Castle Park Berat

... br>Tirana hat leider keinen Busbahnhof , Busse fahren von allen moeglichen Stellen in der Stadt ab. Habe aber den Bus nach Berat erfolgreich gefunden, musste nur 45min auf die Abfahrt warten und die Fahrt dauerte dann 2h. Die Strasse fuehrte zunaechst nach Durres, der Hafenstadt Albaniens, bevor es wieder ins Landesinnere ging. Der Strand sah nicht besonders schoen aus, allerdings habe ich im Moment auch keinen Sonnenschein mehr. Obwohl ...

... get off and walk the rest of the way but need to stop for directions. These private bus areas can be at intersections or in back alleys. They can also change locations and are without street signage (you need to look at a sign in the window). This makes it difficult for tourists to figure out logistics. We end up waiting almost an hour before it takes off. Albania must be the place busses go to die. They are in terrible shape ...

... floating down the canyon. The rapids were quite lame but the views were spectacular and I can&#8217;t imagine a better way to view the national park then by raft with frequent stops to jump in the icy water. After the 18km trip we were given lunch and drove back to Kotor, along the way we took a few photos but I spent most of the way home sleeping.<br> That night I ate pizza for the 4th straight day with the Frenchies and then had an early night in. The next day I bused it to ...

... people, this country must have the highest rate of bunker per capita. Today these almost indestructible things have no military value anymore (did they ever have any?), but the local youths put them into good uses: they are very popular destinations for dating, and the joke is that it gives the term safe sex a totally new meaning. <br><br>As soon as I left Tirana, the weather has changed from sunny and hot to unseasonably wet and cool, which was a great relief for me.

... with Scott, we helped him lay out placement for framed pictures throughout the hostel, paint his common room bar, hang fabric from the ceiling, get a sense of the bus schedule for arrivals, and any other little thing he needed doing. <br><br>This way, we were able to stay in a cool place, work a few hours a day, and get room and board in return. My favorite thing about Berat was how ...

... to be here before the masses come. Anyway back to Berat I stolled up to the old castle on top of the hill quite a trek up but the old ottoman houses within the castle were really nice and good to stroll around the cobbled alleways again not with any tourists around. Tommorrow I am off to the coast before getting the ferry to Corfu. Albania so far is a pretty awesome place and the locals are really freindly.

... outage. Back in the hotel that evening, we gathered blankets from all the different rooms to help deal with the cold. After a bit of Albanian idol (or something very similar to it), with all of the singing in English with thick Albanian accents and all of the commentary in Albanian, I fell asleep. In the morning after visiting the ethnography museum, I took a few pictures around town and then attempted to board a ...

... The only problem was it got dark around 8:30, way before I was done wandering inside. There are no streetlights, a little creepy actually. I made my way down to the town, slipping on the cobble stoned streets in my flip-flops, back to Katie's place. That night we had dinner at Katie's site mate's apartment. His place is absolutely huge, it's rediculous. There were several other PCVs (peace corps volunteers) in town as well. It was fun to compare notes ...

... an Illyrian tribe, who remained closely involved with the settlement for centuries and lived alongside the Greek colonists. The city was said to have originally been named Gylaceia after Glyax, its founder, but the name was later changed to honour the god Apollo. Aristoteles considered Apollonia an important example of an oligarchic system, as the descendants of the Greek colonists controlled the city and ...

... was proclaimed a 'Museum City' by the dictator Enver Hoxha in June 1961. History The town is thought to be one of the oldest in Albania, with a settlement having existed there since at least the 6th century BC, when it was a fortress-settlement of the Greek Dassaretae[1] tribe on the old border between Illyria and Epirus.The founder of the town may have been the Greek King of Macedon, Cassander, who named it after his father Antipater at 314 BC. Known as ...