..An Hawaiian reporter was told that Albania is a mafioso-style country, but then a knock on the door of a nearby house brought a call to three men who spent well over an hour, determined to free him from a very challenging problem with his car. ..
An article written with passion and love for the yet undiscovered Albania..Enjoy!
Unexpected surprises in a once closed land.. Looking to add something exotic to an upcoming trip to Switzerland, I set out for Albania.A story by Allan Sklar, well-established writer, photographer and historian published at Hawaii Reporter
Butrint: sunset after a rainy day-powered by Viva Zoom
Separated by politics as a Maoist ally of communist China,its
long history of isolation is bred of mountainous terrain and a will for
independence. With Italy a mere 160 miles to the west, across the Adriatic, it
had been incorporated into the Roman empire by 145. Greece is even closer at hand. The town of
Sarande is only a few miles from the Greek island of Corfu, reached by ferry
and hydrofoil.
It is mountains even more than the sea that define
Albania. The valleys they create provide
land for agriculture, with sloping hillsides planted in olives and pasture for
goats and sheep, with sheep-herding still a traditional occupation in the rural
south.
Five centuries of Turkish rule have left their mark on the
people and the land. Music, dress, architecture, and religion were all Ottoman
imports.
The walls of Berati date back seven centuries. They enclose
what remains of a once thriving fortified town, that is still home to a small
number of families, with panoramic views on all sides.
Hillsides were fortified to assure control of the valleys
below. Towns like Berati and Gjirokastra preserve their fortifications and are
UNESCO World Heritage sites.
My wife, coming
from Italy, advised me of Albania’s reputation for mafioso-style thugery.
I found nothing of the sort, never felt-threatened in any
way. I found people focused on the rewards of freedom and the promise of
greater prosperity beginning to take hold.
Family still defines things. “I will soon be getting
married,” a 30-year-old waiter in Tirana told me. “My father is now adding a
floor to his house that will belong to us.. My brother and his family already
live there. This is very common in Albania.”
While Islam is the majority religion, pockets
of Christians are found in the south near Greece and in the north near Serbia.
Islam, largely disempowered by decades of communist rule,
has also separated Albania from its Christian neighbors, with Greek Orthodox to
the south, Serbian Orthodox to the east, and Catholic Italy to the west. As
part of the Ottoman Empire, with an influx of Muslim settlers, many Christian
Albanians converted to Islam in the early Middle Ages. But Christian
communities remained, with an obvious presence as we traveled south, driving
through a landscape of steep hills radiating the blue-green of olive trees and
the lovely sound of bells ringing from the necks of the sheep and goats that
link southern Albania to Macedonia and Greece.
Driving in
Albania provided some challenge, with
roads only intermittently surfaced or smooth> That provided a
challenge I enjoy, which was amplified on our last full day on a 6-hour-long
drive along that's called the Albanian Riviera, a stretch about 60 miles of
spectacular coastal mountains north of Sarande.
Not everyone has a car, and there are still cattle-drawn
carts in the countryside, and even in Tirana. But change is in evidence
everywhere, from stylish fashions in Tirana's shops to house construction in
burgeoning Tirana and vicinity. Most are only partly finished, lower floors
topped by tall concrete posts designed to additional floors when resources
permit. Transportation infrastructure has only been marginally addressed by a
cash-poor government.
My on-line
choice of the centrally located Hotel Areela... small, but with full modern
amenities, proved a perfect base in Tirana, a family-run hotel with warm,
welcoming and helpful proprietors. Grown
to more than a million people, Tirana lies at the foot of mountains that are
already snow-covered on my mid-November visit.
In terms of weather, November certainly wasn’t the best time
of year to go, with heavy rains interfering with driving and touring. Other days were blue-sky clear and scenic.
Summer brings a flood of visitors, the majority crossing the Adriatic by car
ferry from Brindisi or flying in from Rome. “There are more Italian restaurant
than Albanian restaurants, our taxi driver remarked when we asked him to recommend
a restaurant featuring traditional Albanian food. Luckily we tracked some down in Tirana and
Gjirokastra, where chef Defrim Gjoca prepared qilfi (eggs, rice, and cheese), specate
mbushura medjath (stuffed peppers with cheese), and a deliciously abudant mix
of greens and goat feta. Fresh
ingredients, fabulously tasty, washed down with a cold bottle of Korca, a
refreshing local beer.
Italy’s
links to Albania start in Roman times, with lands now part of Albania were part
of the province of Macedonia. When the Roman Empire split, Albania became part
of the Byzantine Empire until 1453 when it was overrun by the Ottoman Turks. Under
Mussolini, Albania was annexed as a part of Italy in 1939, following a failed
attempt at annexation of south Albania in 1920.
Zog, the Albanian king, fled to Greece, and Italy’s Victor
Emanuelle III, was named King of Albania. That forced union ended in 1944, when
communist partisans secured control of the country. For the next 56 years it
was Allied with the Stalinist Soviet Union and then Maoist China.
Albania offers
bargain pricing on hotels and dining,
It’s hard to spend $30, for two, at dinner and easy spend a lot less on
lamb, pork, chicken, and deliciously fresh vegetables on the menu. Breakfast at
our Tirana hotel was an elaborate offering of bread, eggs, ham, fruit, juice,
cheese, coffee and more, included in the $39 nightly room rate, pricing matched
elsewhere on our travels. Rental cars are easy to find, we booked a comfortable and road-worthy
Volkswagen that proved adequate to Albania’s notoriously rough roads. Gas was
the budget exception, priced at more than $8/gallon, but driving allowed full
access to the scenic southeast quarter of the country.
*****
Albania makes a great getaway from tourist-clogged Europe,
an easy-to-reach alternative (it’s a 75-minute, $95 flight from Rome)
alternative, with plenty to do to stay busy for a week or two, if you want to
add northern Albania to the itinerary.
The Albanians
proved to be open to outsiders, friendly and helpful when the need arises, that
fact proven on a cold, dark night in Gjirokasta, when what appeared to be a
road, proved to be a ditch, leaving the right front wheel spinning free over the
inky black of a five foot deep ditch, with a stone wall mere inches from the rear of the car.
A knock on
the door of a nearby house brought a call to three men who spent well over an
hour, determined to free us from a very challenging problem that would have
been made even worse by the rainy weather that followed the next morning. No
one was home the next morning when I returned with gifts, including macadamia
nuts from Hawaii, likely an unknown taste treat.
The Basics
Travel: No visa required, passport stamped upon entry. The
lek is the currency. It trades at about 100 to the dollar, which makes pricing
simple. High fashion isn’t the thing here, unless you’re a bride, with wedding
shops as ubiquitous as nail salons in the U.S.
In some places dollars and Euro are accepted.
Credit cards are not widely in use, so coming with cash is
the recommend.
Plenty of on-line resources with detailed information.
www.albaniantourism.com.The well-written, informative, and useful Bradt Guide
by Gillian Gloyer is an excellent resource. We made hotel reservations based on
its recommends outside of Tirana, which worked for off-season travel.
An excellent, conveniently located, quiet, inexpensive choice.
Source http://www.hawaiireporter.com/traveling-with-history-albania/123
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