This past weekend we finally got out of Tirana for the first time since we've been here, taking a two day trip to Gjirokaster and Butrint in the southern part of Albania. How far south, you ask? Well, if you could see in the direction that I'm looking in the picture, you would see a line of mountains and on the other side of those mountains would be the border with Greece. The reality is that this is a small country and the drive shouldn't be all that long, but the drive out there was 4 hours and back was 6 hours. This is what you get when you have to drive over and around mountains on long/steep winding roads instead of through tunnels, because tunnels don't exist.
But I get ahead of myself (every post is going to start like this, I swear). Gjirokaster is one of the oldest cities in Albania and is "famous" for the architecture of the homes, for the castle (2nd largest in the Balkans), as the birthplace of Enver Hoxha (former dictator), and as the birthplace of Ismael Kadare (very famous writer, first winner of the International Man Booker). It's also fairly small - you're looking at most of it in the picture up there. Butrint is what they call either an ancient city or an antique city - I'm fairly certain I saw both on signs on the way there. It hasn't been inhabitable for hundreds of years, it was instead thriving during the time of the Romans and was even being used up through the time of Ali Pasha and the Ottoman rule over the Balkans. It's a two hour trip where you walk around the ruins, get a sense of what the place used to be and what it was used for, climb some of the old stairs, etc. Not that exciting on paper, pretty cool in actuality.
We were on the trip because the language program here occasionally puts together these one or two day trips around the country, mainly for educational purposes, to get a better sense of the history and culture of the country. So twelve of us climbed into a van at 7.30 on Saturday morning and began our trip. Let me just say that the roads we took on this trip are not uncommon, but they were occasionally crazy. I thought the roads heading south were winding and steep but coming back, we weaved back and forth up these mountains to the point that we were in the clouds. In the clouds! It was crazy - fun and exciting and kind of scary - and crazy.
Gjirokaster was very interesting - we toured the castle there, went to the museum that is inside what was the birthplace of Enver Hoxha, and just walked around the streets a bit. It is a beautiful, old city with narrow, steep streets and all of the little shops and restaurants. Nothing of great value in these places but very, very charming. The next day was Butrint which, again, was only a 2-hour visit but it reminded us very much of Angkor Wat in Cambodia. This ancient structure that is in... decent shape, all things considered, that you tour around, getthe history of, and take some pictures of. We had an English-speaking guide which was nice for comprehension, but it would have been an interesting test if she had only spoken Albanian. Oh well, I can't really complain.
Sheesh, I wrote all of that in about 7 84 second bursts. Did it make any sense? Did I write anything? Did I write the same thing 14 times? I need to work on this thing. And there are more pictures - let me see if I can get in more than one per post...
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