Ruins of Butrint

The ancient Roman ruins of Butrint occupy a spit of land a short distance from the beach resort Saranda in southeast Albania. I took a day trip to visit the ruins, now a national park, because I wanted to see the mosaics on the floor of the 6th century Baptisary only to find that they are covered in order to protect them from people and the elements, exposed for viewing for short periods every few years or so. Too bad I missed it.

Butrint's history is interesting enough to make the visit worthwhile. According to classical mythology, the settlement was founded by refugees from Troy. It was named Buthrotum in honor of an ox that was sacrificed and wounded, struggled to the shore and died there, supposedly a good omen. In its early days there was a sanitorium where people came to take cures, sometimes leaving sacrifices or donations, sometimes in coin. Julius Caesar and Augustus founded a Roman colony on the site complete with temples, baths, an amphitheater and bridge that  extended across the channel. Over the centuries Butrint was occupied by Normans, Venetians and Ottomans to name a few. The settlement had its ups and downs and finally, after so many transitions, it became just another Roman ruin being excavated in a land where there are so many. It isn't as grand as those in Rome, Athens, Turkey, in fact it seems rather small but I found  the remains of this little civilization to be interesting and beautiful as well.

I left Gjirokastra on the earliest bus and was lucky enough not to have to deal with the crowds that were milling around the gate as I made my way out of the park. Tour buses, hawkers, beggars had all taken their places. As I waited for the bus back to Sarana, I watched the locals cross the water on a platform large enough for a couple of cars and standing room only as it was pulled across by a winch and cables to the other side. I was tempted to join them but my bus pulled up and I hopped on.

Korce, Albania

It took roughly five hours in a minibus over high mountain passes and lush green valleys to reach Korce, Albania. This is where people live the traditional way. At intersections, people set up stands selling local honey. Along the highway, sheep, goat and cattle herds of varying size hold us up. Old men ride donkeys side saddle to the fields where they work and the donkey grazes. Haying is being done with a long handled scythe, stacked around a pole and topped off with a piece of plastic to keep water from running down the center. Some people have scarecrows, the more unusual being a giant stuffed teddy bear and a hooded black shirt on a crossed pole with a string of garlic around the neck. New housing is being built everywhere, even here, so much construction going on.

A fly-by view from a dirty bus window.

Korce is not really a tourist town. There are a few attractions but no shops selling postcards and magnets. A university gives the town life but Korce has another side, a poor side with rough crumbling neighborhoods. Of course it has its 'old town' area where so many 18th century homes are in terrible disrepair. No fear, gentrification is coming to Korce, slowly but surely, like it or not. There is a new, very modern pedestrian walk beginning at the big cathedral and ending in a traffic circle where I watched traffic wind around three dogs napping in the street, careful not to do harm or disturb their slumber. Amazing!

The Orthodox Resurrection Cathedral is big, shiny as a new penny, the town's showplace. Inside are icons with very different shading to the faces that I took to be part of a looser style of icon painting than that of the 'old school,' which has rigid controls. The ethnological museum has a large collection of them.  I was told that the icons in this cathedral are not frescoed into the walls, but were painted, then glued up. This man spoke in a tone that made it clear he did not approve.

The market is open-air on the edge of the poorer neighborhoods. It has the usual produce, clothing, hardware booths, etc. There are people who set up in the island between the streets bringing whatever they have, usually in small quantities. One man carried a passive young goat by its front feet, approaching people who looked to be in want of such a commodity; another man sat on the walkway with his live chickens tied together by their legs to render them docile. A box of snails sat by itself, oozing over the edges and onto the sidewalk. I did not buy. I found a small saucer I liked and the man gave it as a gift because I am American so I gave him one of my little magnets in return. I tried to buy one orange at a stand but the man would not take money for it. I finally managed to pay for a bag of cherries and settled myself on a bench to draw those neat little three wheeled trucks I am so fascinated by.

The owner of my hotel put me in a minibus to Pogradec and paid the driver extra to take me to the border. It wasn't a long drive and it wasn't so mountainous as before. What caught my eye was the fact that the area is so populated with little concrete mushrooms, bunkers that were part of the defense system devised by Hoxha, who no longer rules Albania. There is a pattern to them, I've heard, that they fan out in some strategic manner. I understand that there were larger ones that were manned full time and many smaller ones that the population was to jump into with their own weapons in case of attack. They are all over Albania, especially close to borders. I was dropped off at the border post and walked through, then down the road a short distance and through the entry post into Macedonia. I should have stayed in Albania longer.

This bunker is in a park in Korce, the only one I got close to.

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.

Meteora, Greece

Beautiful Meteora, it’s got to be the real gem of Greece. Sure, Greece has beautiful beaches, charming old towns and ancient ruins, but nowhere have I seen monasteries perched atop tall rock pinnacles. That's Meteora. The town itself is typically Greek in almost every way but the backdrop is of tall grey, rock formations.

View from the town of Meteora.

The story is that as far back as the eleventh century monks lived in caves in those rocks. There is still evidence of that habitation as some are walled with doorways. In the fourteenth century, the Ottoman Empire began making moves in that direction and the monks sought protection from the invaders. They set about building completely self-contained monasteries atop tall pinnacles, some directly above their caves. All of them are still inhabited as either monastery or convent.

One only has to look to realize what a feat this was because they are steep, high, and virtually inaccessible. Somehow they did it and it was successful because several of them are still there, unsacked and unpillaged. The stone is mostly conglomerate and very stable yet their buildings are a different stone which causes me to wonder how they got it there. I read that in the beginning they used rope ladders to get up and down. Then there were windlasses and rope to haul up even monks in nets. In the 1920s stairs were cut, steep and winding. Now some of the buildings are accessed by roads as well as cable cars. A few of them allow access to tourists and a bus runs from the village.

A windlass and net.

I decided to hike between them with a woman from Australia. The trip was close to seven miles mostly along blacktop roads. Along that roadway we found flowers and trees, many of them new to me. After visiting two of the monasteries, we decided to take the rocky trail into town which was steep, steep, and very green as though we'd just dropped into a rain forest. Lots of moss, lots of ferns...lots and lots of toilet paper were all along the trail as if people couldn't wait long enough to slip into the woods for privacy. Despite this rather disgusting ending, Meteora is thus far the highlight of my journey.

Thessaloniki, Greece

Going by first impressions, it is difficult to believe that Thessaloniki, Greece was once a grand and important city. During the Roman Empire one Caesar chose it as a military base. It was part of the Byzantine Empire, capitol of Macedonia, an important sea port with all the classes and all the amenities. It was conquered and occupied over and over. Its traditional churches went from cathedral to mosque, then back to cathedral.

Close-up of the fancy brickwork of traditional Greek church

Then the fire, in 1917, destroyed a third of the city leaving almost half the population homeless. What rose from the ashes was flat, plain architecture with balcony after balcony after balcony. In my opinion, the fact that they were built with complete disregard to the floors of the building next door saves it from being too regimented for words.

Then there is the old town with its steep, twisted, narrow, cobblestone streets, with houses having medieval overhanging balconies and second stories. Old town is being gentrified at a rapid pace which saves the crumbling structures but takes the 'old' out of them. This is dubious improvement as far as I'm concerned but I have a taste for old, funky and unusual.

Old town gentrified

An abandoned building in old town

Thessalonica's castle

I don't think one can put a shovel in the ground without unearthing some remnant of Roman civilization. Ruins are everywhere and excavation is going on around every other turn, it seems. I asked the fellow from the hostel how one separated the Roman and Greek Empires and he said something along the lines on, 'You tourists, always asking.' with a distinct tone of exasperation before he went on to say, We Greeks don't care. It is just here.' Talk about putting me in my place!

People are not outgoing with strangers there. Often a morning hello got me a dark look in return. Yet, several times I asked direction or spoke to someone who would gleefully adopt me, bless me and reward me with big smiles.

I close with a few random shots from Thessaliniki.

Painting icons is an honorable occupation in Thessaloniki.