“Or, should I say, ‘Al – Ba – Ni – A?!’”
Say this word to a good percentage of persons of a certain age (and younger ones, thanks to re-runs), and you may hear these syllables repeated in rising crescendo, roughly to the tune of “The Saints Come Marching In”:
“Al – Ba – Ni –A!” followed by the line, “You border on the A – Dri – A –
tic!”
The clip from an early season of Cheers can be found on YouTube. Coach is helping Sam study. With his characteristic seriousness-cum-goofiness, Coach employs a well-known mnemonic device, creating a song to help Sam remember the facts for his test. The song, however, employs none of the musical techniques that help us retain facts, such as rhythm or rhyme. Which, in addition to some fine acting, is why this bit is so darned funny. See it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxMF9SsaZns.
In fact, Albania does border on the Adriatic; it lies across the sea from the heel of the boot of Italy. This oft-maligned country was Lonely Planet’s 2011 top destination, and I was fortunate enough to visit it in January 2012, invited by my dear friend Sabine. Now, remember Lonely Planet’s primary audience: backpackers, hikers, potential counter-culture types. I highly recommend the country to similar adventurous sorts, but those who prefer a stress-free, luxury vacation may want to wait a few years. “Progress” is coming to Albania, if you want to call it that, and I saw evidence of it everywhere, but the country's former isolationist policies render it new to tourism.
Albania is one of the Balkans, bordered by Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, and Greece. It does not make the U.S. news very often, though it appeared in a recent Family Guy episode--Peter as a U.N. ambassador looks at the man beside him with the plaque reading "Albania" and makes some deprecating remark. I'll have to track it down and post it here. Albania's history is fraught with conflict, and the country has had to fight for recognition among powerful nations--including their popular media, apparently, as these television episodes aptly illustrate.
You may also remember the ethnic cleansing of Albanians in near-by Kosovo during the 1990s, but, I have to admit, I didn't follow the story in depth. Genocide is ugly wherever it occurs, and I have a hard time thinking about it or looking at its images, but I get enough of the story to know the horror that is occurring. According to Encyclopedia Brittanica, By late 1999, … following the mediation of the conflict, many of the [ethnic Albanians] had returned to Kosovo.” Sabine, the friend I was visiting, regularly travels throughout the region which, at least for now, is calm. The Kosovo region was once a part of Albania, so it's another of those land conflicts, like the Middle East, that cause so much human heartache and earthly destruction.
Albania, once known as Illyria, has been vulnerable to attacks from marauders throughout its history. World War I treaties ceded lands on which ethnic Albanians lived to Serbia and Greece. This doesn’t tend to sit well with folks, but Albania has struggled for existence for centuries as empires played with its sovereignty and borders.
Though now “free” under a democratic government, the country still has its share of problems, including some relatively new ones, such as its being trashed, literally, by a people who’d had no paper goods until after the 1990 fall of Communism. Unfortunate trash heaps appear in places that would otherwise be lovely: Rivers, hillsides, and even the beaches were marred by trash. The Communists had strict anti-litter laws, and the new nation obviously had no means for dealing with the influx of formerly forbidden paper goods.
A regular sight was a Roma (“gypsy” to the politically incorrect) person going through these trash heaps, and some begging occurred—most precariously in the middle of the highway leading to the airport, where women with babes in arms stood between lanes of rushing traffic, waiting for the stoplight and an opportunity to beseech the more fortunate for alms.
The country also only had about 600 cars prior to 1990, according to Sabine, and the newly freed populace, not surprisingly, embraced the automobile. For many years, drivers bought cars without the benefit of driver’s education or experience. Current chaotic road conditions are, no doubt, a legacy of that haphazard introduction. Driving in the city is a challenge, as traffic lanes and signals are ignored, pedestrians randomly cross traffic, and the only rule seems to be “He who first juts into the free space owns it.” Yet few accidents occur. Cars bear down on one other and on pedestrians, but drivers ultimately give way before contact. Just before contact. Not quite as bad as the traffic I witnessed in India, but pretty hairy.
Those with delicate sensibilities might have trouble seeing past these and other unfortunate consequences of sudden freedom, which hopefully prove temporary. Yet Albania’s many unpopulated places lie as pristine as in Illyrian times, and it would be a shame to miss out on them by focusing on the country’s growing pains.
Sabine works for the European Commission overseeing projects to help former Communist-bloc countries improve their infrastructure to meet membership standards. She has lived with her ten-year-old daughter in Tirana, Albania’s capital, for the past three years. Before that, she’d spent several years in Skopje, Macedonia, and before that, Vilnius, Lithuania. Our mutual friend John had also come a week before my arrival and would stay a week longer. The three of us met in the 1980’s when we all worked as legal secretaries at a corporate law firm in DC; Sabine, German by birth, worked for a German international attorney and, with her beauty, fashion sense, and grace, blessed us with a larger-than-life presence. Her influence on my life is incalculable. John and I had visited Sabine in Lithuania, too, and he’d been fortunate enough to know her parents from trips to Germany as well.
Sabine has always wanted to live on a rocky coast, close to mountains—she’d considered Oregon for a while when she lived in northern Virginia—and she has found paradise in this place. According to Lonely Planet, “Since backpackers started coming to elusive Albania in the 1990s, tales have been told in ‘keep it to yourself’ whispers of azure beaches, confrontingly good cuisine, heritage sites, nightlife, affordable adventures and the possibility of old-style unplanned journeys complete with open-armed locals for whom travelers are still a novelty. In fact, one of the first things I noticed upon disembarking in Albania was that I saw many apparently happy, smiling people. Must be that Mediterranean climate. Who can be glum when a lemon tree fruits right outside the door?
 |
| Lemon tree in Sabine's courtyard, Tirana January 2012 |
In fact, “Albania is known for its traditions of hospitality, which are based on the kanun, a set of unwritten laws devised in the 15th century by Prince Lekë Dukagjin, an Albanian feudal lord. The kanun governs all social relations, including those involving marriage, death, family, and religion. Some Albanians still follow its customary laws, including the right to avenge a killing; (‘blood feuds’) were known to occur in parts of northern Albania into the 21st century” (Encyclopedia Britannica). This last is one of the hindrances to the nation’s inclusion in the European Union, though it undoubtedly helps the wedding business there thrive.
The wedding business, you ask? One of the first idiosyncrasies I noticed on our drive from the airport after my arrival (other than stands of fabulous dried grasses, with inflorescences intact, that grew some thirty feet high in colonies all over the landscape) was the number of shops with show-windows displaying spectacular wedding dresses. Sabine explained that weddings are a Very Big Deal in Albania. She pointed to a grand hotel on a hill and said it was used only for weddings, affairs that typically last three days, the bride wearing a different dress each day, with entire villages invited. Sabine’s daughter’s nanny—a lovely young Albanian woman just finishing her veterinary degree who is fluent in German and English—confirmed. Those dresses, she told me, were rented at $1,000 a clip. Yes, rented. Though the country is nominally 75 percent Muslim, most Albanians are actually not very religious, and these dresses look like the latest fashions from Paris, with plunging necklines and bare arms and glitter, glitter, glitter. Everyday dress for women, however, is very conservative, and everyone we saw--men, too--was dressed to the nines.
As Coach noted, Albania is indeed mountainous—75 percent of it. While flying from Munich to Tirana, I gazed from my window for many minutes—fifteen? thirty?-- as miles and miles and miles of snow-covered, rugged mountains stretched on and on, the spaces between their spines and vertebrae lit, brilliantly, by the sun. I saw few settlements even in the valleys where frozen rivers lay. And I saw what looked, to my untrained eye, like glaciers.
 |
| Albanian Alps |
As the mountains began to thin, the Adriatic Sea appeared on the horizon, its blue just deeper than that of the sky’s. Its waters cut into the coast along an unsettled border, perhaps diverted into those patterns by subterranean geography no less hilly and craggy than the land reaching down to them.
Albania, which is slightly smaller than Maryland, is peanut-shaped. Tirana, the capital and new home of Sabine and her ten-year-old daughter, lay just to the west of the mountains. In fact, snowy mountains rise some 10,000 feet very close to Tirana. In nearly a straight western line from Tirana, lies Durres, once the capital and a seaside city where Sabine, John, and I would have lunch—seafood salad replete with tasty morsels from the sea, including squid tentacles. I was grateful I’d had these once before at a restaurant in DC, or they might’ve freaked me out a bit, though I'll bet anyone I can slurp down more raw oysters on the half shell than he or she can.
I’d done a little Internet research on Albania in anticipation of the trip, and a little is all one can really do, since information is relatively scant. I’d uploaded two photos I’d found on tourist sites to Facebook, of two places that rivaled any tourist attraction anywhere else on the planet—one, a beach cove bounded by rocks and cliffs where a crescent of sand was met by the turquoise Adriatic, and the other a crumbling structure of antiquity overlooking a valley cut by a river and bordered by deeply ridged, nearly barren mountains.
In fact, Sabine would take me, along with our friend John who joined us from Wisconsin, to both those places: one, an Ottoman ruin above the town of Berat. Actually, it’s not entirely a ruin; a number of families live at the site in homes occupied for centuries. We made the three-hour drive from Tirana in Sabine’s jeep-like vehicle on roads that required video-game steering skills to avoid the potholes and broken pavement, but also on roads that were quite good. The good roads hadn’t been there when Sabine last visited Berat three years ago. We could see new highway, not yet open to traffic, extending beyond the road we were on.
 |
| Tirana Mosque |
We stopped in the town’s historical center for some lunch before driving up to the castle. “Progress” hadn’t yet spoiled this town, except perhaps with the electric speakers broadcasting the muezzin’s call to prayer from his perch in the minaret. I’d prefer to hear the prayers unmediated, but that’s just me being selfish. I’m sure the faithful who live and work beyond earshot appreciate the innovation. I notice now, on a photo I took of a mosque in Tirana that it, too, had loudspeakers, and I remember how pretty and peaceful the prayer’s long, sonorous tones sounded beneath the chaos of the city. My aunt, who lived in Istanbul for twenty-five years, loved to hear the daily prayers. Though she was a devout Christian, she highly respected her Turkish friends' faith and said the prayers kept her mindful of God throughout the day.
By the time Sabine, John, and I found parking in Berat, we were all three starving, so we went into the first place we saw that served food. The little establishment had been prepared for a big party. A long table (or tables), enough to seat about fifteen to a side, had been laid with silverware and glasses and liters of Coke. Into this tableau walks three obvious foreigners, quite unexpected on this Friday in January, but we were promptly served. Sabine’s blond hair must have caught the attention of one man from the sidewalk, who strode in right to our table and stared at Sabine. He was grizzled, somewhat stumped over as if he'd done hard work his whole life. He just sort of half knelt and stared at Sabine as if he'd never seen anything quite like her. He said nothing, then took a seat at the table next to us and before long was joined by a friend. We could see the Evil Eye displayed in the restaurant. This talisman wards off any threats by the blue-eyed devil. I’d learned this from my Aunt Helen, who said all taxis in Turkey display an evil eye hanging from its rear-view mirror. Sabine's blond hair may have attracted the man's attention when he walked in, but when he stared into her aqua/turquoise eyes I wonder what he thought!
As we perused a menu none of us could read—Sabine gave us a few hints, but mostly it was all Albanian to us—the party filed in, men and women dressed in somber tones, glancing at us surreptitiously, as we them. A funeral lunch, was my guess, while Sabine went for town council. The group, all ages except children, remained subdued and barely spoke through the first course, and just began to loosen up when we left. I guess blue-eyed devils tend to kill conversation.
We made a few semi-educated selections from the menu which, however, turned out to be bowls of liquid swimming with gizzards. And brains. Now, I do admire that these parts of an animal sacrificed for food are regularly eaten enthusiastically by these thrifty people, but I haven’t yet developed the taste for anything other than an occasional chicken liver, so I had to pass on these. Perhaps I shouldn't admit that one of the tastiest of the treats the waiter brought out for us was French fries. As if I had to travel to this remote village for fries! These, believe me, were far better than McDonald's. But with bread and cheese and a few other tasty tidbits, I was satisfied. Meanwhile, John dove into the gizzards with gusto and Sabine picked at the platters with me.
 |
| Mmmmmm! Gizzards! |
French fries in Berat.
The two “older” men—or so they seemed, though with John 65, Sabine 62, and me 52, that’s a relative term these days—next to us had ordered similar bowls of giblets, and when we had all finished they attempted a conversation. Actually, I’d been surprised at the high level of English fluency in Tirana. Having visited Sabine when she lived in Lithuania during its bid for EU membership, I’d expected a similar situation here—no English anywhere on my first trip there, though three years later menus and signs had English translations. This little café was more like it. (Though, truly, I’m not a huge fan of the English-ization of the world despite its obvious advantage when I’m traveling.)
We all smiled at one another and finally one of them said, “Anglais?”
I said, “No, US.” I don’t like to use the term “American” since the Americas include more than the U.S., of course. And please don’t say I’m unpatriotic for that; it’s a simple truth. I also probably shook my head back and forth, which in Albania is the sign for "yes," not "no," as it is in the U.S.
They looked at each other in what appeared to be confusion. Then, the fellow, rather astonished, said, “American?”
My assent caused the two of them even further astonishment. In other words, few Americans (of any of the Americas) visit this country. And that is a shame. Those willing to roll with the punches will love it—the scenery is top-notch and, as stated earlier, you won’t find a friendlier host. Despite the mafia that supposedly runs Albania and the blood feuds, Albania is a pretty safe country for tourists. According to Sabine, crimes such as pick-pocketing and stealing are increasing, but they are still relatively rare.
As are teen pregnancies, Sabine told us, because those blood feuds that still occur. Another reason the wedding industry is still flourishing.
We and the two men exchanged a few more words, and then we were off to the castle (locally known as "Kala")—and spent a sunny, warm afternoon exploring the ruins with their intriguing stone passageways, medieval wood doors, and then we even walked past homes still occupied at the base of the castle. We had 360-degree views of hills and valleys and rivers around us, most spectacularly the snow-capped mountains to the east (my guess on direction).
We and the two men exchanged a few more words, and then we were off to the castle (locally known as "Kala")—and spent a sunny, warm afternoon exploring the ruins with their intriguing stone passageways, medieval wood doors, and then we even walked past homes still occupied at the base of the castle. We had 360-degree views of hills and valleys and rivers around us, most spectacularly the snow-capped mountains to the east (my guess on direction).
 |
| Castle above Berat, Albania. If you can make it out, the sign on the wall says "Bar." Gotta love that. |
 |
| Castle above Berat, Abania, with Sabine and John |
 |
| Love all these passageways... |
|
| At the Ottoman Ruins above Berat |
 |
| What's a castle without crenelation? |
On our way back to Tirana, we took a detour to see Sabine's favorite beach. The scene of the second photo I’d posted to Facebook prior to my trip, that crescent-shaped cove on the Adriatic, appeared to my eyes after Sabine’s jeep climbed a long, winding, and well-rutted dirt road up and over the scrub-covered ridge closest to the sea. Just after cresting, we turned a corner to the wide blue expanse of the Adriatic spread below, sparkling in the late-afternoon sun. The sun hung above the horizon with that liquidy orange bigness that tells you it’s not far from setting.
This was the General’s beach. As we’d driven over, we’d seen abandoned military barracks tucked into the hillside. A General stationed there, Sabine told us, had loved that beach. Who wouldn’t? But I’ve also seen other stories on the Web about why it is so named.
A small, well-kept lodge and several tiny cabins overlook the beach, and a café nearby brought us the tiny cups of espresso served as “coffee” in Albania. For better or worse, the stark outline of a pier jutted into the sparkling water, and men clambered over it with hammers and welding tools that rained electricity into the sea. A future restaurant, no doubt. Progress again. I’m sure the General would never have allowed it.
 |
| Sabine and me, General's Beach, Albania January 2012 |
January is Albania’s coldest month, and John’s first few days here had been record cold, but each day the weather had improved and, on this fine, nearly cloudless day, we could walk the shore with light jackets. The sun neared the horizon, its golden reflection stretching toward me across the water, a twinkling vector of light, tracing each one of my steps, keeping me in alignment with the Source until, at last, it dipped below a low-lying cloud and lit the sky orange.
Why had I used up all of my camera’s juice at the castle? And why had I booked only a week’s trip?
Another tourist feature in Albania, one that I did not anticipate actually experiencing after seeing an advertisement for it on the Internet, is a ski lift that takes passengers from launch at nearly sea level just outside Tirana to higher than 5,000 feet at the top of Mount Dajti; When I saw the ad on the Albanian tourism Web site, I shuddered.
But John wanted to go up that thing, and Sabine was game, so I threw trepidation aside and climbed aboard. I was, I’m ashamed to admit, reassured because the ski lift was built by an Austrian country. (I don’t mean to disparage Albanian workmanship, but the vast number of unfinished villas and abandoned buildings across the landscape does give one pause. A still-under-construction office building stands at the town center in Tirana, a long yellow crane reaching to its top floor, perhaps thirty stories. Sabine says the scene has not changed one iota since she arrived in town three years ago--crane and all. Another initial impression as my plane landed was the number of buildings without windows—oh, they had holes for windows but nothing in them, like the hollow eyes of brightly painted skulls. Sabine told me owners do not have to pay taxes on homes that are not finished, and many families simply live on one floor while the other is being "worked on."
The slow ascent of Mount Datji affords a panoramic view of Tirana and the geographic stage it sits on, if one is facing outward or twisting around, as was I, as well as a close-up of the lives of mountaineers that, from my bubble some fifty feet above them, looked charmingly rustic. I’m sure the reality is not quite as charming. The ski lift’s final climb is nearly vertical against the rock face at the top of the climb (though, actually, the elevation goes on beyond the plateau where we disembarked.) A café at this precipice afforded coffee (espresso in teensy cups, as my friend John once again complained), tea, tiramisu, and a view of Tirana’s lights twinkling below. A thriving nightlife also characterizes Tirana, the capital, and other cities—but I think my days of nightclubbing are over, so I can’t personally attest to this. It was easy to imagine from that vantage point a thriving, exciting world capital, one that Tirana is perhaps on its way to becoming.
On the way back down the mountain in our ski lift, amid the laughter of our recollections from previous adventures and some joke-telling, Sabine received the call from her doctor she’d been waiting for, and the news was not good. A tumor that had recently been removed had grown back. The harsh possibility that she might not beat the cancer that had prompted this visit sank coldly into us as we rode in stunned silence down the dark mountain.
No comments:
Post a Comment