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.