanian towns. We park and exit the car to climb further up the hill to get to the former castle. It has been rebuilt into the Scanderbeg Museum. You can still see the castle walls though and later we looked at the former tower and corner points along the walls.
We had a separate guide for the Ethnographic Museum. We were the only ones there and from the looks of things, no one else had been in a while. It is not exactly tourist season. There were signs that said no photographs but I asked the guide and he said “why not” and let me take photos. How nice.
The museum had tools which were used years ago to plow, flatten ground, blacksmith, make hats, distill, and press olives. I especially liked the olive press and it was like a huge screw on both sides that the men would screw down together onto baskets holding the olives that had already been pressed once for the virgin oil.
We went into the house then and saw the traditional rooms and furnishings. It was very Muslim in that the men and women were not ever together except in one room of the house, the family room. The women had a room above the men’s room that was hidden and they could look down on the men and the young ladies could see who was chosen for them for marriage. In the men’s room, no women were ever allowed so a young boy was stationed at the door to bring in the food and water and whatever other supplies the men needed. Some of the furnishings were hundreds of years old and some of the home was hundreds of years old as well but other parts have been restored.
The kitchen is always interesting. The old mom and dad (parents of the current land worker) would sleep in here because it was the warmest room in the house. Not a bad idea as we discovered later. In Albania, the youngest son is responsible for staying with the parents and taking care of them and taking over the farm/family business.
After the Ethnographic Museum, we went back into the courtyard below the former castle/now museum to head into the Scanderbeg Museum. In the courtyard were 3 turkeys and a couple of young boys looking after them. I am really getting into the turkey photos here. Hardly ever get to see a live turkey up close in the states.
Go into the Scanderbeg Museum and only the very first statues in the entry way are photographed. Then I must put away my camera for the rest of the museum. It is a very nice museum and Klodi did quite a good job of telling us about Scanderbeg who is revered as a national hero who helped free Albania from the Ottoman Turks which is ironic since they trained him to be a soldier. He gathered the scattered local chiefs together and got them to fight together against outsiders. All this happened in the mid 1400’s. He is regarded as many as the savior of Christianity in Europe. If he had not stopped the Ottoman Turks in Albania, they would have pushed through to Rome and the Vatican and there wouldn’t be a Roman Catholic Church anymore. There is a statue to him in Tirana and one in Brussels and other European capitals and you can see his helmet everywhere in symbols or you can buy a similar to wear. It was a goat head with the horns on it. Anyway, a good museum with interesting tales of Scanderbeg and then another part of the museum is dedicated to the Communists. We went through that part rather quickly. We did go out on the balcony and take in the view over the city and the valley and were able to take photos out there.
Now, we have the option to go through the bazaar. While I love bazaars, this one was quite touristy and almost every store seemed to have the same items and same rather kitsy stuff for sale. We did find some rather warm looking knit socks and went into one store to buy some. According to what we had read, we were supposed to bargain for items and it was expected. The lady came up with something like 10 euros a pair of socks each. My daughter found 2 pairs and I was going to bargain but when I started, she turned to Klodi and he chattered away with her and turned to me and said she would only let them go at 18 Euros rather than 20. Sometimes I have found a guide does more harm than good in bargaining. We found a pair of socks outside for 4 Euros
We found some great bowls there too but didn’t get any. My husband looked at a coffee grinder but passed it and then we saw the same coffee grinders just about everywhere. There was a lot of pushing of “brandy” and “cognac” – locally made – and apparently they think tourists must love to buy booze. Most shops were the same as everywhere – “come look” “free to look” “I have many things in my shop”, etc. etc. etc. And we walked to the end of the bazaar and had to walk back through it to get to the car. It was not easy walking either as it was all cobblestones.
Finally we are finished and hop back into the car to head back into Tirana. We get a drive through different parts of Tirana and Klodi tells us of some of the buildings are we are driving. He points out some very traditional Communist buildings. He always says “communist” and it wasn’t until much later in the trip that I realized their dictator was when they had their communist period and they were never actually part of the Soviet Union.
Buildings were all the same and all painted a rather dull gun metal gray during the Communist time. When they started moving away from that, people started putting some color onto their buildings and the general populace was so pleased that it became a law that you had to declare the color of your building when you applied to build and it was put into your permit and building plans. You could still paint a building gray but it had to be in the plans and documents. Some of the buildings went a little overboard with the different colors.
We stopped for dinner at a small restaurant where we ended up with way too much food as we didn’t realize Klodi was ordering a meal for each of us. We got some pies which I didn’t like. We had a spinach pie off a street store front before and it was good but this one was some odd cheese and nasty to me. Then we each ended up with a huge plate of chicken and rice. There were two men outside walking up and down the street with a turkey in their hands. When we first saw them, I thought they had bought their turkeys and were going home. But we see them pass the other way later but I couldn’t get out to take a photo. Klodi says they are trying to sell the two turkeys. Next time they passed, I ran out into the cold but they were walking much faster than my” jump up and go outside”.
We told Klodi that it was necessary to stop at a fruit market and get some fruits for my daughter. He took us to a nice one that wasn’t that far from the hotel and we purchased some strawberries, some grapes, a cauliflower and some pears I think. The strawberries were quite expensive, being about $10 in price for a small container but they were delicious. We got a couple of persimmons for bonus. Klodi was so tickled by my daughter always needing fruit and fresh vegetables that he took to calling her “Fruity Girl” and it kind of stuck the whole trip and we all enjoyed calling her that.
He drove back to the hotel and we walked around the square to the Ethem Bey Mosque. He was thinking we might not get inside but it wasn’t a prayer time so we were able to go into the mosque. As we were walking up to the door, a woman and her daughter, who looked almost grown, asked Klodi something but we went into the mosque in front of them. I thought they were just waiting to get into the mosque.
There was a room inside the door where you took off your shoes. Looks like men went downstairs then to do their ablutions. We walked to the next door which let us into the mosque. It was quite small actually. It had all the usual mosque things but wasn’t very elaborate as mosques go. I asked if I could take photos and Klodi say “why not” but I did not use a flash as there were people in there worshiping. We didn’t stay long because it wasn’t large and we hoped to see a few other things.
On the way out, the same woman and girl talked to Klodi for a while. He told us later that he was surprised because they were begging and he said that white people don’t beg and he was asking them how come and why didn’t she get a job and was really giving her the business for begging and not working. According to him, you can always find a job or help from friends and neighbors. They have a gypsy population and they expect begging from them but not from other white people. He did not give her any money. Interesting take on poor people.
My daughter was not interested in going to the Shijaku House so she went back to the hotel to work out. We hoped into the van and drove around the city a bit to get to this house which is the home of one of their most famous artists who is now in his 80’s I think but still painting. We drove down a small alley and when we weren’t sure where he was going, he drove between the very narrow stone pillars of a gate into what looked like a bar/restaurant courtyard. We all pop out and walk into the bar where he chatters with some people who run off to look for something. We are in the compound of the artist and his son or his family anyway and the house is next door to the bar. We are told to pay our entry fee of 200 Lek per and walk into this fantastic house that is lined from ceiling to floor, almost, with paintings by Shijaku. He has stuck to the same theme many times and some of the paintings are identical except differently sized. He loves to paint cock fights and scarecrows and there are some of Skanderbeg around the walls as well. Definitely a good painter. The house was just as interesting with a large fireplace and stairs up the back wall on both sides and then a balcony around the second floor with rooms but all the doors were closed. Klodi said the man is still painting as there was an easel and a wet canvas sitting on it with a palette under it. And there were several new paintings that Klodi recognized as being new from his last visit. We could not take any photos though.
Didn’t get back to the hotel though before we got hit in the rear. Klodi jumps out and goes to look. We saw the next day that there was only a small ding on the fender. The other driver didn’t have insurance and says sorry a lot but Klodi says “what are you going to do” apparently he has had as many as 30 dings in a couple of months to be repaired. Last time, he had just gotten it out of the shop when someone hit him again.
Back at the hotel and we agree on the time to leave and we go to our room on floor 8. There is a party happening on floor 2 where the restaurant is. We had seen rather large speakers in there earlier. Finally around 10 or so, my daughter calls our room and complains about the noise and can we hear it. The party has started and is in full swing and you can even feel the bass jumping the room around. She calls the front desk and they are most apologetic and say we can move to a new room for the night and keep the room we have as well so we don’t have to move all of our stuff. They come up with keys and show us each a room across the hall which isn’t really much better. Standing in the hall, you can feel/hear the music coming up the stairwell.
They had told my daughter when she first called that they had rooms on the 12th floor so we wanted to see them as well. Those were better. We could hear/feel the music but not nearly as much so we asked for those two rooms. We were able to get some sleep that way and didn’t get drummed/bass-thumped so badly to lose sleep. Sometimes it is helpful to be the only ones in the hotel.
A nice first day of touring and seeing some cool stuff and learning about the history of some of their heroes and founding fathers.

Back to Warm England

carpefeline — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 14:52:31 +0000

Day #10 Thursday January 5, 2012
Up for breakfast and there are more people staying at the hotel this time. The waiter who looks like some actor, remembered what we liked to drink and got it for us. This place had the best breakfasts. We have until 1 p.m. or so Our daughter is going to work out and said that there are regular people who work out there and also a staff of the massage ladies who kind of hang out and wait for customers and get them as well. There was a local patron in the gym who didn’t appreciate that she took a long time running. (she runs about 2 hours) Heavy sighs.

After she was done in the gym we wanted to go to the National Museum which was on the square right across the street from us. We started over there and walked up to the door around 10 and it was closed. Bummer. My husbandl had come out without a coat and it was cold enough that he went back to get a coat but while he was going back for his coat, it had started raining enough to be uncomfortable and the hotel desk had never heard of the idea of hotels having umbrellas so we just gave up on going anywhere at that time. We went into the gift shop of the hotel and found some of the Cobo winery Raki which our daughter got as a gift. There was some lovely jewelry there as well which was silver and gold though so rather expensive. The guide books had said there would be silver and copper jewelry but we never really found any other than the kitsy cheap looking tourist stuff. So while the guide books had gone on and on about the handicrafts and the locally made items, we never really found any that were much different from any other tourist kind of place and never found anything truly unique besides our wooden double headed eagles.

We finally went out again after it stopped raining and I wanted to walk down the street past the museum and see if there was anything to be seen. Was pretty much a street of travel agents. Albanians must travel a lot plus seeing the news around the holidays, there were tons of people coming home for the holidays and then going back and the queues at the Greek border where atrocious.

We did pass several shoe stores and my daughter was looking longingly at the shoes and I finally said we don’t know that they aren’t going to fit until you try them on. Myself, I don’t get the shoe thing but maybe that’s because I have a lot of foot problems but my daughter is well into the shoe addict culture. So we went into the store and she came out with three pairs of shoes. She could have done much more so it is a good thing we waited until the last day to get the shoes. One was a pair that said it was Italian leather. I suppose it certainly could be and probably is although Klodi didn’t think so. But not sure he would know anything about women’s shoes. They were all nice pairs and all about what I would expect to pay for shoes in a country like Albanian and expect to pay 3 or 4 times the price in the states.

So now we have to go back to the hotel and finish packing and that means we have 6 bottles of wine between my husband and me and one bottle of Raki and our daughter has a bottle of Raki. We looked up on the internet to make sure we could come in with this much from a non EU country and we were ok. Sure did almost tilt our suitcases though.

Klodi comes to fetch us on time and we wind out way out of the city through the traffic with the useless police men paying no attention to the stop lights. Klodi dumps us at the departure door and shakes hands all around and we give him an envelope with his tip. The guide book had said 10% of the trip cost but we all felt that was a bit too much because he didn’t do anything the last 4 days except drive plus when we asked him about all the signs all over the place that said “this castle that way and this church this way” he was very, “Oh, nothing much there and it’s probably closed” but we certainly could have driven out to see if it was closed or not and maybe seen something rather than sit in our rooms in Korca or Gjirokastra or especially Saranda. Anyway, he got a nice tip for what he did.

By the end of the trip, Klodi was rolling his eyes at our requests a lot, which were stopping for lunch or stopping for fruits and vegetables or asking the restaurant to cook our own vegetables (yet this was his suggestion in the beginning and I’m thinking that if he knew that restaurants would cook your veggies for you, he has done it before for other tourists) By the end of the trip, it was obvious that Klodi would much rather have been somewhere else than taking us on a tour. Still, we did have a very good time and did learn a lot from him.

We check in without a problem. So nice being business class. Could have told her not to bother putting the priority tags on the suitcases since it doesn’t seem to matter in the order of them coming off the plane. Then we did a quick run through of the duty free, nothing, and then up to the lounge where we were the only ones there. We did get some nice snacks though and they had a nice but odd cake.

Finally it is time to board so we go downstairs and wait for another 10 minutes. They had called for families with children and business class first. We shuffled our way to the gate and they were putting people to one bus or another as we walked out the door. The plane is 100 yards away but we are going to be bussed over there. At first I thought we were getting the business class bus because usually, nice airports, have a bus for first class, a bus for business class and then a bus for the riff raff. But after about 10 people were in our bus, they kept filling it until it was full and then it went. We did go first though and most of the children and families were in the second bus so why have them go through the gate first???

Luckily, the flight was not totally as full and not as many kids and not as many whinny kids so it wasn’t too bad a flight. One of the nice things about business class and British airways is they try to accommodate you, even with odd and unusual requests. I always ask to keep the coffee cup on British Airways. So this trip, I managed to snag all the British airways coffee cups this time. Now I have a set of four.

Into Gatwick and we get through immigration rather quickly but then we stand in the baggage claim area for at least 10 minutes before we even know what belt our luggage will arrive. Then we are not coming out first like priority. I had gloated in Albanian when my suitcase was the first of our three to arrive. This time it was last. Karma! Our driver calls me while we are waiting for our luggage.

Finally we get our luggage and get outside with it. Our driver takes off with two of our bags and we get stuck behind some slow walkers and the driver is disappearing with our suitcases into the parking garage but we catch up finally. He is in a sedan and has a hard time getting everything into the car. He drives us home and stays in the fast lane almost the entire time. While it got us home faster, made me nervous to be flying that fast down the M25! So very nice to get home. So very nice to see our kitties. So very nice to be warm in our house and have plenty of hot water.

That’s our trip. We enjoyed it. We were very glad we went. We think Albania is a lovely country and full of good things to see and visit. We think we will not ever go in the winter again and would advise people to stay in the “high tourist” season for a few more years until they catch on that people like to visit at all times of the year.

Smokey, smokey Korca

carpefeline — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 14:14:57 +0000

Day #8 Tuesday January 3, 2012
My daughter and I wanted to hit a couple of stores this morning as it did look like there were some interesting shops here and of course they were closed yesterday but maybe today. We had breakfast in the hotel, nothing fancy, and walked up the cobblestones to the first turn we had made yesterday towards the castle. There was a wood carver shop we wanted to visit. He had some really nice pieces. He had a cut out of the double eagle of Albania. We both got one and I got a small key chain as well. He and his wife very carefully wrapped them up separately in paper and gave them to us. They didn’t have a lot of English but asked where we came from. We said the States and sometimes that doesn’t register as well so we said America and the man goes “Obama! – good”. Huzzah. People overseas like our president again. Nobody ever liked Bush.

We start back but have a few minutes so we look at some postcards and get some cards and I get a magnet. My daughter has been looking at the purses women are carrying but we have not found a good purse store. She has also been looking at the shoes and they look lovely but she thinks there will not be any in her size especially after she had to go with Large in the clothing store.

We get back to the hotel and the men are waiting for us. We take off about 10:15. Our guide is very nervous about the road today. He has asked the locals and other drivers how is the road as he says this will be the worst road to drive over in terms of snow and if any driver had said it was bad, we would have gone the other way which probably meant back to the coast.

So today we are going to Korca (pronounced Korchah) and supposedly we will see a nice mosque and a museum of medieval arts BUT Klodi has already warned us that this place will probably be closed. It is, after all, only the 3rd and people don’t like to go back to work yet. This has become his theme song with each singing of it becoming a day longer that things are closed and another day of our vacation that we could have spent somewhere warm!

There are some truly magnificent views as we are driving. The mountains are snow covered, the trees are green or brown, nothing in between, and towns are nestled in valleys and quite lovely. Driving in the shadows there are some slippery spots which Klodi drives over at about 5 mph. In places where the sun is shining, he goes about 10 mph if there is snow on the side of the road. We stop one place to look at a valley where there is a waterfall. Kind of hard for me to see it but the valley is beautiful. I finally make out the waterfall. There was a herd of goats there too and they kept coming up the steep hill to the road. At first, it didn’t seem like there was a shepherd but he finally showed up and he is walking up the cliff about the same as the goats do. Just looking at how steep it was made me fall off balance!

We finally get to a spot in the road that is in shadow and there is ice on it and the car can’t get a grip to get up enough momentum to get up the road without sliding. Our guide backs down and tries again to no avail. He backs further down and no luck. It is not a wide road and there are cars behind us and cars coming towards us and we are pretty much in the middle of the road and stuck. Klodi gets out of put on chains.

I don’t think he has ever put them on before and they were not a design we knew. Usually, you lay down the chains and rive over them and then lock them. He was putting them on and trying to reach behind the wheel to lock them. Men were coming up and offering advice and helping with the chains and all. One man talks to us and offers my husband his card (he was actually talking to me too) and he is a doctor at one of the hospitals. He was quite friendly and didn’t seem to mind at all that he was stuck on the road behind a stuck van.

Our guide is getting frustrated and rips off the chains and acts like he is going to try to drive up the hill again with the men pushing the car but then several of the men take the chains and manage to put them around one wheel on the left hand rear. So how many Albanians does it take to put on one tire chain??? In our case, it took three! We get back in the van. Men walk up the road and direct the cars coming towards us to the side so we have a full road. Then several men push and we slide a bit but the chain holds and we get up and over the hill. We keep driving with the one chain and it is flapping as it goes around but we can’t be going over 10mph. We come to a small restaurant and coffee shop by the side and our guide pulls in there and says we will have a break.

The men get busy and take off the chain and attempt to put it back in its case, then Klodi has to put the van back together because he had gotten out the jack as well in case he had to jack up the wheel to get on the chain. All the men who had helped us come driving by us now in their cars and they all wave.

There are bird cages in this small restaurant too. There is a fire in one room and we stand by the fire. There are men working on a car outside and then they are out there holding a rifle and I thought they were going to shoot something but Klodi said they were just posing for photos with the rifle as if they had shot something. It is quite cold in this small restaurant because all the men going in and out working on the car and taking photos of each other holding the rifle always leave the door open. It’s about 2C outside and we are very cold so we are as close to the fire as possible without climbing into it! The door usually gets shut about ½ ways but each time a new person comes in or goes out, there is a chilly breeze into the room.

So my daughter and I are waiting for my husband and our guide and somehow we got into talking about honey. This place was known for its good honey for sale so we each got a kilogram of honey for something like 10,000 Lek which is a bit under $10. We finally continue our journey to Korca. As we pass over some hills and see these little towns and small cities tucked into the hills in nooks and crannies, there is a haze hanging over a lot of them. At first, it wasn’t a great haze so wasn’t sure if it was haze or clouds. When we got further into the mountains and there would be valleys surrounded on all sides by mountains, it because quite apparent that these were smoke hazes hanging over the towns. When we arrived in Korca, it was quite hazy and this town smelled very much like damp wood smoke and peat fires. We had to spray all our coats when we got home because of the smoke smell from this place.

We got into Korca late as it was getting dark already. But then it was getting dark by 3:30 or 4 p.m. We went to the Hotel Regency because this was the only place I had asked for a different hotel as the reviews of our originally assigned hotel was the Kocibelli and it didn’t have good ratings on trip advisor. I was supposed to pay extra for this hotel as it was more expensive. I gave that money to Klodi the next day and he pocketed it so not sure if he got an extra tip or not. Hotel Kocibelli was just around the corner from us and actually looked nicer. The hotel is a nice little place with a fish tank in the middle of the lobby that has a large carp in it that has to jerk itself around about 3 times in order to turn and swim the other way. Also a couple of huge plecostimas We did manage to ask where restaurants were and our guide told us how to find the ones around the main square where the cathedral was and said we couldn’t’ miss it. The restaurant in the hotel was closed. Then he was gone and we were on our own for the rest of the day. No touring today, no sightseeing today, no anything but riding in the car and crossing the mountain. Ah, but there was shopping this morning. I guess that’s something.

We go out to find the restaurants. We find the main cathedral but it’s very, very cold. The cathedral is lovely and lit up at night with some holiday greeting. We see a couple of restaurants on the side of the cathedral so feel confident that we know how to get something to eat. We head back to the hotel and stop at some small shops on the way and find some snacks and drinks. We are accosted by a couple of boys who think we should give them money. This is the only place where we have bit hit by kids wanting money other than some of the obvious gypsies. After our guide had discussed with us about how he told the lady at the mosque in Tirana that she shouldn’t be begging but should get a job and get help from friends, we were surprised that these boys approached us. They weren’t gypsies and in Albania, it seems that gypsies begging is ok but everyone else, it is not.

We head out again about 6 I think. We’re hungry and ready for food. We make our way gingerly back to the square and cathedral because the walkway is icy and slippery in spots. We make our way across the square and pick the restaurant on the left and head into it. It is pretty full of people on the ground floor and someone directs us upstairs. It wasn’t until later when our daughter said something that I realized we had been directed to the women’s bar upstairs. Yep, this was not a restaurant but a bar. We ask for a restaurant and they direct us around the corner. We go around the corner and find a place that says bar and restaurant. We walk in and ask if it is a restaurant and he says yes and directs us into a room with tables and then leaves. We sit there for maybe 5 minutes or longer and then he comes back and says they will not be cooking yet for another hour! I guess he was happy to have us sit there for an hour or so but we didn’t feel like doing that. Sooooo.

OK, we are out of there. We walk back across the street and back down the slippery sidewalk and stop at the small stores again to make sure everyone has something to eat for dinner because we’re not coming out again in a hour in this cold and this smelly, smoky town and that ends our night in Korca, total waste of time to go there really and the tour agency should have known things would be closed. Could have shortened our trip by several days!

Other things we have noticed. Most Albanians look rather surly and will stare at you. When I smile and give a nod, they totally transform their face and smile back at me. They seem to love it when I try to say thank you. The first few times after I had it written down, I still wasn’t doing very well but got pretty good at the end. They laughed a lot too at the beginning. Faleminderit (pronounce all letters including the t at the end and the e’s are accented and sound like short a’s). There is no zoning and no anti-litter laws. Trash is everywhere and the worst of it is thrown into their waterways. Several streams and rivers had high water marks in the trees lining their banks and the markers were odd bits of plastic bags and trash that would be stuck in the branches all at the same level and all ‘flowing” in one direction.

Not only are they heat challenged but they are door challenged too. Even on the coldest days, a lot of people walk in and out of stores, restaurants, bars, hotels and just leave the doors open. It’s no wonder that all the shop keepers, bar keeps, etc. are wearing heavy coats inside their stores.

Usually we saw shepherds with just sticks and dogs but in the mountains, sometimes there were shepherds with rifles and other long guns. Twice shepherd dogs came over to our daughter to be friendly. The one in Antigone got in trouble for it, I think. We have had Klodi stop for fruits and vegetables many more times than he has wanted to, I think. Now he rolls his eyes each time we say we need to stop for fruit. But in spite of all the heat problems and food problems, it is a lovely country.

On! On! No matter that Everything is Closed

carpefeline — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 13:37:24 +0000

Day #7 Monday January 2, 2012
Out of Saranda to head towards Gjirokaster today. We make Klodi find us a fruit stand before we leave Saranda. We are following the same route as we took to the Blue Eye yesterday and it doesn’t take us long to zip past the gypsy camp and past the entrance to the Blue Eye and then up over some mountains which have some snow on them but the roads are ok. We are going to stop at Antigone before reaching Gjirokaster. This isn’t even on the itinerary. Klodi says the road has only been open to this site for a year and prior to that, it was a donkey trek. It is a nice paved road too, not very wide but certainly one of the nicer roads we have traveled pot-hole wise. There are a lot of switchback curves and up and downs and at one point, there had been a recent rockslide and only enough had been cleared to barely let us through it. We pass through some small villages where cows and sheep are being herded and there are some lovely persimmon trees that remind me of Korea because they lose all their leaves before the fruit is ripe so you have bright orange fruit on stark branches. Quite lovely.

We finally pull up into a rather wide parking lot with spaces for 15 or 20 cars. They have high hopes with their new road. There is a sheep herd on the fields below us and several sheep dogs. We walk up to the entrance to Antigone and get some of the history from our guide. 300-200 BC Pyrrhus, the husband of Antigone, who was the daughter of Oedipus and his mom (in the play) built the town for his wife. It is high up on the hill, overlooking the valley, and had quite an extensive town for the time with an agora, city walls, fields, etc. It was incredibly peaceful and quiet up there, very still. The stillness affected us all in a very good way We liked it very much as it was so peaceful.

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As we walked further into the city, we saw some people ahead of us arriving at the Agora area. They were also tourists and I felt quite indignant that we did not have the place to ourselves. The only other tourists we have seen all week and they turn up in the place where it is the most beautiful and peaceful. They left before we did though and we still have quite a bit of time to look at the view and be quiet and all.

This town was quite a way up the hills and had a great view of the valley and the river in the valley which was another river that had moved over time. So at one point, it was supposedly great for commerce and a good place for fortification and defense but how the heck did they protect the river and how the heck did they get the water from the river to the homes as they were miles from the river and it would have been hard to run downhill if they needed to attack someone. If they had anything down there to steal, it would have been gone and the people down the river with it before the troops could get down there.

Back at the car, the sheep have gotten close to the car. One sheep dog is barking at us as we pass. The other sheep dog comes up to our daughter and falls all over itself for her attention. Then back the way we came and on to Gijokastra past a large bunker where someone is living. They have put an Albanian flag on the top of it.

Over another pass and into Gjirokastra the birthplace of their former dictator, Enver Hoxha. It is a pretty little town on the side of a mountain above the Drino River. There is an old bazaar street that is now just a nice cobblestone street with a few modern shops along it. There is an old Mosque in the center of town and there is a castle/citadel on the top of the hill overlooking the town that has been turned into a weapons museum but it was also a political prison in the old dungeons too at one time.

We wanted lunch so we drove to the other side of town and had lunch at a hotel that was sitting on a man-made lake where we got some rice patties that are traditional to the area. They were quite tasty and I had a second helping and took the rest home with us. They cooked our daughter’s vegetables but then drenched them in olive oil. After this, we had Klodi write down how to cook our veggies for us and to say no butter and no oil. We have also had fruit slices for dessert that have honey drizzled over them and sometimes some cinnamon sprinkled on them as well. This is quite good and we have had it at several different restaurants. We were driving through one section of town where there were a lot of road side stands with honey we thought. We asked our guide too late to stop for honey and he said we had already passed all the good honey. But now is when we have just started seeing bee hives so we found some honey in Sarande and got it Lunch was sometimes a challenge for our guide. I think at this point in the tour, he really wanted to be elsewhere and just wanted to get us from town to town and then go visit his friends.

We take a walk up to the castle to see if it is open. As we are standing at the gate looking forlornly at the castle, a car drives up and some VIP gets out with his family and calls inside the locked gate. A caretaker comes to the gate from the inside and opens the gate for him. I am very hopeful that he will also let us in and ask Klodi if it is possible. At first, it looks like he’s not going to but Klodi keeps talking to him and he opens the door and lets us in for 500 Lek. Score!

The entrance hallway is rather grand and long with guns sticking out from each small chamber to the sides of the long hall. The guns are WWII and usually rather large bore long range guns. There is a tank there too but it was all so dark that I couldn’t really take any photos and half the time, my camera couldn’t even get a focus on anything and if I took it off automatic, it was fuzzy. We got through the long hallway and there was a statue to the resistance fighter and then we are out in the courtyard. In the courtyard are doors into rooms which have lost their purpose and some steps leading down into the dungeon where we can’t go but that would be a good part of a tour. In one small courtyard there are a couple of guns and an American “spy” plane. It was a trainer jet with problems so had to land in Albania. The government kept it and put it on display as a spy plane so that they (the Albanians) would realize that their Communist government was protecting them from the wicked West.
The views were lovely up here with the sun shining on the snowy mountains on the other side of the river and the town tucked into the hillside. Gjirokastra is also known as stone town because everything is made of stone even the roofs. We continued on to the end of the castle with another larger courtyard and a façade from a 2009 festival that had been held here. The castle is used for musicals and such but this was the last really big one held here. We looked at a tower with Ali Pasha’s clock on it. We also have a good view of a stone roof there. They are quite well done and according to local lore, very warm in winter and cool in the summer. Not sure how but whatever.

The VIP family has disappeared so we have the whole castle to ourselves. It is a lovely view from the end of the castle overlooking the river (where you cannot see the debris in it from this high) and the mountains that are copper colored on the snow with the setting sun. We turn to go back and walk up on the stage. We were asking about the dance from New Year’s Eve that we saw the locals doing in the restaurant. Klodi says it is just 6 steps and shows us. We all try and get it going pretty good for an impromptu lesson. The steps make you go in a circle so that’s why it’s always a circle dance. Then we head back out of the castle.

My daughter tries to light up some of the guns as we walk back through the darkened hallway to the entrance. I was able to get a few shots but not so many as it is just too dark inside. The caretaker comes out of somewhere and lets us out. We thank him profusely and I am able to say it haltingly in Albanian as I finally got Klodi to write it down for me and once I saw it, I could practice it. The caretaker takes off down the street and we walk down the hill to go down the street in the other direction.

We are behind the mosque and come around to in front of it and our guide asks if we want to go see the former dictator’s birthplace which is now a museum but of course it is closed because nothing is open on Jan 1, 2, 3rd (now we are up to the 3rd being a day of things also being closed). We say yes so we head around the streets and down some small hills and tromping on the cobblestones. There are some nice views back at the castle and some good shots of the stone roofs but I never got a really good shot of the roofs and never really even thought about it until we saw some postcards in shops.

We get half a block from the dictator’s house and Klodi goes “there it is” and that was it. Of course we have to go back the same way, up the hills, around the bends and tromping on cobblestones which haven’t helped my daughters’ injury and haven’t helped my feet but it is always picturesque to see cobblestone streets. Awwwww. Oddly, there was a car sitting on the street that had a Wisconsin license plate. We also saw one in a different town with an Illinois license plate.

We pass the mosque just as it is doing its call to prayer. I don’t notice a lot of men heading towards it. Back to the hotel to warm up. This means we have a small heater in the rooms as it is not getting very warm in there. This country is definitely heat challenged. The hotels aren’t having many guests (sometimes just us) so they don’t heat the rooms until someone comes. That means we are walking into rooms that are 40 something F or maybe 50 if we are lucky. We needed heaters in Berat, needed them in Fier but didn’t get them, and needed them in Gjirokastra. Our room finally got warm enough that we were able to put our heater in the bathroom for the night which was good because there was a huge gap in the window letting in cold air. So with the heater, it was warm enough to take a shower the next morning.

As we pass the mosque on the walk back to the hotel, a man comes out of a small store or bar and sees my husband. He stares at him and walks alongside us on the opposite side of the street. I can tell he is going to talk to us, I thought. He finally comes over and says Hi to my husband and “my name is Jimmy” and where are you from and “I speak German, Russian, Italian and Greek. My English is not so good”. I just automatically opened my mouth and said, Oh your English is much better than our Albanian and then realized that Jimmy was totally ignoring me and didn’t even once look at me or acknowledge my presence. He continued to walk besides us a bit and then said goodbye to my husband and went away. Wow, I’m invisible.

On our way in Gjirokastra today, we had passed through Leskovik. It was a former communist copper mining town. Only reason for its existence was for the copper mine which is now defunct and gone. The town has not dried up and blown away but I was asking what they do now. Some of them are into the livestock and shepherding but not sure what else they are doing and Klodi didn’t have an answer. We saw another copper mine later that was also defunct plus the textile factory that we had passed in Berat that was dead. Not at all sure how these people are living in valleys between mountains with no industry and no easy way to get out of the valley.

This location is quite lovely and the town is pretty but except for the lucky chance we had to get into the castle, this day would have been nothing more than a long drive in the country to look at the scenery. We are a bit miffed that our tour company had promised that these things would be open and set an itinerary that hinged on everything being open. Live and Learn.

Good Day in Berat, Cold and Hungry in Fier

carpefeline — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 14:58:15 +0000

Cold and Hungry in Fier

Day #4 Friday December 30, 2012
A very cold morning greets us when we wake and there is no way any of us are taking showers as we have no hot water and our daughter is smart enough not to get cold and wet in her bathroom. She put her clothes on the heater before she put them on and I put my clothes in front of the heater before I put them on me. So we dress quickly. My hubby & I go to the lobby and into the restaurant for breakfast. There is a group of 10 men or so with coffee and smoking. One woman is seated with them and she never looks up and never joins the conversation. I don’t think she smokes either. The breakfast isn’t bad, just not wonderful either. Can’t even remember now what we had. The group of men at the table look over at us occasionally and stare but when I smile, they smile back. They finally leave and the smokiness clears a tiny bit.

We go back to our room and haul out our bags. Our guide had not stayed in this hotel last night as he has friends in town. As we are checking out, the management is very apologetic for the power outage and no heat and no hot water. There are three bottles of wine sitting on the counter and I think, “I’ll bet he is going to give those to us” and I was right. At the end of his apology, he offers us the wine for the inconvenience. They also gave our daughter an energy drink since she had not stayed to have any breakfast. We carried it with us for a few days and tasted it later, possibly in Sarande and while it might have been a beneficially drink health wise, it was pretty nasty flavor wise. Anyway, this was a delightful little hotel and would have been quite nice with heat and hot water. But the management had tried so hard to get us warm and was so sorry they had the problem and gave us the wine that we really felt it was a good stay.

We make a photo stop on the way to the castle so I can take photos of the old Orthodox part of the city across the river. I can also see an old citadel tower above me on the cliff. I am trying to get photos of cemeteries when we pass. Unfortunately many of them are not coming out because of the speed with which Klodi drives, which means as fast as he can most of the time. The cemeteries are colorful with photos on a good many of the head stones etched into the headstone with the new methods that are current these days. Most of the photos look exactly like a good Polaroid would look, I think. The cemeteries also have a lot of elaborate headstones in them and crypts that appear to be half buried. Cemeteries are always interesting.

We are back up to the castle/citadel this morning. In its heyday, there were 40 churches and two mosques inside the walls. Now most of them are in disuse or dilapidated. The UNESCO money is apparent though as we have to pick our way past workmen in many of the alleyways and streets and sidewalks. Some of the churches are being given overhauls as well. They are all busy getting ready for the tourist season coming this year.
Entering the citadel through the same arch, we pass by the restaurant where we ate last night. We all wave to each other and say hi like old friends. Klodi starts his narrative as he walks us around the citadel. On the wall outside of the restaurant is a plastic bag full of aluminum cans. As there are more along the way and sometimes bags with garbage hanging outside of a house, we think it is their recycling pick up point or their garbage bin that hangs rather than puts stuff in a bin.

We are walking through the citadel on ancient streets of cobblestones – well, the streets are ancient but the cobblestones have probably been replaced a number of times. Most of the city is either uphill or downhill too. Nothing much on flat ground. Our guide is naming all of the churches as we pass so I was able to label the photos with the proper names. Hopefully I spelled most of them correctly.

We are going into one of the churches to see the altar and the icons. Of course, it is a place where I am not allowed to take photos. I would have loved to break this rule but as a matter of course, I try not to break the rules in churches/temples/mosques, etc. and have sometimes been lucky enough to be allowed to take photos. This church had a beautiful wood panel across the front of the church with icons. One of their famous icon painters was Onufri who was called Onufri the Red because he used a lot of red paints in his icons. He also painted a Madonna with child where the child was on the left and that is unusual. Our daughter commented on the single seated pews being around the sides of the church and sat in one to see how comfortable it was. We speculated on which seat would be the best to sit in and fall asleep because you couldn’t be seen by the monks. I did take a photo of her sitting on the pew. Think it shows how sleepy we were as that was the first thought that came to mind – which seats would be best to take a nap!

Our guide clued us into how to tell what the church was called by looking at the icon in the second panel on the left of the altar door. It helps to know your Bible stories too so you can recognize what is painted and therefore know what the church is called. We don’t so we never could guess at any of the churches but at least we knew where to look. We were able to go behind the front wooden panels into the altar room in this church because it isn’t a working church anymore. There were frescoes on the walls behind the altar at one time but they have pretty much been destroyed. The church we visited was St. Mary’s Sleep because the icon with the church name was a painting of St. Mary sleeping.

Continuing our journey around the citadel inside the walls, we pass through an alley where some lovely yellow flowers are blooming on a bush to the right and a great view of the valley ahead of us and some birds swarming on a wire to the left. Both my daughter and my husband had to tell me to stop and take photos as I was busy trying not to fall on the cobblestones. Nice having directors with me so I don’t miss any shots. I do appreciate the help although sometimes I have no idea what my hubby is talking about when he says “take a photo” and I haven’t spotted whatever awe-inspiring view he has seen already.

We curve around various churches and streets and alleyways through all these stone buildings and wind our way down past two churches where there is a large bust of Constantine in the square and two churches beside him, St. Constantine and St Helena, I think. I am behind at this point snapping photos of the vistas before me so didn’t get the entire explanation of these churches and the huge bust. Continuing down the cobblestones and step walkways, we reach the bottom tier of the citadel and there are several dozen workmen repairing the sidewalks and putting in new stone/brick walkways. We had to wander off the path and through the mud to get past them. We have a fine view of the entire valley before us and the Orthodox side of Berat. Almost directly down from us is the Muslim side and Klodi points out the Bachelors Mosque which we’d walked by last night and also a Harem but in the dark, we didn’t get much feel for it. Almost directly below us at one point is St. Michael’s church. Not sure how people got to that church.

Of course, every down has an up and now we climb up the steps to St. Trioda’s church which has been restored but we can’t get into it. There was actually a small souvenir stand outside the church and a small coffee shop as well. We passed back through a gate and wall and on the left, there was the white mosque which has been grafatti’d. There isn’t much to it now.

Our guide tells us that he grew up in Berat and these citadel walls and alleyways and such was his playground with his companions. We walk down another small street and there is a group of 2 boys and 2 girls who are now using the entire site as their playground. Still plenty of workmen too. They are working hard to get the entire place spruced up and ready for the hordes of tourists they hope to have this year.

In 1997, when our guide was a teenager, there was a pyramid scheme going around the country which the government told people was a really good thing and a good way to invest their money. Many, many people put their life savings into this scheme and when it collapsed, they lost all their money and basically the government said, Oh, that’s sad but hey, what can we do? Nothing. People rioted and threw out the government and closed down the country for a couple of months. Guns were passed out to teenagers but for what purpose, who knows? Klodi says he had an AK 46 machine gun, a pistol, and a hand grenade and he was just a teenager. We didn’t ask what happened to the guns and grenade nor if he had used them or not.

We pass the Red Mosque which has the remnants of a minaret and past a hotel that was a church, then a barracks, then a hotel and now seems to be nothing. A lovely climb down a path and rocks with a view of the main city below us where Klodi points out the Leaded Mosque, the King mosque and a big government building/conference center being built. When we overlooked the old Orthodox city, he pointed out the names of several of the churches within that complex. Also says he and his friends used to slide down the hill that was to our left. Looked like good place to run into a tree.

And of course, once we are at the bottom of the hill, we have to turn around and go up because the way through to the parking lot is closed. We tried to take a short cut so we wouldn’t have to walk the complete city again but it was being worked on with water and cement and cobbles and rocks so we had to mince our way through the water and mud and we all got muddy shoes which pretty much wiped off with the grass but not totally.

On the way out, we stopped at the restaurant’s toilet again. There was a statue to Onofri, the painter, in the square just as you entered the grounds. We paid our entry fee upon exit. Winding our way down the hill to the town and heading out again. We passed a large complex that is closed. It is a former communist factory. Think this one was textiles. Most of the windows are broken and there is little or no activity in the complex except for a couple of buildings that have been turned into something else. When communism fell in many countries, whole buildings and towns were abandoned almost overnight. Amazing it could happen so fast but it did here and in Armenia we saw it too.

Going out of town now and on our way to Fier much later than we should have because of the stop this morning to see Berat Citadel. This is from our printed guide: “Berat, known as a ‘city of one thousand windows’, and has been declared a ‘museum city’ and UNESCO protected site. A highlight to any trip to Albania, Berat is one of the country’s most beautiful towns. The old name of the city was Antipatrea, built on the slopes of mountain Timori, with a castle dominating the city. Within the city walls there are houses and the Onufri Museum, where we see paintings by this outstanding painter from the 16th century as well as his son Nikolla. We will spend most of our time touring in the old part of the town (we didn’t do any!) This is perhaps one of the best-preserved Ottoman cities in the Balkans, with a lively lower town and a beautiful medieval citadel district on top of the hill. One of Berat’s highlights is a visit to the inhabited citadel. Once inside the walls, we can visit ruined mosques and several medieval Orthodox churches, still intact and with restored frescoes and icons. The famous Onufri museum is housed in a wonderful church and holds the best collection of Albanian icons. In the lower town, we will see the Leaded Mosque, so named for the roofing material, the Bachelor’s Mosque, the Sultan’s Mosque and the Ottoman han.” Well, didn’t get to see any of the mosques except for from above and sometimes wasn’t sure if I was looking at the right thing. Good thing about mosques, usually there’s a minaret so you can home in on that.

We see a cloud front coming into town. It is a quite distinctive line where the cloud front meets the sky. We stop at Ardenica to visit an old monastery where Scanderbeg was married, supposedly. A lot of it had been destroyed but someone had some foresight to say, wait, this is where Scanderbeg was married so we can’t destroy the entire thing. There are still some monks living there. Also, Klodi challenged us to determine the name of the church. We knew where to look but we don’t know our stories so didn’t know what the picture meant. There was a great clock/bell tower on the outside and I could take a photo there. Sometimes the memory of a vacation is as much about the photos you didn’t get to take as it is about looking at the photos you did take.

We took the tour out of order here and instead of heading for Apollonia, we went to Bylis for another archeological site. On our way, we pass through the small town of Blish or Blash or Bilash. Wasn’t sure which way it is spelled and not really sure of the pronunciation either. As we enter the town to drive through, there are several butcher shops on either side of the road from us. Each one has meat hanging from hooks on the outside of their shop for sale. Each one also has a cow or maybe a sheep or both or goat also by the shop. As we are driving slowly through, a man at one shop pulls a cow up to the shop slab of concrete and as we are watching, lifts a wooden mallet and swings it hard right onto his head. Another man blocked my view just as the first man swung the mallet so I didn’t see him hit the cow but I saw the cow go down and as we continued past, the cow was on its side with all four feet sticking straight out as if it were a stuffed animal. I think one of us, possibly me, said OMG, did he just kill that cow??? Well, heck, it is a butcher shop but I don’t want to see it. I think Klodi said something like stupid people don’t know how to kill a cow, he’s just stunned it. For some reason we are driving by really, really slowly, it seems. Think there was traffic. I saw that the man with a mallet was drawing back for another shot at the cow’s head so I looked away at that point. My daughter also looked away at the killing moment but she saw that it took the guy 3 times with the mallet to kill it and there was a group of about 4 men standing around “helping” and he still couldn’t kill it with one blow. Up until I saw the man with the mallet start to swing the first time, I had my camera up and ready to take photos but I don’t really want photos of this. Not a good investigative reporter am I. As we continue through the town, there are more men looking like they are about to pull up a cow and give it a good whack. Not cool. So we named this town the Killing Fields.

Now on to Bylis. This was a site chosen by the ancient Illyrians which overlooked a river plain below. The river has since changed location and isn’t as deep so ships cannot come up as far as they used to do in those days. But the views from up here were great.

I took a photo of each of the explanation signs so we would know what we were looking at as we went through the ruins. Quite an interesting place and actually had some stone walls and such rather than just markers to show what had been on the site at one time. There were sheep on the other side of a fence from the site. I’m always interested in watching them as well. We walked to the edge of the cliff and looked at the mountains across the valley. They are snow topped and the sun was shining rays on them from a hole in the clouds. Somewhere there was an old path that the women would have used to walk down the hill to the river and climb back up again. They probably went 3 or 4 times a day. I’m thinking it would take me all day for one trip and I’d get thirsty and drink most of the water!

Then we walked back to the restaurant and insisted that we have some lunch. There were two other groups in the restaurant and one was sitting right in front of the fireplace and the other had a heater blowing on their table. Luckily, the fireplace seated group finished shortly and left and we moved over to their spot. Our daughter gives her vegetables to the kitchen to cook for her. They were happy to cook it but asked if she wanted everything cooked and she said yes. They brought it back with the leaves and stems of the cauliflower cooked as well and they actually tasted just as good as the white part of the cauliflower. We did say everything after all, expecting they would take off the leaves but guess they just chunked the whole thing into the water. We had chicken and rice, way too much chicken and rice.

This place had three birdcages. One was a lovebird and one was a canary but not sure what the other was. They were all singers and while we were sitting there, they would sing and chirp. Wasn’t really sure it was them at first because they were so loud and noisy but finally decided it was. Almost like being in the Tiki Room at Disneyland!

After eating, another trip to the toilet and then back down the mountain to Fier. Too late to do Apollonia today. We are running about half day behind on our visits to sites but doesn’t seem to be any reason to move faster or catch up at this point.

We get to Fier and our hotel is on the main square. That’s fine except everywhere there are a lot of fireworks being shot off at all times of day because it is so close to New Years. And there is another carnival on the square. We get out of our van and the hotel whisks our bags up the two flights to stairs to the lobby of the hotel before we had hardly even exited. This was the only time we saw anyone working at the hotel besides the desk manager. We get into the lobby and they want our passports to make copies. Why is it only the 4 and 5 star hotels want to see our passports. All the smaller 3 star hotels are just fine with who we say we are most of the time. Plus there is no one else at the hotel. Did they expect a big rush on guests at the last minute? The clerk behind the counter is not very friendly and starts an argument with Klodi when he asks for Klodi’s passport which he doesn’t have but has his national identity card instead.

Our bags are taken up to floor 4. Klodi is still waiting for a room. We get out of the elevator and it is totally dark on the floor and we don’t know which way to go. We are trying to pull out a flashlight when the lights come on. The manager or front desk person is there and has walked to the end of the hall to turn on the lights. We find out rooms and walk into a very cold room and turn on the heat. Our daughter’s room is directly on the square and she can hear the music quite loudly. We do what little unpacking we have and then decide to go out to get some fruit and such . We’re not feeling the need for a dinner since we ate lunch so late but maybe just some munchies. Klodi had insisted all the way into town that it would be easy to find restaurants and food just everywhere since we were on the main street.

We needed food for later because we are not thinking we want to go out much later. It’s cold and we don’t have a guide right now and we are honestly NOT seeing anything along the street that looks like a market or a restaurant. So our daughter pops into the hotel to ask the man behind the desk where is a fruit stand. He pretends she isn’t there and then pretends (?) he doesn’t speak English. She comes back frustrated. We walk down the street a bit then head for a side street to see if we have any better luck. Our daughter’s suggestion as she is smart enough to realize we are not going to find a fruit shop on the main street. We find a small market and are able to get some things for dinner including a couple of the croissant type things that come filled with two types of crème or jelly. I love these.

We make a bold move and ask when we check out if anyone speaks English. One man behind the counter says “a little” we ask for fruit and he is happy to know the answer and points us around the corner. We go around the corner and at first think he has sent us to a candy store with fruit candy like Haribo but we go a bit further and see some fruit bins in the street and are able to go and get most of the fruit we have been liking and some veggies as well. There were two stores next to each other. The first one didn’t have any lights outside so we went to the second one.

On the way back to the hotel, we stop in to see if we can find me a sweater. I was needing some extra warmth. Any shops we see are filled with very tiny clothes where even our daughter who is a runner and very well proportioned and about a size 8 in the U.S. is a large or extra-large here. We tried one shop where she liked a shirt with skull and crossbones on it but their largest size was a bit too tight on her. They did try hard to find something she would like but no dice We did find another shop that had some cool sweaters. The one I liked the best was a large and would fit her a tiny bit big but wouldn’t have fit me at all. She did find a sweater that she liked and the salesman wanted to make sure she understood it was a man’s sweater. He was amused that she kept trying it on and then said something like everyone wears either kind of sweater. Didn’t much look like a man’s to either one of us but whatever. I actually found a hoodie there. Also a man’s hoodie and not one I would ever buy on my own because it isn’t very pretty but I was desperate for more warm clothes so I got it. We all felt it was a hoodie for advertising Communist China as it was covered with red stars.

Back to the hotel and it is still very cold in the rooms. The heat is coming out of a vent and then disappearing back up into the intake vent which might be good for summer but it meant that the room wasn’t going to be much warmer. And it is still quite noisy. I call our guide and ask him if he can ask if we can change rooms to a quieter room away from the main square. We figure it shouldn’t be a problem because we seem to be the only guests. Klodi is on the third floor and we are on the fourth but I don’t think anyone else is here. He says he will go ask. Whether he really did or not, it is hard to say. As we are sitting in our rooms in the cold and getting a headache from the noise, our daughter went downstairs in about 20 minutes but our guide wasn’t at the front desk asking for a room change for us. About 10 minutes after that, he knocks on our door and says very sorry but they refuse to move us and say that the carnival will stop by about midnight. Of course it did not stop and went on all night long. Cuddle under the covers and try to warm up and do get some sleep. Gotta get an alarm clock that comes with a white noise generator!