Gjirokastra, Albania

In Albania, they love Americans. I got off my bus from Greece and immediately realized my map was packed in my suitcase. A young lady stopped me, pointed me to a bank for currency exchange, took me to the right bus, put me on and told the driver where to let me off. That is only the beginning. People paid my bus fares, gave me little 'gifts' when I wanted to pay, and on and on. In one bus situation I realized that I was not just American, I was their American, and they would take care of me, which they did. There is a hand over the heart gesture people do when they find out I'm from the USA, accompanied by a look I cannot begin to describe. So I had to ask why and the answer is too complicated to explain here. I will simply end by saying that never have I entered a friendlier country.

Gjirokastra, like many European cities, began with the castle on the hill. Their castle did not have a village inside its walls but housed an army. The oldest part of the city begins at the castle and works its way down, getting newer with distance. The castle now houses a military weaponry museum, the main hall with big guns pointing their barrels into the hallway, several that came to Albania as part of reparations from World War I. Atop the castle is a collection of cannon barrels and an American plane that landed in Albania with mechanical problems in 1957, I think. The government let the pilot go home but held the plane to show off as a downed 'spy' plane for a period time. As I walked along outside the castle wall admiring the wildflowers and taking photos, a man motioned me to come over to photograph his small herd of goats grazing there. Very cute.

Most of the guns on display are Italian and German

A few old relief panels hiding in a corner of the castle

View from the castle

 Southeast Albania is mountainous and they built their towns on the sides of the hills leaving the wide flat valleys to be cultivated. It is a patchwork of fields, green and beautiful as well as practical. Gjirokastra is built on seven hills, I'm told. The old town twisty-windy, narrow cobbled streets lined and stacked with stone houses that have stone roofing. It is local rock, flat and uneven looking because of its varied form rather than the usual baked tile or tin sheeting. I find them fascinating. Old town's major streets are of stone cut in the shape of bricks. Some of them have some sort of baked finish of color and are laid out in like mosaics in stripes or diamond designs. Houses have the overhanging second stories common to so many medievel villages, stone, white stucco, dark wood supports, each different from the next. I like that. Looking out from them one can see the taller buildings of the newer part of town, pastel in color, beautiful against the mountains and an angry grey sky.

They call this junction 'the Neck' to the old bazaar, now gone. 

The stone-roofed top of an old Turkish bath from the Ottoman era.

Transportation is interesting in Albania and has a reputation as being difficult. I hear it being discussed among the hostel crowd. There are no bus stations. Buses and minibuses park on street corners. The 'station' is where there is more than one bus standing about, yet the locations are actually designated. I would go to one, state the name of my destination and get pointed to another gathering of minibuses or directed to go around a corner. One driver got out of his bus and walked me a couple blocks to put me on a bus. We did not even speak the same language. Such is the goodness in Albania which ranks very high on my list of favorite countries.