A few weeks ago, Albania celebrated a holiday called Bajram- the name (at least in Albania) for the Muslim holiday Eid al-Adha that celebrates Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son Ishmael (effectively the same as the Abraham-Isaac story recounted in the Judeo-Christian tradition, with the sons interchanged). With no work to be done and some lovely weather for company, a group of us made a trip to a village called Voskopoja. Today, Voskopoja is a small and remote village that is located in the mountains above the city of Korce. Several hundred years ago, however, it was a fairly major city and cultural center. One of the first printing presses in Albania (or was it the Balkans? Either way, pretty big deal) was built there. It was also the home to many churches and monestaries. Probably due to the lack of development pressure and its relative isolation in modern days, many of those churches are still standing. We only managed to get inside one of the churches, but were still able to appreciate the others from the outside.
In many ways, an old orthodox church is the architectural antithesis of the modern box-with-a-cross churches that have become so common in America- so much so that it is almost hard to believe that both were built with the same purpose in mind. In general, the Orthodox churches are small, dark, and ornate. They are adorned with intricately carved wooden alters and the walls are covered with paintings (is this where I get to use the word frescos?) of the saints and various scenes from the Bible. They smell of incense and wax and time. Their function seems to be less as a place of assembly than it is a venue for reflection and prayer.
It seems inappropriate to use a church to take shot at Albania, but one of the churches in the village provided a scene that you almost have to share if you want people to understand where this country is today. A beautiful covered walkway had been built along one of the sides of the church, leading from the front gate to the entrance of the sanctuary. The walls along the walkway had been painted with the traditional iconography of the orthodox churches. Being outside, however, they were subject to the elements- both natural and human. This beautiful artwork is probably older than most states that I've lived in, but neither its age or cultural merits prevented it from being brutally defaced- in one case (see below), literally. It's a particularly dramatic example, but the scene encapsulates so many of my thoughts about this country: beautiful, rich in culture, ancient, and occassionally prone to do things that make you stop and say, “Wait. Really?”
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