House of the Purple Worms: A Day in Albania

So on the morning of June 1,8 it was time to leave Greece and take our (bus) chariot to Albania. This was pretty exciting since it is not a country many Americans seem to visit.

We got up early and loaded into the bus and said goodbye to our hotel.

We had to drive a good ways through Greece before we would get to Albania.

Slowly, the nature of the Greek mountains began to change.

We passed many houses with these birds on their chimneys. (I assume they are a type of chamber pot to keep the birds from entering them.)

They also hung puppets from the rooves, but I didn't manage to capture a picture of any of those.

Here is a another Greek landscape with sheep in it.

I thought it was cute that they used a picture of an old bellows camera to let us know that the traffic was being monitored.

Somehow I hadn't realized that Hollyhocks were a wild flower, but of course all flowers started off in the wild or their genes did.

For lunch we stopped at a little diner in the middle of nowhere. I have no idea what town this was near, but it seems to be a cafe called "The Steak". The sign indicates that the sell tripe and boiled goat along with sandwiches and cigarεττεs.

This is what it looked like from the outside.

It was actually a pretty interesting place and we sat and enjoyed being released from our automotive cage.

All too soon we were back on the road.

And finally we crossed over the border into Albania. It seems like it is mostly the women who work the fields in this part of Greece and Albania.

The Albanian landscape was mountainous and rocky. They have some of the greatest bio-diversity of Europe with 30 % of Europe's Flora and 42% of the animal species occuring in Albania. there are more than 353 species of birds to be found here. (Wish we had had time to look for some of them.)

The area was definitely poorer than other places we had been with lots of abandonned buildings.

Albania is also famous for having more than 170,000 bunkers built so the people could have protection from invasions.

Enver Hoxha (dictator from 1944-1985) had more than 750,000 bunkers built (starting in 1961) and you see them all over (supposedly there are 7.5 bunkers for every square kilometer in Albania.) We did see them all over the place. Hoxha tested the claims of the bunker designer, by putting him in an early prototype and then attacking him with a tank. The designer lived and so thousands of his bunkers were built all over the country. It is a country that has been occupied by other countries many times, so I guess I can understand the paranoia, especially after they alienated the Soviets in the sixties.

We stopped for the night in Gjirokastra (with a population of just under 20,000) - most of us staying in a beautifully elegant old hotel, Hotel Argjiro.

The interiors were gorgeous and highlighted Albanian culture and history. This is a sitting area across from the front desk.

Nearby was this beautiful bar.

The walls were decorated with historic and traditional images. Isn't this an adorable couple!?

Four of us however stayed at Hotel Kodra on the top of the hill.

It had a lovely view of the city.

Our rooms were less elegant, but still very nice.

It was spare with little ornament except around the light fixtures.

I found the streets of Gjirokastrato be quite picturesque. The stripes are built into the streets by using different color stones.

The bazaar had many local traditional craft items, like carpets, blouses and bowls.

I spent a long time talking to this stone cutter. He is depicted numerous times on trip advisor, so I imagine he talks to the tourists a lot. We had a long conversation. He only spoke Albanian, but he was able to get his ideas across about how poor Albania was and how hard the life was. ("Labora! Labora!" he said. "Work! Work!") He also showed me his anchor tattoo and described how he had had to serve in the navy (I think it was four years.)

Many of the buildings were boarded up and derelict.

Across from the hill on which our hotel stood was another hill (or mountain?) with a huge fortress1100 feet above the city. In the afternoon we wandered over to see what was inside. We were required to have a tour guide escort us through Albania, so we wondered if he would take us there, but it turned out he did not. (He basically sat on the bus and rambled on about Albania's mineral deposits and potential for prosperity despite being one of the poorest nations in Europe.)

The fortress had a chapel for an obscure Albanian sect described here. Religion had been outlawed during the Hoxha years of Communism and Albania declared itself the first Atheist country in 1967. It is now 58% Muslim with the vast majority (56% being Suni). Only 2.5% of the population now claims to be atheist, but anther 12.5% didn't want to answer the poll, so it may be a larger number.

Here are a few shots of the interior of the fortress.

Much of the fortress is pre-12th century with large, round romanesque arches and big thick walls to support the weight of the structure.

Mostly the fortress is full of artillery that was used to defend Albania against the Germans, but occasionally there is a statue or something else to look at. There is also a museum, but since we didn't know if we would visit it the next day, I decided not to pay for entry and did not see it.

Here is a view from the top. There is a big area with a modern structure for concerts just outside the fortress.

Around the concert area there are structures with the familiar round arches.

Here is the concert area with its modern stage structure.

This looks across the clearing away from the stage.

Here is some of that diverse fauna!

Down in the town I saw these solar water heaters and satellite dishes.

The market was spread out and very colorful.

Our group spent the late afternoon wandering around and shopping, or sitting in cafes having a beer or late lunch.

This is a statue to a local Albanian freedom fighter who formed the first guerilla fighter group in Albania in 1906. He assassinated the Ottoman Binbaşı (Lieutenant Colonel) of Gjirokaster in 1908 who had suppressed the Albanian nationalists. He is a folk hero with many songs written about him. I think this may be one of them here.

I was hungry, so I went to Mapo a little Cafe in the center of town where I had the best chickenlemon soup I have ever had!

This is another shot of the town of Gjirokaster.

There were not a lot of flowers in the city center, but every once in a while you would see something like this.

The were having a beer festival in town that night, but it was also the FIFA world cup play offs - so they had a projection TV in the square so people could follow the game.

We had a nice dinner in the main hotel.

Here is the festival after dusk, when things really got going. They had rock music and everything!

From our hotel atop the hill we had a great view of the Gjirokaster fortress.

The next morning I got up and did a short walk in another part of the town because or breakfast was not yet ready. I think this might be a typical morning scene.

I passed this monument to the Albanian workers. (I think that is what it is.)

Our hotel had a nice spread, with cheeses and eggs and breads.

We also saw people working on rehabilitating one of the buildings. Someone was in the third floor throwing rocks and debris out the window. This woman came to chat with the workers and wanted me to take her picture.