Hotel Palma 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 ...

The girls, 2 other girls from the hostel and I are off to Berat, a 3 hour bus ride to an Ottoman era town. We are given rough directions on where to catch the furgon to Berat. Juliana, in particular, is trying to save as much as possible. The taxi would be E3 to the bus "area" but she wants to take a local bus there for E.25. Two stops out, our bus back ends a car. Minimal damage but the other driver is making it into a major incident ...

... and 2 other French girls the next morning. It was a lengthy trip but the scenery on the way up was well worth it. It reminded me a little of Canada, with deep aqua blue lakes and huge mountains covered in forest, all be them much drier and significantly hotter. Once we go to the rafting headquarters we were hurried along by the leaders and driven to the top of the river. Like cows we were huddled onto rafts and with 12 We were instructed in Montenegrin and before we knew it we ...

... 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 ...

... been there for a long time on the hills where a river passes through. The backpackers I am staying at is brand new and they are still doing it up. That is one thing about Macedonia and Albania all the backpackers are just starting up in the past year as there has hardly been any backpackers come this way before. In a few years time there will be lots of backpackers coming through this way so it is ...

... icons and other religious paintings. Many of his paintings were originally displayed in churches throughout Berat. They were really beautiful works of art. That evening we walked around town for a bit. We went into the only internet cafe where I discovered that the connection was so slow that I could see my list of messages in gmail but couldn't open any of them. While we were on the internet, there was another ...

... behind the counter dishing up souvlaki. I go inside and her husband? brother? charming prepares my dinner, carrying on a decent conversation in English. He also finds me a seat on the ground floor, which I greatly appreciate. I really hadn't wanted to go upstairs to a room full of men. Sated, I return to the hotel and at 7:30 on the button, the power comes back on, after I fumble around in the dark for five minutes searching for my flashlight, of course.

... 969;), was located on the right bank of the Aous, the ruins of which are situated in the Fier region, near the village of Pojan (Pojani). It was founded in 588 BCE by Greek colonists from Kerkyra (Corfu) and Corinth, and was perhaps the most important of the several classical towns known as Apollonia (&#913;&#960;&#959;&#955;&#955;&#969;&# 957;&#943;&#945;). The site was already used by Corinthian traders and the ...

... giant, called Shpirag over a young woman. They killed each other and the girl drowned in her tears, which then became the Osum river. Mount Shpirag, named after the second giant, is on the left bank of the gorge, above the district of Gorica. Berati is known to Albanians as 'The City of a Thousand Windows' a similar epithet to that sometimes applied to Gjirokastra, The City of Two Thousand Steps, and has a mixture of Orthodox, Muslim, Greeks and Vlach inhabitants ...