Respect Thy Elders

Top: The village of Voskopoja (in the valley, towards the left side of the picture). Bottom: one of its many churches.

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?”

At first glance

Two weekends ago, I made my first visit to Berat, a city in south-central Albania. It is an ancient city (founded in 341 B.C. according to one Mr. Wikipedia) that was built in a river valley between two high mountains. Some of its older sections have been beautifully preserved- amazingly well preserved, in fact, by Albanian standards. For a variety of reasons- most of them probably tied directly to Enver Hoxha- very few Albanian cities have a well preserved historical component, despite the impressive age that many can boast.

That was a surprising and slightly disappointing discovery to make when I arrived in the country, but after enough time passed, I learned to set aside my expectations of historical European refinement and accept the slightly haphazard modern development that defines Albania. It isn't uncommon to hear visitors comment on the conditions (one well-traveled visitor remarked that the style of development here reminded him more of countries in Africa than any that he had seen in Europe), but I really hadn't given it much thought for the last few months.

Until I visited Berat. As I walked from the historical section of the city back to the modern side, I couldn't help but wonder how people were able to replace such beautiful places with development that, if not ugly, is simply forgettable. The care that was taken in the construction of older cities is often plainly evident even today- in Berat, it is seen in the careful terracing of the buildings, its lines of uniform windows, the white walls, and the tile roofs. It is a place to live, but it is also a place to love.

The new cities, on the other hand, were seemingly built with no purpose in mind beyond functionality. The components of these areas are no different than the old cities- homes, stores, businesses, restaurants, roads- but the fabric that holds them together is completely different.

This is just the city planner in me talking now, but I am more convinced now than ever that the importance of the design of a city cannot be discounted. A city should not be reduced to its component parts in the way that so many 20th century planners and architects seemed to think. It cannot be explained with tidy tables and numbers, but I believe that we as humans have an innate appreciation of beauty and design and we rob each other of something very important if we make ourselves live our day to day lives in places that give no regard to either.

If you were to visit Albania and never set foot inside a building, you could be excused of thinking that Albanians are a careless and messy group of people. I barely even flinch anymore when I see someone on the sidewalk in front of me throw their finished bag of snacks on the ground- even when a trash can awaits 20 feet down the road. Public structures- trash cans, benches, signs, etc- are often vandalized or outright destroyed. Buildings- which usually have a dirty or unfinished facade in the first place- are usually marked with graffiti. All in all, it doesn't set your expectations regarding what awaits you inside the buildings very high.

That is why it is surprising when you do go inside and find warm and inviting environs. Homes are usually kept spotless and are filled with comfortable furniture and, if they can be afforded, lavish decorations.

It is a very odd and distinct contrast. How can people that give so much value to order and cleanliness in one part of their life give so little regard to it in the other? There are surely many facets to that answer, but I can't help but wonder if people would start caring more about the public space if there was simply more to care about. Little consideration was given to the people that would be living there when they were being built and they, in turn, return little consideration in its care.

Not my picture, sadly. But it is from Pogradec and is a pretty good example of what you can expect to find as you walk through the city itself.

Hmm. Well, that was a much longer tangent than I thought that it was going to be. What I originally meant to say is that Berat was very beautiful and you should visit it if you're ever around these parts. Just make sure you find a trash can when you are finished with your candy wrapper, please.

I Spy

After leading a sedentary lifestyle for several weeks, I am leaving the safe confines of my lakeside city today to venture back out into the wilds of Albania. Most of the legs of my travel on the road during the next week should be too short to warrant stretch breaks, but with my sights set back on the open highway, I give you "I Spy: Pilaf Stops."

I spy a horseshoe, metallic and grey, and colorful flowers in pots made of clay. The skull of a ram and shrubs trimmed just so, eagles and lions that won't run to and fro. The paints, they come in shades of pastels, while the pipes reach far for the rain that just fell. And when your spirit needs protection or fun, there's a full chain of cloves and a dish in the sun.

Mmmm... pilaf. See you next week.

Ne jemi Bishqemi

This past Tuesday was a holiday in Albania. Whereas it seems that we take great care in America to put as many of our holidays as possible on Fridays or Mondays, Albanians aren't afraid to let them fall smack in the middle of the week. While a long weekend has its obvious advantages, sometimes it feels really good to wake up on a Tuesday and say, "You know what I need to do today? Nothing. Nothing at all."

Anyway, Tuesday was Mother Theresa day in Albania. In case this fun fact slipped by you unnoticed, Mother Theresa was an Albanian. She was born next door in Macedonia, but ethnically speaking, her family was Albanian. (Lineages: people take them very seriously over here.) So here's to you Mother Theresa, and your life of service that we could all learn a thing or two from.

Next week, I'm planning to make a short trip back to Bishqem to visit my host family before heading to Elbasan for a Peace Corps conference. Bishqem has made the occasional appearance on this blog, but I've never shared a nice, coherent group of pictures that display the highlights of this little town- my home away from home in Albania. In honor of the upcoming visit, here that is:

Bishqem from the neighboring radio tower:
Once you get away from the main highway, the town quickly turns into an agricultural village that is filled with scenes such as this in the spring:

A group of the older homes in town:

My host family's house. The bottom floor is empty for the time being, but if time and finances allow, they hope to open a store in the space in the future:

The stairs leading up to the second floor of the house. The spring flowers in Albania were beautiful.

Upon entering the house, you find yourself in the living room. While I was occupying the second bedroom, this room also served as my host brothers' bedroom.

The second bedroom and my living quarters during training:

My host brothers- Ramazan (left) and Taulant (right):

Life in Bishqem included lots of time spent walking along the highway:

The Autogrill! Bishqem's one stop shopping spot. The Autogrill offers the Albanian traveler and the residents of Bishqem a car wash, gas station, coffee shop, restaurant, internet cafe, and market (which my host family manages). Many hours of PST were spent at the Autogrill, and yet this is the best picture that I managed to get of it. Nice fountain, though, yeah?

Bishqem's 9-Year School (grades 1-9 all meet in the school in Albania) and the site of our language lessons.

The closet... excuse me... the classroom in the 9-year school that held our language lessons. From left to right: Jeff, myself, Laura, a sweet map of Albania, Oriola (language teacher extraordinaire), and Susan.

And finally, one more group shot. Each of the host families in Bishqem graciously invited the other Peace Corp Bishqemers to dinners at their respective houses in order to meet us and stuff us silly with ridiculous amounts of food. This picture was taken after the dinner at my host family's house. Left to right- me, host mom, Susan, host dad, Jeff, Laura.

And there's that. Good times in that little town...

Illustrated Edition

Peace Corps has taught me many things about life and myself: that family is best kept close, that I'm not that great at learning new languages but it sure is fun to try, that I took easy access to ethnic food for granted for far too long, that Americans use too much water in their coffee, that one stop shopping is overrated, that paved roads and parking lots are not overrated, that figs are a real fruit and don't only exist in newton form, and that there is an art to keeping a good blog.

I'm still figuring that last one out. I ran out of writing steam a few weeks ago and have been avoiding this thing ever since. I think I'm back, but there will probably be a few changes around here. More pictures and fewer words for a start. From there, we'll see where it goes.

The pictures above are from this past weekend. Brad and I made yet another hike to the nearby village of Potkozhan. It was a beautiful fall day and I actually managed to take a few pictures of the town itself. You feel like you step back in time about 100 years when you enter some of these rural villages. Four hours later, though, I was back in Pogradec, sitting in a coffee bar filled with flat screen TVs and using wireless internet to skype with my parents.

One word summary? Albania.

Winter is coming...

Not long ago, I went back and looked at some of the pictures that I and other volunteers had taken during our first weeks in Albania. When we arrived in March (a nearly unbelievable 6 months ago, now), the Albania that was waiting to greet us was just beginning to wake up from its winter slumber. The weather was bright and sunny for our first few weeks, but the trees were still bare and the grass was caught somewhere in the transition from a tired tan to a fresh spring green.

In many ways, it was a stark and drab landscape. I know that I shouldn't find anything odd about such scenes in the early spring, but I was surprised by how great the difference was between the Albania that I saw in those pictures and the Albania that I have since constructed in my mind. A lush spring arrived a few short weeks after we did and the world that I have since known here has been leafy and green. Logic and reason aside, a small part of me had been lulled into thinking that this would never change.

This feeling is especially pronounced for me in Pogradec. Whether I choose to acknowledge it or not, I know that I have seen Elbasan and Bishqem in their winterish garbs. Pogradec, however, is a city that I have only seen wearing its summer's best. Furthermore, this is a city that comes alive in the summer. The beaches around the lake were covered with the best of the balkans-- the tanned, the burned, and the speedo-bound. Restaurants and cafes stayed open late and were almost always full. The xhiro (/ the promenade/the road that everyone takes their evening walks on) was unbelievably crowded for hours every night with strolling families and groups of friends. In the office, my coworkers would randomly disappear for month long vacations. All those things, combined with the occasionally inescapable heat, made the feeling of summer as palpable for me in Pogradec as it ever has been in my life.

In amongst this resortish wonderland, however, there were a few gentle reminders that life wasn't going to continue this way forever. One, for example, hangs behind my desk in the bashkia.

What's that you say, boy? Not a big fan of Raki? HEH. Let's hear you sing that tune in January.

The other came in the form of the long sought after answer to my question, "If all the buildings here are built with cement, cinder block, and rebar, why are are there so few trees to be found?" Answer: firewood, dummy. Before now, the idea of firewood in my mind was synonymous with the cute stacks of logs that you see in front of your local grocery store in November (Impress all your friends with your fashionable outdoor campfire ring!). Not so in Albania. Here, firewood is an industrial scale business. The wood stove remains the most common source of heat for houses in this part of Albania and August, I learned, is the month that most people begin to buy their fuel for the upcoming winter. The soundtrack of summer-- the splash of water, the dance music drifting out of all the cafes, the laughter of kids at the beach-- played a strange duet with the harsh whine of chainsaws, the crack of axes, and the rhythmic stacking of woodpiles.

Mine was obviously the ignorance of a greenhorn. Even as August reached its pushim-y (vacation-y, with equally horrific grammar) climax, I received repeated warnings from everyone that I know in Pogradec that summer was quickly approaching its end. September, they told me, would bring cool weather and the departure of the tourists and the summer residents that filled our happy and lively city.

I wouldn't go so far as to say that I doubted them, but I thought that the transition between the seasons would be more gradual than most people tended to imply. My expectations seemed accurate as August drew to a close. On the final weekend of the month, several other volunteers visited Pogradec and a group of us spent our Saturday morning hiking out to a small church and a series of waterfalls that is located a short distance outside of town. It was a beautiful day, but it was an intensely hot day as well. By the time we reached our destination (via a route that included an unexpected and extensive trailblazing session down a steep, scrub covered mountainside), I felt downright grungy and wanted nothing more than to jump into a giant pool of cool water.

And that basically sums up that hike.

In a great stroke of luck, it just so happens that our town has one of those on hand. When we returned from our expedition, it took every ounce of my self discipline and resolve not to run straight to the lake and jump in-- hiking gear and all. Thankfully, it doesn't take too much time to change into swimsuits and our group quickly reconvened to take two proud paddle boats out onto the high seas of Lake Ohrid. My exit from our boat into the water followed shortly thereafter.

Had I not been so blissfully enraptured by the embrace of the cool, clear water, I might have payed closer attention to the northerly breeze that was beginning to blow across the lake. I also might have noticed that the towels and umbrellas weren't forming their typical continuous carpets and canopies across the beach. Like the doomed protagonist in your favorite after school specials, though, I simply dug my hands deeper into the pockets of my neon-green windbreaker and struck up a happy whistling tune, oblivious of the fact that the street light was out and that a group of mustachioed men in trench coats waited forebodingly on the corner.

Oh, hey there fellas! Lovely-dovely night out, isn't it? You want some change for the bus? Sure thing! Let me check my fanny-pack.

The distant rumble of thunder crescendod into a deafening roar that night when we decided to head out to one of Pogradec's beachfront discos to drink overpriced beers and teach our Albanian friends a thing or two about the fine art of anglo-american club dancing (The grass doesn't cut itself, after all... somebody needs to start the lawnmower). Per usual, we could hear the music pounding out of the club from afar as we made our way down the xhiro. Upon entering, however, it was quite apparent that something had changed. A week or two before, we would have been blazing our second trail of the day, this time through a tight crowd in search of a rare empty table. That night, however, our group of six effectively doubled the population of the room. A few more stragglers would join in later and push the headcount up into the high-thin air of the 20s, but at one o'clock-- just as our dance party was coming into its own-- the lights came up, the music went down, and we were ushered back out onto the street and into the slightly scratchy sweatervest of fall.

It may seem like I'm being overly dramatic, but the change really was that sudden. The next day, the cool northerly breeze turned into a chilly northerly wind and blew the remaining beach-goers right out of town. During my nighttime walks that week, I would find that the warm electric glow of the cafes that had escorted me home all summer had been replaced by closed doors and dark windows.

Fall is a happy time of year and I usually find myself looking forward to its sweatshirts and ciders and the never-ending football on the TV (oh wait). The speed with which it came upon us simply took me off guard this time around. I sometimes feel like I have been living in a completely different town for these last few weeks. While many cities in this country are getting back to full speed with the return of students and families and employees, Pogradec is slowly sweeping the floors and softly chuckling to itself as it remembers some choice scenes from its party the night before. Like all great hosts, it knows that those friends will be back for more someday. Now, however, it just needs to see its way through a quiet afternoon... and a little bit of cold weather that follows close behind.

Even my picture books get wordy

When I began this blog, I had grand plans of making at least one post per week. I did pretty well in the beginning, but I have been slipping lately. I don't think that I'll be able to make a post with any substance in terms of writing until next week, so for now I thought that the least that I could do would be to post a few pictures.

Last week, I took a long weekend and made a whirlwind tour of southern Albania. One of the great advantages of being a peace corp volunteer is that there are other volunteers living in just about every place you could ever want to visit in your country. Traveling is a pleasure when friendly faces (and free spots on a couch) await you at every destination.


The sun sets on Leskovik


Day two took me down one of the windiest and most beautiful roads that I have ever had the pleasure to see. Our bus spent the better part of the morning following a crystal clear river through this stunning valley. The picture doesn't even come close to capturing the scale of the mountains that you see on the other side.

These are some of the ruins of the ancient settlement of Butrint, located just north of the Greek border. Just how old is the site? Caesar made a couple visits, and Homer mentions it in the Aeneid. And to think that I once called my 80 year old rental house "old."

I spent most of the weekend in Ksamil. The town went from a small agricultural village to an up-and-coming tourism destination in the last couple decades. Unfortuantely, most of the developers forgot to get permits for their sites. The government has been gently reminding them of that mistake by knocking down all the non-permitted buildings. Cleaning them up? Not so much. The town is littered with scenes such as this:


So why would anyone ever want to visit it? Well, they also have a bunch of this. Contrast: Albania excels in it.