You Go Nate!

YOU GO SLAVIA ALBANIA! - Part 5: Land of Mystery, Land of Wonder, Just Don't Drink the Water

August 18th:

We woke up in Macedonia and went into town to buy some breakfast and spend the last of our denars. The problem was that things were so cheap we had trouble spending them all.

So with several bags full of baked goods, some juice, and other assorted goodies we set off around Lake Ohrid to the border crossing with Albania.


Albania.


Did you know that from the end of World War II until 1991 Albania, under the dictatorship of Enver Hoxha, suffered through one of the most repressive communist regimes in the world?

I mean, you know you've got a communist hard-liner when your dictator thinks that the USSR went soft after Stalin.

In the 60's and 70's Hoxha gave the USSR the cold shoulder thus making Albania a very isolated land.

Hoxha was so worried that either the USSR or someone else would invade Albania that he built nearly a million pill-box bunkers all over the country.

Hoxha died in '85 and democratic elections were held in 1991. For the first time in nearly half a century, tourists were allowed in the country.

As we passed through the border checkpoint I reminded myself that we were passing into terra incognita, a mysterious new country that is still unknown to most the world.


The first thing we saw as we entered Albania?


Bunkers...

...and then cows...

...and then cows with bunkers and I think a donkey in there somewhere...

These little bunkers serve almost no practical use these days and most are simply weathering away.

We passed old abandoned factories...

And hilly landscape dotted with villages, factories, and other flotsams of civilization...

As usual we listened to the local radio stations wherever possible, though I do remember at one point lingering on a Christian Rock station with some pretty cheesy music. I'm not sure the Slovenians appreciated the cheesiness.

Our first stop was the town of Elbasan, smack dab in the middle of Albania.

Janez, while working as an EU law enforcement agent in Kosovo, had visited Elbasan previously. He also knew a few words and phrases in Albanian to get us by.

It was a good thing too! Our first order of business after parking the car in Elbasan was to find a currency exchange office. We found one, but discovered that the guys working at the counter spoke no English. None. They didn't even know the numbers. So we had to simply write our wish for money on scraps of paper to get the right change.

With some Albanian money in hand we then set off through the streets to find some lunch...

There wasn't a whole lot to see in Elbasan, but just watching the people and the city itself was a fascinating treat.

We found a little place for some authentic Albanian fast food (it was a bit like a Greek gyro) and sweated in the heat as we ate...

After lunch we strolled around a bit more and found some evidence of Albania's love for America...

I didn't expect Albanians to look any different than the other people in the Balkans, maybe a little bit Turkish since the Turks were here for 500 years. Though surrounded by Slavs and Greeks, and ruled for so long by the Turks, Albanians have a distinct look, language, and culture.

The Albanian language while an Indo-European language, is really in a class all by itself, only distantly related to the other languages of Europe.

Check it out...

Albania is one of the poorest countries in Europe. Things are fairly run-down, there is a lot of trash on the streets, and you cannot drink the water. There are no auto-emission standards and so you smell car exhaust quite strongly when out and about in the city. In fact, the smell of the strong exhaust reminded me immediately of being in South America.

August is wedding season, as we saw in Kosovo. Thus we saw a lot of shops with bridal gowns for sale throughout the city...

Balconies...

Smurf boy...

We left Elbasan and started heading south. We passed a ton of car washes...

All over the country we passed unfinished concrete structures. You could tell they were built fairly recently and often with a finished and inhabited ground floor.

Some of the nicest buildings throughout the country were the gas stations. Here are both types of buildings together...

This was a weird house shaped like half a boat!

There were almost no road signs and the roads themselves, though mostly well-paved, were not highways and we had to keep to a fairly slow speed.

As we drove south we started to pass many olive groves...

Later in the afternoon we arrived at the city of Berat.

Berat's old town is a UNESCO world heritage sight for its well-preserved Ottoman houses. The Berat castle overlooks the city...

We passed the Albanian Orthodox Church across from the Mosque. Albania was the world's first officially atheist state, and while the majority of Albanians are nominally muslims, there is also a sizable minority of nominally Orthodox Christians.

Berat is where the Albanian Orthodox Church proclaimed its autocephaly, or autonomy as an Eastern Orthodox Christian denomination, in 1922.

We parked and stepped out into the baking summer heat. We found a shop selling cold bottles of water and bought some. We then hiked up one of the old streets towards the castle.

Looking behind us as we climbed we had a great view of the city...

We got to the castle and found it a fun and interesting castle to explore...

We saw very few tourists. It was cool in a way because we had the castle almost all to ourselves, though I felt bad for the locals selling souvenir trinkets near the entrance.

People still lived in some of the houses atop the castle hill. It felt like stepping back in time...

We had a great view of the city...

...including the Christian quarter on the other side of the river...

Photo op...

The castle was largely left in ruins for us to simply explore. There were no roped-off areas, few signs, and it really felt like we were discovering the castle for ourselves. We tried to go in this toppled minaret but found a dead cat in a bag on the first step. I hate when that happens.

There were cool clouds over this old Orthodox chapel on one side of the castle hill...

A large head...

We followed the castle wall around the hill, passing the still-inhabited Ottoman homes...

There was an old monastery on top with ancient frescoes above the door...

Olive groves surrounded the castle from the hillsides...

We left the castle and went back to the city. I realized that walking through Berat was like walking through a variety of time periods all shook up in a bag and thrown out about city: Roman columns, a medieval castle, a 15th century mosque, 17th century Ottoman homes, 19th century rooftops, telephone poles and electrical wires that looked like they were put up in the 1920's, communist monuments from the 1950's, a bus from the 1960's, mannequins in the shops from the 90's, and then modern cell phones and even some nice new cars...

We went to the old town and crossed the river for a better view of the Turkish houses...

Berat has the nick-name of "City of a Thousand Windows" and it's easy to see why...

It was fascinating walking these old streets...

...and encountering the locals with donkeys...

I spotted another chapel built into the cliff-face of the castle hill...

You go Berat!

This kid was waiting at the wagon for the horse to arrive. A few moments later we saw his friend galloping by on the horse through the streets to hitch the wagon back up...

It was time to leave Berat...

And so we continued our journey south. It was still slow going on the small roads, and we occasionally had a few road blocks...

We'd also occasionally spot a fire on the hillsides. Not sure what they were burning, but I hope they had everything under control.

It was dark by the time we pulled into our evening destination of Gjirokastra.

Our first order of business was to find suitable lodging. The first place we checked was a fairly modern-looking hotel near the main road. It seemed fairly clean and had air conditioning. Only €10 a night per person. Not bad.

Next we drove a few blocks to the old town where we parked the car and checked out one of the ancient-looking hotels on the cobbled streets. We walked into the sparse lobby noticing the run-down state of the hotel. A single old man sat in a small built-in office room in the corner with a work counter and a bed. He came out and greeted us and we found he spoke a little bit of limited English. He explained he'd give us a rate of €7 a night. We asked if we could see the rooms.

He led us up the stairs of the old place and explained that it was built as a hotel over a hundred years ago. I doubt if it had changed much for the nicer in all those years. We arrived at the third floor where he proudly showed us the rooms. And the shared bathroom. No toilet seat. No air conditioning.

For some reason he made it very clear to us that we would not be sharing this floor with any Albanians. I'm not sure why that was a plus, but it seemed to be a selling point for him.

Janez did the talking and after gathering quick looks of agreement from each of us, he accepted, we paid, and then put our stuff in the rooms.

I really dug the floor tiles...

A part of me was a bit apprehensive about staying in such spartan accommodations when for only a few euros more we could have air-conditioning, a private toilet (probably with a toilet seat even), and bed sheets that didn't look covered in dust.

At that point I kicked myself: "Nate!" I said, "the other nicer hotel will give you no experience, you will forget it as soon as you leave it. You haven't come all this way to forget about your time here even if it is just one night's lodging."

Even though I awoke to the sounds of dogs fighting outside the window and was so hot that I had to get up in the middle of the night to put a damp towel on my chest, it was totally worth it; and I'm so glad we chose the more interesting hotel.

Lesson learned.

Here's the old street with the hotel...

We asked the hotel man where we could get a bite to eat. He led us across the street to a restaurant and asked if we liked meat. We did. So he ordered something for us and then left. The restaurant people set a table for us on the narrow sidewalk and a few minutes later brought out an amazing Greek salad, which we gobbled down quickly. Next they brought out a plate full of some sort of roast meat.

We weren't sure which kind of meat it was, and the restaurant people spoke no English so we just had to make the sound of different animals until we hit on the right one.

"Mooooo?" ...no

"oink! oink!?" ...no

"baah, baah?" ... DING DING DING!!

It was excellent...

Wow, it had been a long and hot day, but full of amazing experiences. The cities, towns, and landscape were interesting, but I found the Albanian people themselves to be the most fascinating part of this country. Nearly everyone we interacted with was kind, smiling, helpful, and when they spoke English they asked us always, without fail, where we were from and then were genuinely interested in hearing our answers.

I love visiting new countries, and my first day in Albania was a good one.


Here you can see our route for the day in gray (I think that's the color) from Ohrid in Macedonia to Elbasan, Berat, and then Gjirokastra in the south.

View Yugobalkantrip in a larger map

Next: A new day in Albania; The Nate Escape; a Greek, Byzantine, Venetian, Ottoman, Albanian sandwich; the Ionian Sea; and Nate gets some female fans.


You just wait...

...