Enjoying Albania!

Saturday, July 18, 2009--Thessaloniki (Continued)

Although it was hot outside, I wanted to see the Contemporary Art Museum. Therefore, I walked to it taking the shady sides of the streets. The museum itself is rather large and quite nice. All of the works are by Greek artists, and I found some of them personally interesting.

Across the street was a small park where I sat and relaxed for an hour afterwards. I was hoping that the heat would dissipate before continuing, but that didn't seem to happen although it was already getting to be around 17:30.

From there, I walked further eastward. There is a promenade along the waterfront where many people go to watch the sunset. As I returned around 18:30, people were beginning to come out. But I could tell that the sunset was at least 2 or more hours away. I stopped to see the White Tower, one of the symbols of Thessaloniki and then headed toward my hotel.

Instead of eating out, I decided to stop at a supermarket and buy some things. I got a bottle of red wine recommended by a lady at the market, a huge slice of feta cheese, and a bag of big green olives. I went to the room and ate them while watching TV.

Sunday, July 19, 2009--Thessaloniki

The city rises up a hillside from the sea. It's a rather gentle rise close to the sea, but it gets quite steep further up. There is an area called Ano Poli that my guidebook says is an old neighborhood up the hillside with narrow, winding streets and interesting houses. I decided to go explore it. The best part was a small square that had 3-4 very quaint small restaurants with outdoor patios. But it was fun exploring. I saw people having breakfast on patios with views down the city to the sea, grapevine-covered patios, folk-art, etc. I stopped in one of the parks there and finished eating the half of my feta cheese and my olives that I had not eaten last night in my room. I had hoped to buy some bread to have with them, but bakeries do not operate on Sundays in Greece, I guess. I offered some of the feta cheese to a cat living in the park. Apparently cats don't like feta cheese, since she looked at it, sniffed, and walked away.

It's another HOT day. It isn't as bad as it was in India, but that's mainly because there are shady sides of streets. I think the temperature is probably just as high. Also, it is so much easier to walk here with sidewalks available and with cars stopping for pedestrians at crosswalks. I'm so glad I am not still in India. It was tonight (early tomorrow morning) that I was originally scheduled to fly from Delhi to Istanbul.

I finished reading Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovski today. It's set in World War II in France during the invasion and occupation by the Nazis. Although the author was Jewish and was deported and died in the camps, the book has nothing to do with that. She shows how the lives of the "ordinary" people were affected by the war and how they reacted. An interesting note is that this is a "discovered" novel--one that she wrote just before being deported and that her daughters thought was a journal that they just couldn't bear to read. It wasn't until the late 1900s/early 2000s that one of them opened it and discovered it was a novel. Nemirovski had been famous in France as a writer up to her death. The two appendices, showing her planning for the characters and documenting the communications between his husband and others to try to save her once she was deported, were almost as interesting as the novel itself. I gave the book 3 1/2 stars (out of 4).

I returned to the waterfront promenade late in the afternoon. I took the book mentioned above hoping to find someone speaking English who would like to have it. I seemed to be the only non-Greek around! I discovered another quaint area of restaurants near the warehouse district while exploring. It was too early for a restaurant, however, and I had not eaten all day. Therefore, I stopped at a gyro restaurant near my hotel and had a pork version for my dinner before going back to the room. I gave the book to the man in the lobby asking him to pass it onward to some guest who arrives from an English-speaking country. Maybe he will, or maybe he'll sell it!

Monday, July 20, 2009--Thessaloniki to Elbasan

A cool front arrived sometime during the night. I actually felt a bit uncomfortable and needed some cover! Too bad it didn't arrive earlier when I was exploring the city. Today is a travel day when I will be inside an air-conditioned bus!

I headed off to Albania with high stress levels. I was planning to stop in Korce just across the border so that I can go southward from there without going to the capital first. However, there is no map of that city and no information about hotels there in my guidebook.

There was an Albanian couple and their daughter sitting near me on the bus, and I heard them speaking English. I started talking to them and discovered that they had immigrated to Canada 9 years ago and live there now. They are here for two months to visit family this summer. As I told them my plans, they convinced me to change them. First, they said that the roads are not in good condition going southward from Korce and that I would have problems trying to get transportation that way. Instead, they suggested that I stay on the bus another 3 hours until we reached Elbasan. From there, they said it would be easy to go southward tomorrow. They asked the driver if I could pay extra and do that, and he agreed for a price of 4 Euros more.

It took us three hours to go through the border crossing!! Everyone was so frustrated. A bus arrived before us, so the one man processing bus people had to do them first. Then he started with us. That was only on the Greek side. A few meters further, we had to all line up again to go through the Albanian processing. Fortunately, the other bus had already proceeded beyond there by then.

It was 10 1/2 hours after leaving Thessaloniki that I arrived in Elbasan. Again, it was not in my guidebook, so I had to find my way. Fortunately, I got off at the bus station and could see a bus with the destination where I planned to go tomorrow. A young man working at a restaurant there spoke to me in English and confirmed that it would leave at 8:00 tomorrow morning.

I headed off looking first for a bank and then for a hotel. The bank came soon and there was no problem getting Albanian currency. But then It took 45 minutes to find a hotel. People would send me a direction and I would find nothing. Once, I found a hotel right in the center of town (where I had passed within a block earlier) only to discover that it was full. Eventually, I found a brand new hotel called the Hotel Grand. It had a room within my budget range that included breakfast, a/c, refrigerator, cable TV, etc. I was surprised, since it looked like it would be more expensive than it was. I took the room and left immediately.

While searching for a hotel, I had noticed people walking toward town from all directions. As I retraced the route to the bus station to make sure I would know it tomorrow morning and would know how long it would take me to walk it, I started hearing loud music. So after confirming the route and time to the station, I went to the center of town to discover a stage was set for a concert in front of the old fortification walls and clock tower of the city. There were 3 TV cameras (including one on a swinging boom), lots of lights, and a big crowd gathered. Although I had not eaten anything but 8 cherries given to me by the Canadians all day, I decided I should stay and see part of the concert before finding food. It started about half an hour later. It had one Albanian act after another doing just one song each. The crowd was enthusiastic. Groups of men made circles and danced to the music. All of the songs sounded to me like Turkish music. I enjoyed it and the feeling of being in a happy and excited crowd. But after about eight acts, I slowly made my way to the back of the crowd and left.

My dinner was Albanian fast food--the equivalent of the Greek gyro, but different. I was served a headed piece of flat bread that was covered with mayonnaise, tomatoes, pickles, sliced chicken, French fries, melted cheese, and ketchup. It was already 21:45 when I ordered, so I headed back to the room afterwards.

Tuesday, July 21, 2009--Elbasan to Berat

I slept well. Everything was new in the hotel, including the wonderful mattress on the bed. I hated to leave such luxury, but I had to.

I was downstairs at 7:00 when breakfast started. It was nicer than I expected--omelette, slices of tomato and cucumber, feta cheese, and toasted bread. For some reason, my coffee and water which everyone else was getting never arrived. I didn't have time to ask for it, since I needed to get to the bus station.

It's fun to be in a new country. So far everyone has tried to be helpful even if they don't speak English. And I am enjoying the challenges of being here and having to find my way with so few people speaking English. It helps greatly that Albania uses the western alphabet, though. It will be more difficult in the countries I will visit soon that all use the Cyrillic alphabet.

I was at the bus station at 7:45 and got a good seat. We left promptly at 8:00. It is nice seeing the countryside here. This is a very agricultural country. Everyone has gardens, orchards, vineyards, etc. In fact, it's very common for the entire front yard of a home to be a vineyard or a combination of a vineyard and a vegetable garden. Many people have stands on the roadside to sell tomatoes, watermelons, peaches, and the other items that are fresh now. On the roads, there are often horse carts traveling, since this is still a poor country and not everyone has a car. The roads, too, are poor except for a couple of main highways. The route today was over a twisting, rough road that was often only about 1 1/2 lanes wide.

I found a hotel immediately here. It wasn't the one I wanted to fine, but my guidebook was not clear enough about its location. This one is clean, has a/c, is convenient to the station, and is only half the price of the one where I stayed last night.

The main attraction here in Berat is its citadel which is an old fortress with nice old white stone houses and several small churches inside. The weather is HOT again, so it was a difficult walk to the top of the mountain to see it. After exploring there, I went to the Ethnographic Museum which is the former home (from the 1700s) of a wealthy resident that is now a museum. I really liked exploring it, and would have enjoyed staying there rather than in a hotel.

It was 13:00 by then and the day was getting too hot to be outside. I stopped at a fruit stand and bought two large peaches to take back to my room. They were dripping with juice and were so delicious. After watching CNN briefly (It sure isn't as good as BBC World anymore), I fell asleep and had a DEEP nap for about 1 1/2 hours.