expatdame

A castle in the plain

I shouldn’t be so surprised every time I see ancient ruins in Albania. After all, the country was right in the heart of the Roman empire long before the Turks or Enver Hoxha showed up. But somehow those later conquerors eclipse the ancient ones, and Enver in particular constructed truly awful buildings, so it’s quite a treat to visit ancient monuments. An opportunity to forget about the concrete skeletons and rebar farms and miles of plastic bags that line much of the landscape.

The most recent example of this was a visit to Bashtove Castle. (See the photos in the Bashtove Castle album). In any other country this would be a prime tourist attraction, but we and one other group (an American with Albanian friends) were the only visitors. My friend Rebekah had found it in the Blue Guide, and when I told my Albanian colleagues about the castle they had never heard of it. To get there you drive to Rrogozhine, and with good directions from the Blue Guide, look for a tiny sign on the side of the road that leads you straight into a gully but quickly puts you onto "quite a good and very straight track", as the Blue Guide describes it.

Bashtove Castle was built in the late 15^th century, and when we came upon it I felt like I was indeed in the 15th century. That's one of the great things about seeing the sites in Albania - the lack of development means that you often see them pretty much the way their builders saw them. (Except when they're in the middle of a hideous new development.) It looks kind of squat, but that’s apparently because a good chunk of it is underground, due to silting. There was once a mosque at one corner, and it has the classic romantic saw-toothed castle profile. It was quite windy the day we visited, and the atmosphere was very evocative. It was a little bit hard to get inside because they shepherds in the area have built informal anti-sheep fences, piles of branches, at each potential entry point.

Since there's been no development nearby, visiting the castle made me feel like I was back in the Middle Ages. It sits in drained marshland used for pastoral architecture - just like when it was built. The only movement we saw in any direction while we were there was a herd of sheep being urged on by an elderly shepherd. (A friend of mine is running a project that is encouraging Albania to develop civil society – which is a shorthand way of describing community activism/participation in government – and as part of it one of the involved villages put on a village fair last year. They are now hoping to have a festival inside the castle enclosure this summer.)

After our visit to the castle, we headed off for a fish lunch on directions from our fellow castle visitors – ‘turn left and go three kilometers – you can’t miss it’. Well, we did. You’ll see the state of the road in the photos, and two hours later we limped back to the main highway and had a lamb lunch.

First day of summer: March 14th

Yesterday was ‘Diten e Veres’, which literally means ‘Day of Summer’. I prefer to think of it as ‘Mimoza Defoliation Day’, because it marks the beginning of the (mercifully short) period when urchins from the streets of Tirana go up on Mount Dajte and cut down every blooming branch of mimoza they can find to sell to us flower-starved urbanites. And yes, after a long winter, my environmentalist scruples go out the window; I’m a good customer to the urchins. Diten e Veres is a major national holiday; schools and government offices are closed and everybody goes out onto the boulevard and into the park to celebrate spring.

I, ever quick to criticize, wondered why in hell they were having Summer Day a week before spring even arrives. Especially given the icy evidence of daily life that winter was never, ever going to leave. But now I know why. Whoever declared this holiday has a direct line to the gods, because the weather - which had been rainy, cold and nasty in Tirana and snowy, cold and nasty 50 metres up the road - suddenly turned summery on Diten e Veres. Close to 70F/20C, trees magically erupting into bud where just days ago hailstones had collected, birds chirping hysterically. Me too. This weekend I’ll try to get some photos of Albania’s budding (no pun intended) entrepreneurs at work.

Winter non-wonderland

I'm back - sorry for the long silence.

Here's all you need to know about winter in Albania: Last Friday I took a plastic container of soup out of the freezer at 7 am before I went to work. I forgot to put it in the office refrigerator so it sat on my desk all day. At lunchtime (1 o'clock) it was still frozen.

And here's all you need to know about Albanian construction: Frequently when I get up in the morning it's colder inside my house than outside (and that's my fancy schmancy indoor-outdoor themometer telling me, not my imagination). Hollow bricks, covered with a skim coat of plaster - that's all there is between me and sub-freezing temperatures. And my apartment was built, for his own family, by the man who was in charge of all construction in Tirana during the communist regime. So it's got to be about as good as construction gets here. Sigh.

As you can tell from the growsing, it's been a long winter. It was an especially cruel one because December was warm. Winter hit with a vengeance in January, and now, just 10 days before spring, it's still very cold. Thick ice in all the puddles walking to work yesterday. Lots of snow still on the mountains outside my bedroom window. It's also been an incredibly stormy winter. Here in Tirana we're growing gills, and they had to make helicopter drops of food, medicine and blankets in the north, as numerous villages were cut off by deep snow for weeks on end.

What made this season especially hard for me was that they dug up my entire street in early January and it's been the Okefenokee swamp ever since. Mud lakes, rock mountains, uncovered manholes, power poles and lines lying on the ground - and no street lights. A real adventure coming home from work in the pitch dark. One night the manager of a nearby cultural centre guided me home by the arm. But today they planted trees all along both sides of the street and I think we're beyond the worst. I've had my oil changed in preparation for my spring and summer travel schedule. The first trip will be into northern Greece for the Easter weekend. I hope to post some photos then.

Interlude in Italy

This weekend three of us took advantage of Euro 100 round-trip fares on a fly-by-night airline to go to Puglia (pronounced POOL-ya), in southern Italy. What a great escape! (Photos are in the Puglia album)

On Friday night we stayed in Bari, a town I’d only been through. Our hotel wasn’t the greatest but at the corner was a classic Italian bar where, within 10 minutes of arrival in the city, Casey and I were downing prosecco, the light bubbly champagne-like drink known well by everyone who visited me in Rome. With our friends Barbara and Roberto we had a nice walk to the ‘centro storico’, the old town, and a great seafood dinner.

On Saturday morning Casey and I returned there for an early morning walk. It’s one of my favorite things to do in Italy, just stroll the streets in the morning while the town is coming to life and people are going about their business in that unself-conscious but theatrical way in which Italians seem to do everything.

Sadly I missed a wonderful photo. The old parts of Italian cities have many four and five storey buildings with no elevators. The old ladies who've lived in them for a thousand years have their neighbours or grandchildren do their food shopping for them since they can't carry things up the stairs. The old ladies lower a basket out a window on a long cord and the groceries get loaded into them. So we happened around a corner just as an old lady had lowered her basket for some cartons of milk and a young boy was excitedly helping load them. But I couldn’t move fast enough to get the shot.

At that point we felt that we’d seen most of Bari’s charms, so we took off north along the Adriatic coast. Barbara and Roberto introduced us to Trani, a town with two excellent features: a working fishing fleet, and native stone of a warm white that had been used to construct everything in town. The whole town gleams. It has a beautiful Romanesque cathedral where a wedding was going on, and when we went in to see the interior after the wedding, the florist gave us orchids from the arrangements he was dismantling.

We went to lunch then, just in front of the harbor, and adjacent to an apartment where someone had hung out their blue socks to dry on a wire attached to the building. A little while later the bride and groom appeared, partaking in a modern Italian tradition: after the wedding the bridal couple and an entourage of photographers and videographers makes a tour of the local scenic spots taking photographs. (After three years in Rome I’m convinced that the photos are the main point of the wedding.) This couple stopped to pose for the ‘wandering down the medieval street’ shot. I don't think they saw the socks while they posed in a practiced way for the cameras, but you can see the result in the Puglia photo album.

Since we’d bagged our Bari hotel after one night, we had nowhere to stay, so after lunch we headed off to sightsee and find rooms. It was a lovely afternoon of wandering through backroads and villages, sometimes in driving rain and sometimes not. After having lived at ground zero of touristic Rome, I really enjoyed visiting towns that don’t have any destination sights (by Italian standards, anyway). In these place the pleasure is just in partaking, or at least observing at close hand, the comfortable pattern of daily life in a country with a rich culture. I hope the photos give a sense of it.

Frescoes and figs

Last weekend I went with some friends to a little village near Elbasan to see the frescoes in a little church. Have a look at the Elbasan photo album (one day I'll figure out how to make a link to it).

Football follow-up

So Albania's joy at winning the football match against Greece was quickly tempered with the news that a 20-year-old Albanian immigrant in Greece had been stabbed to death by a Greek-American while celebrating the victory. I have just never been able to comprehend the emotions attached to sports, but of course, this death wasn't really about sport. It was about the simmering anger between the two countries. I know why the Albanians hate the Greeks - they face a lot of discrimination there. I don't quite know why the Greeks hate the Albanians, beyond the usual reasons natives hate poor immigrants - they blame them for all the country's problems, they accuse them of taking away jobs (which are always jobs the natives refuse to take anyway) etc. More than half of the workers who died building the Olympic venues in Athens were Albanians, but the Greek government won't even acknowledge that.

It was somewhat encouraging to hear that after the murder there was a big anti-xenophobia rally in Athens (although I think the participants were mostly Albanians, not Greeks). The Albanian football team has visited the family of the young man killed, and given them $10,000 - a lot of money in this country, especially in the north where he was from. But it's just so sad and pointless.

One correction: I said the Albanian team's name was Partizani. That is the name of the best team playing in Albania. It turns out the 'national' team that won last Saturday is made up of Albanians who actually play for teams in other countries. This is common apparently. I was told that the international football federation has a whole set of rules that actually require these peripatetic footballers to come home and play for the national team when called.

Go figure. As my father once said during the big American football game on Thanksgiving Day: "Who's winning? Bank of America? Or Merrill Lynch?"

And why have I now written THREE posts about football? Must have too much time on my hands...

WE WON!

No sleep in Tirana tonight - Albania's Partizani beat the European football champions! And not JUST the European champs but the hated Greeks! A really decisive win - Partizani scored in the first two minutes and then again before the 10th minute, and their defense was just awesome.

The sky is completely obscured by the smoke from the fireworks, and the noise outside my apartment is unbelievable. People shouting, horns honking, everyone running around in red shirts waving red flags. What a moment of pride for a country that has had so few!

A third wave of fireworks just started. The fans have completely taken over Rruga (road) Elbasani, the only east-west road in Albania, which is at the end of my street. The television is playing the Albanian goals over and over, and showing Albania's 'Times Square', Skanderbeg Square. It seems as if the entire country is heading there, the square where 13 years ago they tore down the golden statue of the dictator Hoxha, but where you can still see the famous statue of the medieval hero Skanderbeg on his horse. Everyone is filling the square for a night of celebration. What a thrill to be a part of it! (See the 'football' photos in the Tirana and All the Latest Photos albums.)

Albania in the big time

It's a really big day in Albania - tonight the national football (soccer) team, Partizani, plays Greece in the first round of qualifiers for the European cup. Greece came out of nowhere to win another European cup, the UEFA, this summer, so this is definitely prime time. And it's layered over with Albania's real dislike of Greece because of the way Albanian emigrants get treated there.

The prime minister has got together a pot of $500,000 from 'private donors' that he promises to the team if they win tonight. And the team has pledged to turn over half of it for the benefit of children! This is a new mindset in Albania -- thinking of the less fortunate -- and exciting to those of us who watch the country's development.

I live about 100 metres from the stadium and can see half the field from my apartment. From my desk as I write I can hear them testing the sound system over and over -- "nje, dy, tre" -- and playing the national anthem. They've got the field manicured to within an inch of its life. Last night there were freelance fireworks everywhere, and the town is full of speeding, honking cars flying the wonderful Albanian flag -- a red field with a black double-headed eagle. The only problem for me is that my street is now closed to traffic for the rest of the day, and I need to drive to a farewell party tonight for one of the expats. He's cleverly timed the party from 9-11, while the game is on, hoping everybody can get back home before the beginning of the insane post-game traffic and noise extravaganza.

Watch this space for the results!

The beginning of the end

Each weekday morning I get up at 5:30 and go out on the terrace to lift weights, listen to the birds and the BBC, and watch the sun come up. It's usually over 20 degrees at that time (around 70 F I think) - a heavenly start to the day in shorts and a tank top. But on Tuesday morning, for the first time, I had to wear long sleeves, and I decided it was going to be a weird cool day, so I wore a long-sleeve top to work. But no. It got close to 35 (more than 90F) that day and I realized it was the dreaded first hint of the end of summer - hot days and cool nights. Normally I love fall, but in Albania my affection is tempered by the reality that fall is followed by winter, which is horrible here.

People in this part of the world have the 'mediterranean mindset' - the idea that this is a warm region, or at least a temperate one, so who needs insulation, proper heating, etc. Maybe the temperatures don't get that low, but it's damn damp in the winter here, unlike really cold places, and it's hell. I heard about a man who spent 11 years working all over the Mediterranean and then was transferred to Norway in January. His first message out was "Finally - I'm warm in the winter". Because in a truly cold climate they understand about things like double paned windows and insulation and central heating. Here I think central heating means you heat the central room in the house. Or you heat the central part of your body with a hot water bottle. Or something. And the power goes off all the time, so you either need a generator (lucky me) or a gas heater (I won't have them in my house. Everybody gets headaches from the fumes.)

I never complain about the heat, humidity and dust in the summer. Instead I get to complain all winter. You're on notice that it's begun.

More beaches

I got my wifi network set up, so I'm writing this sitting on the terrace watching another beautiful sunset. I feel so lucky to have been posted overseas at this time in technological history. Internet, the online New York Times, email, Amazon.com, wifi, satellite TV - how could I live without them? Just a few years ago my colleagues were totally isolated.

On second thought, there's something to be said for not having to hear about death and destruction in Iraq or listen to Bush's campaign ads.

So last weekend was another beach tour. On Friday my office had a retreat in Lezhe, a town in the north with a relatively undiscovered beach. We had lunch at an incredible oasis (I'll take a photo of it when I go back this weekend) on a lagoon with the freshest fish ever. A colleague had called in the morning to reserve all 4 kilos (about 9 pounds) of fresh eels the proprietor had been able to buy. The thought of eels made me shudder but they tasted fabulous. The beach was also nice, except for the trash, and the water incredibly warm. There are a couple of photos in the Lezhe album.

Then on Saturday morning I went south to Dhermi and Himara with friends. The problem with the roads is getting really serious along the southern coast. The road is terribly rutted, and there are quite a few sections only one car wide. At the same time, the number of cars seems to increase exponentially every day. Albanians have such an allergy to the word cooperation, there's usually a standoff at these one-car-at-a-time sections, with drivers facing one another and honking away, nobody willing to give way. This weekend at one of these points there was a group of three young men who energetically took charge of directing cars - and they did a much better job than any traffic cops I've encountered. When it was my turn at the front of the queue, one of them folded in my side view mirror so it wouldn't hit the cars I was passing and said "Ik, ik, ik!!" A word whose meaning (Go!) I know because every surface in Tirana has been painted with graffiti telling the prime minister to "IK!"

We didn't have reservations, but Fatmira had absolutely promised that she would have accommodation for Natasha and me. It took nerves and determination to get to this very isolated beach - the last three kilometres on a dirt road that forced me to use 4-wheel drive. How could anyone have found it? But when we arrived we found a restaurant where the waiter knew me by name - during the winter he works at the restaurant near my office. We also found a 24-hour disco with a pounding bass, located maybe 30 metres away from our accommodation: a pup tent. The reclining seat in my car was looking awfully good. We prevailed on Fatmira to find us something a little more suited to our princess tendencies. Since she knows everyone in Albania, she soon found us a $50 room in a nearby hotel - pretty pricey for Albania, but I'd have paid more. It even had a swimming pool. (See a photo in the Himara album)

Our main purpose in coming had been to visit the old town of Himara, one of many Greek enclaves in southern Albania. It's mostly ruins, with a few families who live in Greece coming back for a month each summer. The photos tell the story.

I'm listening to Lightnin' Slim, an old blues artist, on my porta-stereo, with harmony provided by the call to prayer at a nearby mosque. Honey, you're not in Kansas anymore!

P.S. Half an hour after I wrote the last sentence, I heard mournful singing and jingling bells on the street. It turned out to be a Roma man driving a one-horse cart full of furniture, and his song sounded intriguingly blues-like. Maybe the lines are blurring between 'Kansas' and Albania.