Into the Land of Zog

Gjirocastra, Albania

Within five minutes of entering Albania we were passed by a horse and cart and home suddenly seemed far far away. Wooly hatted shepherds pushed their flocks toward the mountains and the Ottoman towns that crumbled to dust on the hilltops. A now receded communist tide had too left it's detritus, concrete bunkers erected by a paranoid Hoxha (the longtime dictator) are everywhere you look. Unfortunately for a nation trying to forget, these bunkers are virtually indestructible. They sit overgrown in fields and gardens.

We entered Tirana, Albania's capital in a surprisingly deep darkness. Barely any of the streetlights seemed to work, only a sickly yellow light shone on the potholed road, the roadside butchers as they hacked at  hanging carcasses, the 'UK London Niteclub' blaring out sub-Eurovision house. 'This is more like it!' we cried.

The previous few days had been spent in Dubrovink, Croatia and Kotor, Montenegro. Both were truly beautiful old walled towns but in this, the entirely off season, they were dead. Struck mute by holiday-home blight, there was not a local (or tourist) in sight. Still, the journeying was  incredible, the blue blue sea burning our eyes through the bus windows.



Berat, Albania

Albania proved to be our favourite of the Balkan states. I'd imagined bleak concrete landscapes and boiled cabbage but how wrong I was. Berat was a wonderful, whitewashed Ottoman houses sunned themselves in the cold winter light, their windows gazing to the somewhat heavenly mountains across the valley. In the old fortified town, washing still hung, people still lived. Gjirokastra, near the Greek border, was equally beautiful. Its fort had been occupied by Romans, Byzantines, King Zog, Nazis and Communists but for an hour or so we were its only residents. As with all old relics in Albania, there was only an old man with a half-burned cigarette and a cheap jacket staffing it. Once you've given him a couple of fairly insignificant coins you are then free to roam the ruins as you please or, as we prefer to do, to run around like overexcited children (see picture of me in plane).

This is the rather demented look one acquires when faced with Albania's many joys

Albania is touristic diamond waiting to be mined (albeit a not very classy, possibly a bit dodgy diamond). There have, however, been lows (largely in regards to temperature). Albania is usually seriously hot and is not well equipped for the minus temperatures we've been experiencing. On a number of occasions we found ourselves in bed behatted and bescarved as the streets outside iced up. In Gjirokastra, half the town lost all power (including heat) and water. 

It is rather nice to be back in civilisation. And not just any civilisation, for we are in Athens, home of civilisation! That is, if you ignore all the other civilisation that came before it a little to the east. Anyway, I've already taken up way too much of your time and I'm off to find myself a hunky Greek waiter and dance off into the sunset. Toodle-pip!