Hotel Mangalemi Berat

Hallo zusammen,<br><br>den heutigen Tag habe ich zu einem Ausflug nach Berat genutzt, UNESCO World Heritage Site. Die Kommunisten haben zwei Staedte, Berat und Girokastrja, zu Museumsstaedten deklariert und diese nicht zerstoert. Beide stellen heute grossartige Ensembles ottomanischer Architektur dar und sind daher beide World Heritage Sites (Girokastrja ist allerdings recht weit im Sueden und daher werde ich die Stadt nicht besuchen). <br ...

... 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 ...

... the beach to Sveti Stefan. The amount of fat Europeans that oil themselves and sit in the 5 euro beach chairs along the 4km stretch was appalling. There was rubbish and cigarette butts everywhere all along the private beaches. In Europe you truly do get nothing for free and I can see why they foam at the mouth when they see a gold old aussie beach.<br> Yesterday I left Budva for Tirana, Albania. This took about 6 hours and three different buses but I met a nice Aussie who ...

... the city was nicknamed "City of Stacking Windows". To walk inside them was quite an experience too; the narrow, steep and winding alleys are cool and dark, and lo and behold I found they still use donkeys to transport heavy stuffs where cars cannot enter. Another thing this city is famous of is its citadel on a low hill top, which, at 2400 years of age, is the oldest inhabited citadel in Europe.<br><br>I spent two days there, stayed in the apt of a PCV (another fringe ...

Berat, Albania, is a small town in the center of the country. Albania is funny because it was shut off from the world for so long during communism, and they are slowly rebuilding themselves and exploring being part of the greater world. This sounds little strange, but it really is like this. A lot of people expressed fear about going to Albania, wondering if it was safe, etc. but we had a great ...

I woke up at around 6:30. I can never sleep these days for that long I dont feel I need that much sleep. I strolled around town taking in some of the sights. There is not that much to do in Tiranna itself really but it is quite a nice little city and its compact which is the main thing and you feel safe all the time. I set off from the backpackers at around 9ish armed with a map of the city and the ...

... there are many problems in Albania with the government and people are not happy here. The power outages are too regular and are getting worse. He said that the government is spending too much money that it doesn't have on power and it will eventually run out, but they don't really have any viable alternatives. His questions to me mostly centered around Brittany Spears - where does she live? Have I seen her house? Do ...

... to the citadel I was really sweating - the climb wasn't so bad, it was just SO hot. Once at the top I was totally blown away. My guide book had really undersold this. It said an inhabited citadel, I didn't know exactly what to expect. Well it's a huge castle with a village of people living inside, another volunteer told me later about 800 people. Inside the castle walls are windy streets, houses, shops and cafes built from the original interior walls plus new ...

... east to Thessaloniki and Byzantium in Thrace. It had its own mint, stamping coins that have been found as far away as the basin of the Danube. The city was for a time included among the dominions of Pyrrhus of Epirus. In 229 BC it came under the control of the Roman Republic, to which it was firmly loyal; it was rewarded in 168 BC with booty seized from Gentius, the defeated king of Illyria. In 148 BC Apollonia ...