We leave lovely Lake Ohrid for Albania...
We have greatly enjoyed our few days by the shore of beautiful Lake Ohrid, but we need to move onward again if we’re going to maintain the full schedule we’ve set for ourselves. So we’re all packed up and waiting back at the little Ohrid bus station and hostel in time to board a nice Mercedes van that will transport us to our next exotic destination. We’re heading to Albania now, and with hopes it will be less forbidding than all those past years of closed borders and Cold War paranoia might suggest. The occasional mosque reminds us we’re in the heart of the ever-shifting and overlapping boundaries of Western European and Middle Eastern cultures.
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Just a reminder of where this trip is taking us...
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We approach the border checkpoint with some trepidation, as we really have no idea what lies in store. The driver collects our passports and delivers them to the guard house, and we wait for the official verdict. A guard emerges to give the van, and us, a cursory inspection, and then sends us on our way. We apparently looked harmless enough and the whole thing was fairly routine.
I remember one riveting incident in the 1980s on a train from Amsterdam to Paris, where several Belgian police officers at a border crossing stopped to question a young man seated just in front of us, and then they escorted him off the train. We had no idea what the issue was, but I recall that the young man did not appear surprised. Maybe an old unpaid parking ticket. Or maybe a long prison sentence in Belgian custody.
The Albanian landscape provides us with ample scenic views as we skim the western edge of Lake Ohrid (elevation: 2274 ft) and begin our descent through mountainous terrain to Tirana (elevation: 360 ft), the Albanian capital. At this point, the Pan European Corridor VIII (our route through North Macedonia) tends to follow the ancient Roman Via Egnatia. This historic roadway was constructed in the 2nd century BC under the Roman Republic as an extension of the Appian Way from Rome that ended on the Italian coast at Bari. After crossing the Adriatic Sea, this new road was built to connect Rome to her eastern colonies.
The Via Egnatia (named for Gnaeus Egnatius, proconsul of Macedonia who ordered its construction, completed in 120 BCE) was about 1120 km (696 miles) long and began at present-day Durrës on the Adriatic coast of Albania, passed through the Balkan mountains near Lake Ohrid to Thessaloniki on the Aegean Sea, and then onward to Byzantium (now Istanbul). It crossed the ancient tribal lands of Illyricum, Macedonia, and Thracia, and it became a major trade route that had other important moments in Roman history.
As we sped our way in a comfortable van toward Tirana, the capital of Albania, I tried to imagine the armies of Octavian and Mark Antony trudging and clattering slowly through these mountains on their way to the fateful plain at the Greek village of Phillipi (named by Phillip, the father of Alexander the Great, in 356 BC) where they would meet the forces of Brutus and Cassius in the last civil war of the Roman Republic. At that famous battle in 42 BC, the future Emperor (who later renamed himself Caesar Augustus) would revenge the assassination of his relative Julius Caesar.
In the Shakespeare play Julius Caesar, Brutus says, shortly before the final battle at Phillipi where he was defeated and slain:
“There is a tide in the affairs of men which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune.”
Alas, poor Brutus, stout defender of the Roman Republic against Caesar the dictator and his kin, badly misjudged the tide.
Augustus would go on to defeat the forces of Mark Antony and Cleopatra at Actium (on the Adriatic Coast, south of Albania) in 31 BC, declare himself as Emperor in 27 BC, and rule the Roman world for the next 41 years until his death in AD 14 at the age of 75.
Any important road like the Via Egnatia serves as a ‘proto-map’ of sorts, as it would be the track a person would follow because it’s the easiest route to distant and unknown lands. It could be a method of directing trade, instead of just facilitating it. Such a road could bypass the merchants of any kingdom, town, or village that refused to pay proper tribute to the dominant kingdom or empire – or the Roman Republic – that constructed it. It could serve as a pathway for armies to subjugate restive subjects, or even nature itself – and since the Romans generally preferred to subjugate rebellious peoples instead of ignoring them, all these roads were worthwhile investments for them.
“The map shows the natural world in its place within the empire.”
– Off the Map by Chellis Glendinning (New Society Publishers, 2002)
Another event that would shape the future, and one that went largely unnoticed at the time by the Romans, took place on a different segment of the Via Egnatia . This was the same road that the Apostle Paul took on his way from Phillipi to Thessaloniki (Acts 16-17) around 50 AD to spread his version of the new Gospel that centuries later would be adopted by the Roman Emperor Constantine. In these days, though, we might not consider Paul to be a ‘highly evolved’ person, as shown by some of his pronouncements regarding women; that is to say, fully half the human race.
“Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection.”
— 1 Timothy 2:9–15
And so the depth of history rests constantly upon us throughout our ‘Balkan Circle’ wanderings, and those very same ancient pathways still direct our progress in more ways than you might imagine.(http://astrodigital.org/space/stshorse.html)
Along much of the way we follow an old and decaying train route, with crumbling support towers, several tunnels, and arcaded bridges that look like ancient aqueducts. It all adds a bit of color to the trip. An article about the Pan European Corridor VIII mentions that a train connection is also part of the plan, using the existing route system. And if it’s this decrepit railroad track they’re referring to, I sure hope they’re planning some major upgrades.
We enjoy a comfortable and scenic passage through a countryside where we had expected to find – well I’m not sure what, exactly. Maybe lots of barbed wire, tanks, and armed troops in this previously forbidden land. It’s unlikely we’d have even gained access to travel here a few decades ago to this ‘once-hermit kingdom’ due to the paranoid strictures imposed by Enver Hoxha, the country’s longtime leader who ruled from 1944 to 1985. He was a staunch Marxist-Leninist and Stalinist who later even became a thorn in the side of Khrushchev and Mao, as they turned away from pure soviet zeal.
But there’s little of the drama we may have imagined. We see villages with little restaurants, people selling vegetables, kids going to school, the usual ways of everyday life. In fact, there’s not much that’s different from all the other Balkan countries we’ve visited – except yet another incomprehensible Balkan language.
We pass a large sign that advertises a company named (gulp!) Kastrati that may sell gasoline. But I was not inclined to inquire further as to the business model.
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Tirana
The last stretch is on a modern expressway as we might find in any highly-developed Western European country. We slice our way past small villages nestled among jagged mountains, and then through large modern high-rise apartment developments, and we arrive soon enough safely in the bustling center of the city of Tirana.
We decline the urgent offers of multiple taxi drivers to take us the six or so blocks to our next little apartment hangout. It’s not really about the money, as taxi fares are cheap here. But we like to deal with city streets on our own, as we get a better picture of things when walking. And we found a close-by shopping mall for a lemonade, and an ATM to score some Albanian leke, the sixth currency we’ll spend on this 4-month trip.
($1USD = 108ALL)
After settling in to our latest nice digs, we’re off to see what this surprisingly modern city is all about. Or at least as much of it as we can grasp in the few days we’ll be here.
We’re just a block or so from the main plaza, in a section of the city that’s booming with commercial activity. And traffic. We turn a corner or two to find quiet side streets, that also lead to a broad and busy parkway avenue lining the channelized, and brown, and smelly, Lana River. It appears that the city’s inefficient infrastructure may be struggling to keep us with all of this explosive growth.
The river-drainage-canal is soon behind us and we reenter the sophisticated enticements of modern commerce. And a few odd older apartment blocks. A sign extolls the advantages of moving to a sparkling new ‘Future Home,’ and we wonder what the words “• Shitje • Blerje • Qera” might mean. Especially “Shitje.”
The phrase, according to Google, means, “Sale • Purchase • Rent.” And we are relieved to know that. Future Home is a real estate company, and they have quite a few nice listings on offer.
And then we’re hungry again. How can two people who have spent the past three months devouring their way across Eastern Europe manage to get hungry so often? Well, the unbelievably tempting food is partially to blame.
It’s a fine cool evening in late September and we take the after-dinner opportunity to make our way slowly back to the apartment. This city has so much to offer that a person could well fantasize about staying for a while to enjoy the many pleasures that are well displayed in brightly lit nighttime windows. We could find a place with an excellent view of some sort, and maybe buy a few pieces of art for the walls. We pass wonderful collections of furniture on offer, and there’s an excellent wine shop nearby so that we could stock up on some of the finest Balkan wines available. The people who live in these countries have been producing good wines for generations. For centuries. For millennia, actually, since someone in the nearby Black Sea country of Georgia figured out the process around 6000 BCE.
This is not at all what I had expected to find in this formerly forgotten and backward corner of the Balkans. (Where are the donkey-drawn carts? The oxen plowing fields?)
Paul Theroux, in his 1995 book The Pillars of Hercules describes the intriguing process of circumnavigating the Mediterranean, mostly by land. He arrives in Albania as the country is emerging from a strict form of socialism and has been swept up in a mania of Ponzi schemes that loot the life savings of most Albanians. He arrived by ferry from Bari, Italy, in the port city of Durrës and was engulfed in, “…a mob of ragged people, half of them beggars, the rest of them tearful relatives of the passengers, all of them howling.” He’d just stepped into a shocking European third world.
We will find, during the next two weeks that we’ve allotted to travel this amazing country almost three decades after Theroux’s visit, that we’ll also be often surprised. But in a very good way.
In this morning, we find a little crepe shop nearby, and we grab a quick breakfast. It’s a good change from our usual bread, cheese, and fruit way of beginning the day.
We’ve entered a fall rainy spell and everyone on the street is well-equipped with umbrellas and galoshes (a great old word, galoshes!). And life goes on as before, as we meander the main plaza. Tirana boasts several new and architecturally challenging high rise buildings that suggest we’re in a different city entirely from Hoxha’s soviet fortress. And the imposing statue of national hero Skanderbeg on a horse – he kept the Turks at bay from 1443-1468 – reconnects us to this country’s long history.
The outcries of children in a large Polish-Ukraine poster project remind us again of the terrors currently underway in the brutal Russian invasion of nearby Ukraine. It certainly seems to weigh heavily on all of these nations as they are starkly reminded of their own vulnerability to the past, and possibly future, territorial ambitions of Russia.
We did not visit the numerous old Soviet one-man concrete bunkers – there were about 173,371 Bunkers built in the 1960s to 1980s – that are scattered across this tiny country. And some of them have been repurposed as art pieces. If we’d had another day or two in Tirana that would probably have been on the agenda, but just wandering the streets and experiencing the city in its present form seemed more appealing.
At some point during the day the notion of slopping around in the damp becomes less romantic and we search out a decent coffee shop for some warm replenishment.
We appear to have a transportation issue ahead of us. There is no clear and correct information that we can find online about buses to Gjirokastra, a mountain redoubt we’d planned to visit next. One usually reputable online site says there’s only one bus per day, and it leaves at 8:00a.m. Carolyn contacts them and that bus goes to Greece. They don’t sell tickets just to Gjirokastra. Other sources say there are lots of buses there every day.
We’ll only be in Tirana for a few days and we decide to go check out the southern bus terminal – it’s well south of the international terminal where we arrived in Tirana – and get this sorted out. So we slog our way back through the downpour after our coffee break, and find a city bus stop behind the Opera that we hope is the right one. Carolyn looks up the correct spelling of the long distance bus terminal and has it ready on her iPhone, since we speak no Albanian. She flashes it to the driver and others standing at the bus stop and they ignore it, asking instead, in good-enough English, “Where you want to go?”
Yes this is the right city bus, a very long sectional unit that has plenty of space onboard. And it gets us out of the rain. We find a couple of seats and we’re on our way. Soon a ticket man comes by to collect from us and the other passengers. After another couple of stops the bus is jammed with people, and a guy named Dili starts talking to me, in very broken English over the din of the crowded bus, about where we’re from, how we like Albania, and everything else he can dream up. I can hardly understand him in all the noise. He even tries some of his butchered Spanish – which he learned in Iceland(!), hanging out with Hondurans. Some of the other passengers are rolling their eyes.
The bus driver hits the brakes to avoid something up ahead, and that pitches a lady, who was standing right near us, into Carolyn’s lap. So between Dili’s unending palaver and the lady’s pratfall, this sudden bit of comedy adds a nice layer of humor to the trip.
Before too long we’re at the terminal and our new friends make sure we know it’s the right stop. We step out into the rain and onto a long broken sidewalk, lined by a teetering fence, to make our way carefully to the large open-air corral of buses that passes for a terminal. It looks like more of a ‘bus grab-ass’ than a terminal, but amid all the confusion it seems to work. There’s a tiny shed with ‘Gjirokastra’ painted on the outside wall among many other destinations. The guy inside assures us there is no problem. There are buses leaving almost every hour after 5:00a.m., and we can get tickets on the day we leave. We find a snack shop, and a large sign board that appears to agree, and then we cross the busy street to wait in the rain and catch a bus right back to where we started. As with most of the side trips we get involved in, it was another interesting peek into the daily lives of the local people. In a downpour.
After we arrive back at the plaza we look more closely at the Opera building and notice there’s an event scheduled for the evening. And there are some very nice small restaurants under the long portico. It’s apparently a sign from the heavens. Or we at least have elected to interpret it that way. And so we settle in with glasses of fine local red wine and share another excellent meal as we wait under a rain-sheltering canvas for Opera Time.
“After silence, that which comes closest to expressing the inexpressible is music.”
—Aldous Huxley
The event is a small production, and not one that needs the main stage, so we’re shown up a stairway into a recital hall and seated with a modest crowd of local opera buffs. And then we’re treated to a memorable evening of talented performers, with an excellent pianist performing a wide variety of classical works. It’s just the sort of thing that gives meaning to our travels and that we look forward to finding along the way. (And I got a nice photo just after the performance.)
After the Opera, on our way back through rain-slick streets, the brightly-lit Resurrection Orthodox Cathedral welcomes the night. And the techno-traffic lights of central Tirana even illuminate the pole and the arching support bar. It’s all a nice bit of LED pyrotechnics to celebrate the evening.
The next day dawns fine and sunny and we head out to locate a place called NY-T Bagels. We haven’t had one of those in quite a while and it sounds like a nice bit of whimsy to add to our Albanian adventure. The owner has spent some time in The Big Apple and returned to open her own small deli. We quickly devour a delicious “New York Sandwich” (before I can even snap a picture!), two coffees, and a ‘kek portokalli’ (orange cake). And the bill for 710 leke comes out to about six and a half US bucks. For the budget-minded, Albania can be a welcome refuge from ’Starbucks prices.’
Onward we trek, past various city sights and toward a nearby parkland on a hilltop. It’s a beautiful wander along forested trails, with other morning hikers, and beyond the hill we come to a reservoir with the charming name of “Artificial Lake.” A large group of chess players surrounding a table in the park, a ubiquitous sight through much of Europe, remind us that connection with fellow humans is still possible without iPhones.
We find a nice balcony – with coffee! – overlooking the lake, a lazy dog, and the daily recreational life of the city. There’s a crew of workers below adding a nice brickwork patio to the scene. This exuberant and freshly-awakening city appears fully ready to leave its mordant past behind, and embrace the modern European world.
We find a different track back through the city that may, with any luck, get us further lost into the depths of Albanian life. There’s everything from high fashion to a local skiffle band and The Museum of Secret Surveillance, to motorbikes with an umbrella-top that may ward off a few drops in a rainstorm. There’s a foolish pigeon who dares to roost on the head of noble Skanderbeg – and to leave a smatter of indignity drooling down his face!
Can we ever forget Elwood and Jake, the immortal Blues Brothers, whose mugs now grace the backside of a Tirana telephone switch box? We mention the ridiculo-bizarro duo of Dan Ackroyd and John Belushi here because Belushi’s ancestors came from Korçè, a town that Lonely Planet labels “southern Albania’s intellectual centre.”
And the nation produced a 1988 postage stamp in his memory. (Shqipëria = Albania) Ah yes, John “Jake Blues” Belushi gave us some laughs before departing our world at the young age of 33. Requiescat in pace, John.
Every new corner of the city brings a new experience to the language-poor traveler. Having a facility with English and Spanish, and a decent familiarity with French, is not such a bad beginning. But there are limitations for us on this trip through a corner of the world where we’ve dealt with Italian, Magyar, Romanian, and the Slavic variants of Slovenian, Bulgarian, and Macedonian. And now the Albanians speak a different language entirely. Yet few in the Balkans are able to speak all those languages either. Fortunately for us, many signs are in English and the people often rely on a smattering of English, as it has become the ‘lingua franca’ — the business language — of the western world.
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But it’s time, once again, to move on. We start our last Tirana day with a spread of German pretzels, Italian bread, Albanian cheese and juice, Macedonian sausages, and coffee. Our grand ‘Balkan survey course’ leaves much to be desired – 3 days here, 4 days there – and only a light skim of all that these countries have to offer. So far we’ve gained a lot of knowledge about the Balkans, although it often seems superficial since we haven’t been able to stay anywhere, except in Budapest, for several weeks at a time. Or even months.
We leave our apartment to catch a city bus to the southern cross-country bus station and there’s a guy working precariously-balanced on a second-story windowsill while he’s installing a new window. It gives me pause just watching him up there. But then another fellow is asking for my attention, a threadbare guy who says something in Albanian, and I assume he wants some spare change. But through multiple gestures, I figure out that the heavy load of scrap metal in his cart, which includes the old window and door frames from above, is too front-heavy for him to tip up the kart by himself. I add my weight and we share a good laugh as together we level up the cart. Then I snap his picture and he goes happily on his way with all that treasure.
We return to the same broken and treacherous sidewalk outside the South Bus Station to score our tickets to Girokastar. And soon we’re in a nice van that whisks us away from Tirana. The highway slices through stony mountains that reveal the turbulent and twisted geology of the region – and Albania has more than its share of geology. We’re off now to another different part of the country.
Girokastra
The host for our apartment in Girokastra (sometimes it’s Girokastar, or Girokaster) insists on picking us up at the bus station, at no extra charge. And it’s the sort of kindness we’ve encountered pretty much everywhere so far in Albania. Perhaps they want to shake off the country’s forbidding reputation of the past and make sure we know they’re not like that in person.
Once again, the apartment that Carolyn has found for us is an excellent choice for our stay in Girokastra. There’s a comfortable queen-size bed, a bunk-bed we won’t need, and a nice little kitchen. The separate bath is right by our entry door and the spiral staircase is a bit of a challenge, but we’re ok with that.
The view to the hilltop castle and out over ancient slate roofs to the escarpment beyond is more than we expected. The cost of the apartment is US$106. For six nights. If you need to get your travel budget back on target, Albania is a good place to start.
After we settle in it’s time to go uphill – most everything is uphill from our apartment – in search of whatever there is about Girokastra. And for some dinner.
There are two little stores, back-to-back on a corner, and only about a block away from the apartment. They each have a good variety of vegetables, fruit, bread and cheese, and other items for breakfast and lunch. There’s an upper-level apartment with a small tree growing out of the windowsill. And there are plenty of skittish cats to keep the mice and rat population under control.
Girokastar is a fine place to wander narrow streets, and there are plenty of places to browse through local handicrafts and various essential tchotchkes on another day. The hike soon builds our appetites and we find a nice little dining place on a tree-shaded balcony overlooking the street just below. Very soon a half-liter of the house wine appears before us and we launch into platters filled with fine Balkan specialties.
Afterward, we meander carefully back down dark cobblestone streets to that fabulous nighttime view of the castle just outside our window. And the dulcet tones of the Albanian language, spoken by a smiling local TV ‘Weather Lady,’ soon lull us to sleep.
While we didn’t much understand the Weather Lady, her graphics said it would rain, and it rained most of the night. But in the morning, we awoke to a clear day and we set out up a long pathway to ‘yet another Euro castle on a hill.’ The whole continent is lousy with them and I don’t recall how many of these hills we’ve climbed over the years, but they’re a good excuse to get some exercise. And you get a ‘royal view’ of the village below.
We pass signs leading to the Cold War Tunnel, built by the paranoid dictator Enver Hoxha during Soviet times, but decide to skip it for another day. And after spending time in the dank recesses of the castle, we later decided to skip the Tunnel altogether.
Inside the castle there are plenty of once-mighty armaments on display, leftovers from the many wars of Europe. And the little Italian tank looks almost comical when compared with the behemoths that have come later.
Ali Pasha was the Big Guy around here for many years during the Ottoman Empire, and well known for his ability to balance several foreign powers along with all the local factions. (We’ll run into Ali Pasha again later, in Sarandë.) Many of the cannons on display still bear the markings of their British suppliers. But I can’t imagine stuffing a bunch of explosives into some of those older and cruder models, and then hoping to survive the blast.
One of the more curious artifacts on display is a badly-corroded Lockheed T-33 Shooting Star that once belonged to the US Air Force but got lost in fog in 1957 over the Adriatic Sea and landed in Albania. Or, as the Albanian press reported, it was a spy plane that was forced to land after being intercepted by the Albanian People’s Army. (Make up your own story, and insert here: X.) The pilot was returned to the US after several weeks, but the plane was brought up here as a sort of attraction. And it’s been weathering away ever since.
There are fine views from every part of the castle grounds. And there’s ample heavy stonework to frame more than a few nice pictures.
As the day ends, there’s a inspiring site on the castle wall for contemplation. (And as for me, I took one look at the 30 foot or so drop-off where those two rapt young ladies are sitting, and I stepped back about ten feet.)
We leave the castle behind in the waning light, and soon we’re nicely seated at another fine repast, with another excellent view. Again the evening’s dinner is well worth investing the time to build a good appetite.
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Centuries of European hubris and history can be read in these battlements – and also in your personal DNA. Check it sometime, if you haven’t already, and you’re likely to be surprised at the volatile mixture of your own blood.
A few years ago there was an outspoken white supremacist who was challenged by a reporter to submit his DNA for testing. The results proved he was part Black, and we haven’t heard from him since. The whole thing is ridiculous, of course, because we all came from Africa in the first place.
In 1941, Jorge Luis Borges published a short story entitled, ”The Garden of Forking Paths.” He posits a bizarre picture of multiverses in which, “We do not exist in the majority of these times; in some you exist, and not I; in others I, and not you; in others, both of us.”
The map of my DNA shows that, due to accidents of timing and geography, my ancestors somehow survived terrible battles, bitter freezes and droughts, and famines that may have been different from the ones faced by your ancestors, as we simultaneously occupied different, and sometimes even nearby, political and ethnic universes. And now here we all are, as we climb these rough castles and forts rendered in heavy stone, following the tracks some of our people left behind. And the view is nice.
The maps of Europe have been drawn and redrawn so many times in the past, since long before paper maps were invented. And now it’s all on a tiny iPhone screen that sometimes leads us astray and sometimes crashes. Ancient tribes, the Illuryians, and Thracians, and proto-Greeks pictured their world on cave walls. Each succeeding conqueror redrew them with later methods – the Macedonians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Ottomans, Austro-Hungarians, Germans, French, British, US. And now here we are.
“We’re all in our own fishbowls. We should hesitate before we pass judgement on what life is like in the fishbowls of others.”
– Louis Menard
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One evening we stumble into a cosy-looking bar we’d passed several times before on our way up the hill. Well, not ‘stumble,’ exactly, as we hadn’t yet ordered a drink. But inside we found a sort of drunken madhouse fantasy honoring local boy Enver Hoxha and the poet Charles Bukowski. Or perhaps a ‘compare and contrast’ exercise by a bar owner with a well-developed sense of irony. And soon I was hoisting a glass to, well I guess it was to the absurdity of the moment, of the place itself. There’s a kind of shrine just over my shoulder, with Enver Hoxha looking almost beatific, and with Bukowski laughing maniacally. At himself(?), at Hoxha(?), at us(?), at the world(probably). Choose one. Or more.
Had Bukowski lived in Albania in those days, I can well imagine that Hoxha would shortly have put him up against a wall and had him shot. Enver Hoxha was a puritan of the severest sort who did not well-tolerate criticism and sent many other critics to the wall. Pico Ayer, writing for Time Magazine in 1986, described Charles Bukowski as a “laureate of American lowlife.” He was a gifted, if drunken and loutish, poet who wrote foul works designed to offend the power structure. A meeting between Hoxha and Bukowski could not have ended well.
And soon enough we drag ourselves back into the night, to wander down dark twisting cobblestone streets lined with charmingly decrepit little homes that were built long before Hoxha and Bukowski, or any of the rest of us, were born. At such times, it seems the ancient villages of Europe laugh at the pretensions of the modern world. They laugh at us, that we believe our little everyday issues are all that important. These ancient villages have seen all this so many times before.
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Enver Hoxha was born in Girokastër in 1908, studied law in France and Belgium, and returned to teach in Albania at Korćë. He fought against the Nazis and their Italian Facist allies during WWII, and later was a founder of the Albanian Communist Party.
The Encyclopedia Brittanica says that during his 40 years as the ruler of Albania,
“…he forced its transformation from a semifeudal relic of the Ottoman Empire into an industrialized economy with the most tightly controlled society in Europe.”
Among his many reforms, he confiscated and collectivized large farms and made the country largely self-sufficient in food. He expanded industry, and because he brought electricity to all the rural districts, in 1970 Albania became the first fully electrified country in the world. Many formerly epidemic diseases, including malaria, were brought under control through major health reforms. Illiteracy was mostly eliminated, and the ancient practice of generations-long Gjakmarrja (blood feuds) was banned.
Hoxha was a strong advocate for Albanian women’s rights, which hitherto had remained little changed since medieval times. Vast numbers of women soon entered the educational system and later took political office in large numbers. In 1967 Hoxha proclaimed in strong terms that,
“The entire party and country should hurl into the fire and break the neck of anyone who dared trample underfoot the sacred edict of the party on the defense of women's rights.”
All of that, and more, was accomplished by strict Stalinist means, along with the attendant bloodshed of thousands of wealthy landowners and political opponents.
Enver Hoxha died in 1985.
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As we spend our remaining days wandering the stone-brittle streets of Girokastar it’s easy to see why it’s sometimes called “Stone City.” A few pictures illustrate the point.
We settle in for a last good dinner at a place that overlooks the valley below in a setting sun, with those persistent little daily clouds that are generated by the mountains. And as the evening falls, we wander back to our fine little apartment one last time.
It’s been a good six nights here. The total $106.00USD paid for our nice little apartment with the fabulous view was just $17.67 a night, the corner groceries were well-supplied with good fare at a reasonable cost, and there were many excellent restaurants within walking distance. A person could spend a good month or two here, getting to know the culture, writing some poetry, drawing a few pictures, and not having to worry much about the budget. It’s hard to imagine that a place like this even exists anymore.
But it’s time to move on, and our host drives us to the city center so we can get tickets on a nice van to the southern coast and the town of Sarandë. That's where you'll join us next...coming soon! — PRW