Month: May 2019

A fast developing city which feels young, vibrant yet traditional. Patisserie vie with the coffee bars. Wide boulevards absorb the traffic with ease. Colourful, a throwback to tbe communist days. Modern global brands are apparent though do not dominate. We’re can learn from their cycle lanes and pedestrian crossing systems.

Families enjoy Sunday lunch in tbe restaurants. Perhaps forgetting that not so long ago they might have been spied on: the House of Leaves Museum is a chilling reminders of the controls of the former totalitarian state (cf we welcome GCHQ et al as protection of freedom for its modern eavesdropping).

Why didn’t I know that Mother Teresa comes from here? Just a square, no statue. Tbe generosity of the Albanians extended to sheltering Jews during WW2.

Then back to our hotel rooftop bar to bring up the average age.

A reminder about the generosity we’ve experienced. Stopping for an ice-cream and biscuit, the lady waved us away when going to pay: a gift. We see that on the smiles and waves of the people we pass: universal greetings that transcend different spoken languages.

Today we saw the remnants of a communist industrial complex which once covered 145 hectares and employed 12000 people (1962-91) and now clings on. Colourful graveyards decked in flowers. Subsistence farming evidencing crop rotation we learned in school. A turkey herding her chicks (or is a brood of such chicks known as a kebab?). Nodding donkeys, both in the flesh and priming the oil fields.

Then we find Tirana: a bustling capital city with hordes of bars, coffee shops, barbers; restaurants are harder to find. To explore tomorrow.

Relatively short day also tiring. Lots of concentration needed on the road. The poor surface was one thing: the driving quite another: a free for all directions. Apart from the heavy lorry drivers to be fair who took care when passing.

Most of the scenery was working towns and farm land. Vlore was being regenerated before your eyes and it looked for the people that lived their, not the tourists.

Cheeky kids were abundant: curious and knew enough English to attract attention.

Berat is another proposition: a medieval town nestled in the valley of the river Osum. Awesome!

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Short day in distance, long in perspective. That’s an up of 1000m in 10k, taking in honey sellers at the zig-zag corners and admiring the skills of the heavy lorries navigating their way down.

Noticing in Northern Greece the lack of cemeteries, in contrast Albania has more, though not as bright as the Grecian ones. It would have been impolite to photograph the village turnout at the funeral procession; slightly weird to be overtaken by the empty hearse as it careered down the hill.

The Tour Albania cycle race thundered by to make short work of the hill we’d laboured up.

Shortish cycling day: just as well with the undulating road we were on. This is the main coastal highway north and thankfully relatively quiet today. Albania is a country that is growing dependent on its tourism with the infrastructure coming a way behind putting pressure on local services on peak season. No difference to gone then and things line the NSCR500.

Rapidly leaving the developing sprawl of Sarande behind, the landscape becomes more that of a developing nation: what looks like subsistence farming (which were may all end up back with to solve global warming). Small goat and sheep herds nestle the road side with a shepherd near by. Donkeys and horses with wooden saddles graze. Older people with tanned skinned, slightly shrunken faces and dressed in black for the roadsides. Like Greece in the cafes men sit and chat. The sound of manual labour breaking stone in quarries.

More obvious signs of foreign visitors with A D and H number plates on mobile homes and motor cycle groups.

What were staying looks like it’s being redeveloped: the sound of building is in the background.

We all hide from the hot sun.