Albania
Trip Start
Mar 28, 2008
1
12
17
Trip End
Jun 11, 2008
Gjirokaster,
Gjirokaster,
Albania
Thursday, May 22, 2008
Albania is not quite what I was expecting
"She'll be comin round the mountain..." =)
. I honestly didn't know a lot about the country, and thus didn't really know what to expect. But I assumed that since its not a very prominent country that it must be underdeveloped (when comparing it to the US and the like). It has a lot less development as far as major cities and all that, but otherwise it seemed like a run-down version of Greece. The cities we went to seemed pretty similar and someone outside of both countries probably wouldn't be able to tell the difference between the two countries. The big difference was the university. It was basically a single unmarked building in the middle of the city. When we got there, we knew that we were going to talk to students about Greek and Albanian Relations, but we didn't realize that there would be about 50 of them, and 23 of us. At first we all crammed into this tiny library that had enough chairs for about 1/3 of us, but then they moved us into a larger room so everyone could sit down and we could talk easier. Most of the students were pretty quiet and didn't say much, but there was a group of about 5 students that were the first ones to answer any and all questions we had, and 2 of them actually got into an argument amongst themselves. One girl felt that relations aren't that bad and that she lived in Greece for awhile and never had a problem. The other girl (sitting only 3 seats down from her) felt that relations were bad and that Greeks were racist and discriminatory against Albanians
The city of Gjirokastra
. They started arguing about the history between the two countries and about some things that have happened (arrests, vandalism, killing, etc). Another student that didn't really say much seemed to be frustrated with the fact that we were asking political-type questions and just told us 'forget politics, lets talk about real things--things we care about and things that affect us'. We didn't really know what kind of issues there are that aren't political, so we tried to ask him to start talking about something but what he was really getting at is that he didn't want to answer our questions, he wanted to know how us Americans were going to help them at the university. He actually asked us 'What are you going to do to help us? We need things, we need books. How can you get us money to get what we need?' We explained that that's not why we were there and he didn't really understand so he just stopped talking and responding.
An interesting point in the day for me was when one of the students from UW started making comments against the Albanians and seemingly offending them. I don't like the idea to begin with of us being in countries that we are not used to, and to some extent not very welcome in, and asking politically-charged questions. But then to have one of our students almost attacking these people saying that 'they need to look at their own faults before they place blame on others' or that 'there's obviously something wrong with your country if so many people are leaving
Same city
. Can you blame them? Why would they want to stay?' and this was after we had seen people express deep patriotism for Albania and the people there. I just couldn't believe it and wanted to get as far away from the people in our group as I could. After the university we went to Saranda, which is a city on the beach. We had lunch by the sea and then had about an hour to just wander around. I decided to get some coffee, and a shop-owner gave me a free post card (pretty sure it was like 30 cents) but that was cool. It was really pretty, and we could see the north end of Corfu. There are more people in Albania that speak English, which is kinda nice since we know absolutely no Albanian, and they are more welcoming than people in Greece. The people in Albania actually wanted to talk to us and socialize, as opposed to the people in Ioannina who stare at us and are probably counting the days until we leave.
After that trip, I took a weekend trip to Corfu, which I will write about in another entry. I will try to steal some pictures from other people that took them (my battery was dead). I'm also going to Parga aka heaven this weekend, and I will make sure to take pictures there. Our next field trip is to a monastery and one of the professor's house. If its interesting I will take pictures, if not then our next trip is the one to Athens!! =)
Next Stop: Parga
