Berat - along the Osum

The direct way from the Berat castle to the Gorica neighborhood was full of adrenaline, thanks to crazy dogs. (I already learned in other parts of the world that throwing stones to dogs is sometimes the only solution but I still have scruple to do so.)

However, back at the Osum one can cross the bridge Ura e Goricës to enter Gorica. This neighborhood has a lot of small and steep alleys and while exploring them I found the church Kisha e Shën Spiridhonit në Lagjen with a nice garden at the entrance. At the door sat an old man who was overwhelmingly happy. I could not understand him but was very impressed. His eyes were like lights when he spoke and he gestured inside the church as if he had built everything by his own. What a situation: You enter a place you found by chance and somebody you have never seen before is so happy to see you as if you are his son who returns after he has been away for many years. He looked into my face smiling with tears in his eyes and finally I had tears too and I cannot explain why and what happened. Eventually I felt so thankful and was happy without a special reason. I wished that I could have understood at least a sentence. While writing these sentences tears come again into my eyes and I have to smile - thank you!

The Ura e Goricës.

View from the bridge at Gorica and its church.

The Kisha e Shën Spiridhonit në Lagjen.

The entrance.

The interior.

I was surprised to see so many churches because I thought that Albania is an Islamic country. But as I wrote in my last blog post the Ottomans respected other religions. When Albania was founded in 1912 the majority of the south Albanians were Christians while the majority in north Albania were Muslims. In the communist era all religious activities were forbidden, priests and imams were sent to prison and in 1967 Albania was declared to be an atheistic country. Since 1991 religions are again allowed and for example the Orthodox Autocephalous Church of Albania was restored. Nowadays about 40% of the Albanians are Muslims, and about 35 % are Orthodox or Catholic. Depending where you search these percentages will differ because after 40 years without religion most Albanians are atheists despite that they are in member lists of a religious community.

Back to sightseeing. The most famous site of Berat is the Mangalem neighborhood - the so-called city of thousand windows. It consists of even more steep alleys than in Gorica and exploring them makes fun. You will find tiny bars where local people are drinking but also large and quite expensive restaurants for tourists covering several floors of a house. You will also find improvised stores where people sell things like honey and other local goods.

View from Gorica at the Mangalem neighborhood.

The same during the dusk.

It was a beautiful night and this old slushy song came into my mind:
Toploader - Dancing in the Moonlight
 
The dusk in summer is in general spectacular in Albania as I already wrote. Within a few minutes almost everybody goes out on the streets. Suddenly there are carousels and music is turned on. Take as example a walk at the Bulevardi Republika:

The dusk begins and the street gets crowded.

About 5 minutes later.

About 10 minutes later.

The street party lasted until half past nine or ten and it stopped as quick as it begun.

I assume you are curious about the large building in my overview images of Berat. This Capitol-like building is the Universiteti i Beratit. The building was open but only a single security men was inside and he couldn't speak English. People in the city told me that it is a private university with very high fees. Meanwhile it seems that something happened: The website is dead for months and googling around also gives no information. So either it is closed or it is now a branch of another Albanian university.

The west side of the building

The entrance hall.

The east side

Impressive, but there is no other building or a campus.

Berat - quiero más!

I guess you want to see more of Berat. Therefore this song fits well and gives us the power to move one in the heat: Skalariak - Queremos mas

The Berat castle is very old. It was before 200 BC and then used by the Romans, the Byzantines, Greeks, and Albanians until Berat became eventually part of the Ottoman empire. The idea of having nation states is relatively new and the vast majorities of the states before 1800 consisted of different communities with different languages and religions. One of the keys for the success of the three big empires, Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman, was to respect these differences and to leave their inhabitants major parts of their sovereignty. This is the reason why Berat still has a Christian community and why one can find very old churches inside the castle.

View into the castle area from a wall tower at the entrance.

One of the many large insects there enjoys the sun.

The Holy Trinity church from the 14th century
in the western part of the castle.

The St. Mary of Blachernae church from the 13th century.

The area of the castle contains a small city of its own with lots of small house and alleys. To get water for the inhabitants a large cistern was built. It is a hall built inside the rocky soil of the castle. Only its roof is visible but one can look inside the get an impression of its size:

The roof of the cistern with its entrance.

Inside the cistern. Looking at the dead body
you can imagine the horrible smell.

A building vis-à-vis to the cistern.

The main outer wall of the castle is conserved as well as most parts of its Chemin de ronde. Walking it along you will find many nice views to admire the gentle landscape. The only drawback was the waste. While the city parts along the Osum river are clean the alleys of the castle were full of waste. It seemed that the waste collection was stopped - not a good advertisement for a world heritage site.

View at the Mount Tomorr.

View at the Osum river.

The Gorica neighborhood.

The eastern part of Gorica.

The center of Berat. In the center of the image you see the complex
of the teqe-mosque-caravanserai I wrote about in my last blog post.

Berat - hot in here

Berat is in my opinion the most beautiful small towns I have been. The houses are original ones from the Ottomans' times but one can also find small churches and houses from the Greek times (before the Ottomans). It was also surprising to see the different religions of Albania side by side peacefully.

To start the exploration one can simply walk through the lower part of the town along the osum river. There you find the Lead mosque as well as the new built Orthodox church, lots of Ottoman houses and a caravanserai with the Halveti Teqe. That Teqe is an original Cemevi from the 18th century with a beautiful wooden ceiling:

The Halveti Teqe.

Inside the teqe.

The wooden ceiling.

Another part of the caravanserai is the King Mosque:

The King Mosque.

Inside the mosque.

Inside the mosque.

Closer look at the ceiling.

Another wooden ceiling in the mosque.

The caravanserai is an exciting place but there is nobody who can explain you anything. When Berat became a UNESCO world heritage they installed a voice system that you can rent headphones with information of all interesting places of the town. As normal, bit by bit the headphones got broken but there is no funding and no will to repair them.

Another attraction of Berat is its castle. I really like heat and even 40°C is OK as long the air is dry. But that day there was 43°C with a high humidity and without clouds spending shadow. The ascent to the castle is not very steep nor very long but I felt that it took ages and I was totally tired after reaching the castle. Listening to
Ian Pooley - 900 Degrees
will push you up the hill as well. At the road towards the castle there is the impressive building of the Bank of Albania and the ethnographic museum.

The building of the bank of Albania.

Road towards the castle. OK, it is steeper than I remembered.

The museum was closed for an unknown reason but the security men of the museum was bored and happy to see somebody. I couldn't understand him and he invited me to the closed museum to get some shadow and water. Perfect! Well, it turned out that he expected some money but that was worth it.

Building of the ethnographic museum.

Being illegal - inside the museum.

View from the museum at the road to the castle.

Further ascending - view down to the city.

The entrance of the castle.

No Pain - No train

After again some time I'll continue to report the Balkan journey.
The last stop was in Tirana. As I wrote it is a nice town with friendly people and getting information is an adventure that I liked to continue. Where to go from Tirana? No plan, so let's go to the railway station and have a look. Me was told that there is a breathtaking railway line from  Elbasan to the Lake Ohrid. Surprisingly there was no single person and to timetable in the station but 2 open trains; one with the destination sign Elbasan. While looking around baffled a railway worker appeared routing me rudely from the station. It turned out that the line to the Lake Ohrid was closed just a few weeks ago and that the were thinking of to close even the track from Tirana. And indeed a month later the Tirana railway station was closed and demolished. (The plan is to rebuild it outside of the city center together with a central bus station and a new tram.)

The Tirana main station. The rolling stock is original "Made in GDR" and the coaches were once built in my birth town.

Too bad because the Albanians said that the trains were extremely slow but that made them perfect to discover the eastern mountain area of the country.

OK then let's got to a UNESCO world heritage site. I decided in favor of Berat. As I learned how to get information it was this time easy to find a bus to Berat: Drinking some beers with the guy at the hotel reception. Some of his friends came over we talked about almost everything (politics, economy culture...) and they began to phone friends to find out how to go to Berat without success. In the end we stopped a taxi on the street whose driver called a colleague who knew a city bus driver whose bus line stops at a place where Furgons start towards Berat. So I was picked up 5:30 in the morning (sic!) by this Taxi driving to the city bus station whose driver told me where to leave the bus and how to get to the next one that is going to the starting point of the Furgons. And indeed I made it up just in time to the Furgon starting at 6:30 after an interesting "city tour" through industrial areas.

Let's now watch some of the craziest dance moves on a bus: A. R. Rahman - Urvashi Urvashi

Getting up that early is usually not my style so that I slept the whole time in the Furgon awaking directly in Berat - being flashed by the landscape and the architecture:

View from the hotel to the Lead Mosque and the New Orthodox Cathedral in Berat.

Krieg um die Wahrheit

Meine Browser-Startseite war seit Jahren spiegel.de. Seit einigen Monaten fällt mir auf, dass die Berichterstattung immer unobjektiver wird. Der Höhepunkt war für mich dann diese aufgeregte Meldung, dass russische Kriegsschiffe durch den Ärmelkanal fahren. Darin wird auch erklärt, was internationale Gewässer sind und dass das alles normal ist. OK, aber wozu dann überhaupt so ein Artikel ganz oben auf der Hauptseite? Ich habe das Gefühl, dass nicht nur der Spiegel Angst schüren will. Es ist fast schon unheimlich, dass viele großen deutschen Medien fast identisch schreiben. Zum Beispiel der Kriegsschiffe muss man nur mal Google bemühen. Was ist daran objektive Berichterstattung? Wenn deutsche Kriegsschiffe durch den Suezkanal fahren, berichtet doch auch keiner darüber. Mittlerweile wird sogar jeder Abschuss von Übungsraketen berichtet, aber nur von russischen. Was ist mit chinesischen, oder japanischen Raketen und warum sollte mich als Leser das interessieren?

Sogar unsere, eigentlich unabhängigen, öffentlich-rechtlichen Medien nicht mehr objektiv. Die Meldung, dass Putin angeblich allein auf dem G20 Gipfel saß, ging ja bereits durch die Medien. Selbst schweizer Medien, die sonst immer neutral sind, berichten voreingenommen. Im Zug von der Arbeit liegen immer ein paar der schweizer Pendlerzeitungen herum und in einer las ich etwas von einem russischen Separatisten, der die Opfer des Flugzeugabsturzes verhöhnt. Dazu wurde ein Bild abgebildet, das aus einem Video stammt. Das Video zeigt aber genau das Gegenteil.

Eine gute Kabarettnummer zu diesem Thema liefert mal wieder Die Anstalt. Als ebenfalls Die Anstalt im April anprangerte, dass führende deutsche Journalisten nicht unabhängig sind und sogar für den Bundespräsidenten an Strategie-Reden mitschreiben um diese Reden dann in Artikeln zu loben, war ich skeptisch. Aber nachdem sie daraufhin verklagt wurden und Die Anstalt bzw. das ZDF gewonnen hat, scheint doch etwas dran zu sein.

Es geht mir nicht darum zu werten, ob Russlands Aktionen oder die von irgend einem anderen Land oder einer Organisation gut oder schlecht sind. Ich erwarte von unabhängigen Medien einfach eine unabhängige, also objektive Berichterstattung, die auf möglichst gut recherchierten Fakten beruht. Natürlich sind Redakteure auch nur Menschen und haben eine Meinung. Diese in Kommentaren kund zu tun ist auch vollkommen in Ordnung, aber es sollten alle Meinungen und deren Begründungen zu Wort kommen.

Meine neue Startseite ist seit gestern Telepolis. Dort gibt es Neuigkeiten zu allen erdenklichen Themen (nicht nur zu Politik), Hintergrundberichte und verschiedene Kommentare mit verschiedenen Meinungen.

Um mich jetzt wieder zu entspannen, höre ich jetzt den Song Cruisin' vom Künstlerkollektiv mit dem treffenden Namen "Künstler Kollektiv".

Die Anstalt über Flüchtlinge

Da kommt man geschafft von der Arbeit und will sich einfach etwas berieseln lassen. Warum nicht mal etwas Kabarett? Also macht man das Abendbrot und im PC läuft Die Anstalt. Die erste Viertelstunde plätschert nett vor sich in und dann bleibt einem der Bissen im Munde stecken. UNBEDINGT anschauen und zwar bis ganz zu Ende!:

Die Anstalt vom 18. 11. 2014

Wahnsinn - der ganze Ablauf der Sendung und die Spitzen, die das Lachen gefrieren lässt. Die Szene mit dem Mann über Bord ist schon hart und das Gespräch mit dem DDR-Grenzer grandios entlarvend. Göttlich heftig ist auch die Gerichtsverhandlung, die darin gipfelt, dass Flüchtlinge zu Wort kommen. Ich hatte Tränen in den Augen.

Wann beschäftigt man sich schon mit dem Thema Flüchtlinge? Wenn mal wieder ein paar hundert Menschen tot aus dem Mittelmeer gefischt werden sind alle kurz betroffen, aber nach ein paar Tagen hat man es vergessen. Es ist schon verrückt was wir mit Kriegsflüchtlingen machen. Es ist ist klar, dass das Verständnis für Wirtschaftsflüchtlinge in der Bevölkerung nicht groß ist und das gilt für alle Länder, in denen ich bisher war. Es geht auch nicht um Wirtschaftsflüchtlinge, sondern darum, dass Leute, die um ihr Leben fürchten müssen, eine Chance haben muss, temporär aufgenommen zu werden. In Bosnien habe ich viele Leute getroffen, die während des Bürgerkrieges von Deutschland aufgenommen wurden und einige davon auch eine Ausbildung erhielten. Deren Dankbarkeit hat mich beeindruckt. Fast alle waren sentimental, denn sie nicht jeder wollte unbedingt wieder zurück aber alle waren der Meinung, dass man sein Land selber aufbauen muss.

Ja das Thema ist schwierig, aber Leute ertrinken zu lassen ist keine Lösung! Ob es einem gefällt oder nicht, man wird Leute nicht daran hindern können, auf der Suche nach einem besseren Leben nach Europa zu kommen. Man kann und muss nicht jeden aufnehmen aber man kann ihnen auch nicht beim Sterben zuschauen. Ich denke es ist in Ordnung, wenn man Wirtschaftsflüchtlinge wieder zurückschickt. Gerade die gut Ausgebildeten unter ihnen fehlen im eigenen Land und so ändert sich kaum etwas vor Ort. Es muss aber das Ziel sein, dass es in möglichst jedem Ort der Welt lebenswert ist und das geht nicht wenn z.B. Ärzte und Ingenieure auswandern.

Edit:
Da ich für diesen Eintrag arg kritisiert wurde, sage ich es nochmal ganz klar:
Es muss zwischen Wirtschaftsflüchtlingen und Flüchtlingen unterscheiden werden, die in ihrer Heimat mit dem Tod bedroht werden. Damit klar wird, wie Deutschland derzeit mit Flüchtlingen aus Syrien umgeht, sei auf dieses Video ab Minute 45 verwiesen: "Die bürgerkriegsähnlichen Zustände in Syrien sind bedauerlich. Sie können aber keine besondere Härte begründen."

Freiheit ist alles

In den Ohren vieler Deutscher hat unser Bundespräsident den Begriff Freiheit zu oft gebraucht, aber er hat Recht. Freiheit ist extrem wichtig und wir sind uns oft nicht bewusst welches Privileg wir haben, diese zu besitzen.
Diesbezüglich werde ich eine Begebenheit aus meinen wenigen DDR-Jahren nie vergessen. Wir hatten einen Mitschüler mit schwierigem Elternhaus. (Ich habe im Sport einmal Striemen bei ihm gesehen und er hat mir erzählt, dass sein Vater ihn manchmal mit dem Gürtel schlägt.) Im Unterricht war er ein klassischer Hampelmann, der sich von den Lehrern immer weniger sagen ließ. Im Werkunterricht hat er dann unseren Lehrer von hinten getreten. Der Lehrer hat ihm dafür reflexartig so eine gescheuert, dass er gegen eine Wand geflogen ist. Ich mochte ihn nicht und nach dieser Aktion war ich froh, dass er nicht mehr in unserer Klasse war, und habe mich auch nicht gefragt wo er stattdessen war. Wir waren 9 Jahre alt und es waren noch einige Monate bis zur Wende. Und nach dieser war er wieder an der Schule - als Zombie! Er war so unglaublich eingeschüchtert und still. Er wollte auch mit keinem reden über seine letzten Monate reden. Mir sagte er nur, dass er zur Strafe für sein damaliges Verhalten in einem Heim für "Schwererziehbare" (was für ein bescheuerter Begriff!) war und dass es da schlimm war. Ich konnte nicht begreifen, wie jemand in ein paar Monaten so anders werden konnte.

Ein paar Jahre später bin ich durch Zufall in Torgau auf den ehemaligen  geschlossenen Jugendwerkhof gestoßen. Er war damals noch nicht zugänglich, aber ich habe daraufhin im Internet recherchiert und es hat mich sehr betroffen gemacht, was man mit Kindern gemacht hat, die meist nur ein kompliziertes Elternhaus hatten. Als hätten sie es nicht schon schwer genug, hat man sie gebrochen, teilweise für ihr ganzes Leben.

Der ehemalige geschlossene Jugendwerkhof; heute Gedenkstätte. (Bild von der Wikipedia)

Aus Anlass des Jahrestags des Mauerfalls gibt es eine kurze Dokumentation zu den Jugendwerkhöfen, aber auch "normalen" DDR-Kinderheimen mit ihren Strafsystemen:

Trauma Umerziehung: Heimkinder in der DDR

Hier noch zwei Links zum Thema:

• Geschichte der Gedenkstätte GJWH Torgau
• Webseite von Ehemaligen mit Listen von Heimen und Videos

Tja was passt dazu schon für Musik? Eigentlich nur etwas Verstörendes:
Aphex Twin - Ventolin

Ansonsten ist Torgau ein schöne Stadt, die auf jeden Fall einen Besuch lohnt. Und diejenigen, die sich nicht vorstellen können, dass oder warum die DDR ein Unrechtsstaat war, der sollte so mutig sein, außer dem Schloss Hartenfels auch die Gedenkstätte des Jugendwerkhofs zu besuchen.

Around the Blloku - Tirana

This post continues the blog posts about the 2013 Balkan journey.
From Gjakova in the Kosovo I went to Albania's capital Tirana by bus. The bus ended at the huge Skanderbeg square in the center of the city directly in front of the tourist information office - on a Saturday. Fortunately the office had tourist-friendly opening times ;-):

Walking around the Skanderbeg square is a pleasure because you find a good mixture of architecture and culture. Tirana is a very young city. Before it became Albania's capital in 1920 it was a small town and only a few houses, like parts the former castle, survived Tirana's growth. Albania became independent in 1912 and therefore everything that makes a city a capital had to be built at once. Therefore you find around the Skanderbeg place buildings for ministries, mosques, churches etc.:

The Et'hem Bey Mosque in front of the town hall.
The tower at the left side is the clock tower.

View into the mosque. Note that you see paintings of houses - which is an exception for mosques.

The Skanderbeg monument in front of the mosque

The very good National Historical Museum

The brand new Resurrection of Christ Orthodox Cathedral

The TID tower still under construction (after 6 years)

The neighborhood at the south-west of the Skanderbeg square was in the times of the dictator Enver Hoxha a closed suburb for Albania's leaders and their families. It is called Blloku and is now the party location for Tirana's youth with lots of bars, discos and restaurants.
This the call for dance music:
Fuse ODG - Antenna (so funny when he controls her "remote").

Along the Dëshmorët e Kombit boulevard at the south of the Skanderbeg square you find many interesting government buildings built in different periods; for example the Presidential Palace. At the end of the boulevard is the campus of the University of Tirana (has more than 100.000 students):

The impressive main building of the university.

The rectorate building of the university

The ministry of finance.

At the south-east of the Skanderbeg square you find the Murat Toptani street which is a nice boulevard. Along the boulevard is the national art gallery, the castle a huge and beautiful garden restaurant, the building of the National Assembly and the the Ura e Tabakëve.

In my opinion Tirana is a nice city with many places to discover and super friendly inhabitants. Even the new-built outskirts look OK and clean. The only drawback is its "chaos" in terms of information and transport. For example Tirana has a large network of bus lines but nobody, not even the bus or taxi drivers know it. There is no network map and no timetables and often also no numbers of the lines at the bus stops. But as I wrote in my first post about Albania the key is communication. For example Tirana is surrounded by high mountains and there is a cable car to the Mount Dajt. But how to get there? Well I drunk a beer with some locals and they called a taxi driver who called a bus driver who explained how to get there by bus. The bus is very cheap while the taxi is not but the taxi driver abstained to make money to drive me there. That is what I really liked. In many tourist places people try to get your money but not in Albania where tourism plays almost no role. OK, this is the reason for funny things like the new bicycle renting system: There are several places where you can rent a bike but the bikes are all locked and the persons to unlock them don't work on weekends. I never saw anybody renting the bikes also not during the week but I admit that the bikes give the city a modern touch ;-)

One of the bike rental stations.

Typical urban housing close to the center of Tirana

The Lanë river in the inner city.

The cable car to the Mount Dajt is so expensive that most of the Tiranians cannot use it (nevertheless cheap for Western-Europe tourists). The ride up the mountain lasts some minutes and the views are magnificent. The area at the top consists of a restaurant and an astonishingly cheap and modern hotel. Some hiking routes start there too but the real top of the mountain is unfortunately a closed military zone.

The mount Dajt.

The new outskirts if Tirana at the bottom station of the cable car

View at misty Tirana. The lake at the left is one
of the two artificial lakes with large parks around them

At the top of the Dajt.

I repeat myself but Tirana is really worth a trip for a long weekend. The nightlife is good and the museums are the best ones I have been on the Balkan. The surrounding is beautiful and the city still has an adventurous touch while it is super safe. I never felt so safe in such a big city - no matter where and when.