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.