Hotel Europa Vlore

... 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 ...

... impressive but still interesting. It is not of the scale of the castles I had seen in Croatia and Western Europe. We stop for a drink at a restaurant just inside the walls. The owner tries to convince us to have his sample of native dishes. An older German couple is there and says it is outstanding. The girls want to eat. The meal was excellent but he brings us extra dishes and charges us for them. We have to run to get back for ...

... pass the time. We were both in the same hostel as well which was great because it meant I had a drinking buddie.<br> Tirana, or from what I saw of it was an interesting place. The locals were super friendly and enjoyed trying to converse with us, even though they didn&#8217;t speak a word of English. There was a couple of interesting sights such as an old Mosque in the center but the biggest surprise of all was the pumping bar scene . One particular street had heaps of bars, all ...

... were built by the past dictator, Hoxha, who was paranoid of his country being invaded (if you have only one friend in the whole world, what do you expect?). All this bunkers were the country's mainline of defense, and to make sure that they could withstand the full tank assault, he had the designer put into one of them and had the bunker blazed by tanks. The poor guy survived, the dictator was happy, so he had 700,000 of them built all over the country. With only 3.6 ...

... enjoyed the people and the food thoroughly, and even got a little more than a tourist insight through our volunteering. <br><br>Scott is an English ExPat who was looking to open a hostel somewhere that has a lot of tourism potential. He fell in love with sleepy Berat, and bought a world heritage building to convert into a hostel. What he needed from us was some finishing touches. During our ...

... 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.

Back to the coast via Apollonia, "a ruined city from 588 BC, set on rolling hills among olive groves, with views that expand for miles across the plains below" (yes, yes, lovely - read : worth a 20 min lunch stop) through to Vlora, a built up tourist town with a beach (wow : cram 'em in!) and south down the "treacherous road" to some beaches we'd heard were really nice ...

... to keep us entertained - at least for the time when we were actually awake. I so far hadn't noticed any of the things in my (admittedly short) travels around the countryside, but the infamous bunkers left over from the Communist era were literally everywhere. Apparently constructed in haste during one of Enver Hoxha's more paranoid periods, they were meant to repel any potential invading army and were built to withstand tank fire. Allegedly they're nearly ...

... and refortified it. In 1867, Berat became a sanjak in Janina (Yanya) vilayet. During the period of Ottoman rule, Berat fell into severe decline. By the end of the 16th century it had only 710 houses. It began to recover in the 17th century and became a major craft centre specialising in wood carving. During the 19th century, Berat played an important part in the Albanian national revival. It became a major base of support for the League of Prizren, the late 19th ...

... day we'd been to the beach. Vlora is where the Adriatic and Ionic Seas meet, so I'm not sure which one we had a dip in. but, if the government would only take a little time and effort to clean up the beaches of the rubbish dumped on them then they would be fantastic. Environmental pollution doesn't seem to be taken seriously as an issue here, but maybe as a very poor nation they have other things to worry about.