Montreux and the music

I wish I had more time for this blog because there are so many things I could write about. For example a weekend trip to the Montreux Jazz Festival.

I went there with the Bensnburner Backing Band who played together with the local band Bleep from the artist collective Loft A46. My job was to film the concert and it was the first time I filmed. Respect to all camera men! Up to 5 hours holding a camera as still as possible without the help of a tripod is a challenge for untrained muscles.

Thanks to the normal traffic jams on Swiss highways we arrived Montreux late. As side effect we hit a thunderstorm short before we arrived at the Lake Geneva. The mountains and the lake were the perfect scenery for the black and deep clouds. What an epic ride through lightnings hitting the ground close beside the car! I drove a quite old car that was slightly overloaded so that the descend to the lake on a the flooded highway released a nice dose of adrenaline.

Many people know Montreux from Deep Purple's song "Smoke on the water" and besides this hit many other famous songs were recorded there. For example Queen owned a recording studio in Montreux. In my opinion the beautiful landscape around Montreux is a main reason that this small town attracted many bands to stay longer than for the festival. I think you will second that:

View from the old town towards the French side of the lake.
 

View along the shore line to river mouth of the Rhône.
But what is this? Let's zoom in...

... it is the Château de Chillon.

The entrance to the Valais.

View from the Freddy Mercury statue.

The town is also quite nice. I like that special Art déco style:

View out of the window of our sleeping place.

The house where we slept.

In the Avenue des Alpes.

My favorite is the house Avenue des Alpes 80:

Doesn't look very special but note the details:

The old town is a bit up the hill:

High above the town are some grand hotels. This is the Palace hotel:

Here is an image of the impressive building.

There are also some nice hiking tracks and canyons around Montreux and two narrow gauge railway lines bringing you up to the mountains.
If you want to go to Montreux don't be shocked of the extreme prices. For example in a normal restaurant a steak (without anything else like potatoes etc.) cost about 42 €!

Back to music. The concert was given in the mentioned Loft A46 and was not part of the official Jazz festival program. As I had to film I only have images from the rehearsal:

The location.

Between the gigs of the two bands the singer-songwriter Mark Kelly played a few songs. I didn't know him before and he impressed my with his voice, with the deep thoughts in his texts but also with his ability to animate the audience. If you need a great voice and/or performer, contact him! Here are some of his songs: It's true, Oh my god and Can't give you more. He performed the latter just with the guitar - goose bump feeling.

Mark Kelly in concert.

The Jazz festival itself takes place in the Montreux Musique & Convention Centre as major venue. Although the prices are incredibly high, most of the concerts are sold out. But there is a stage in a park besides the centre where you have a program for free during the whole day. Along the lake promenade there are dozens of tents with small shops. Therefore it feels disappointingly like you are on an average village summer event.
The Jazz festival manages that their sound recordings became part of the UNESCO's Memory of the World. In their special Jazz festival museum the present somewhat strange things like a special room where you can listen to music from last year's festival recalculated by computers to hear it as if it was played in the old casino that burned down in 1971.
All in all the festival is a great opportunity to see some of the best artists on this planet live but I fear that the rich people who are able to buy a ticket won't dance and party as much as the artists and the music deserves it. (I also fear that I will never have enough money to check if this is true ;-) )

At the promenade.

In the Jazz festival museum.

In the city of bling-bling

The question was where to go from Bajram Curri. There are only one road to the other parts of Albania, a mountain road named SH22. A few days later I met people who drove it with their own car and they said it is an small adventure but the landscape must be amazing so that on didn't want to drive fast. However, Bajram Curri is only a few kilometers from the border to the Kosovo and it was therefore a simple decision to go there. The first bigger town where our Furgon stopped was Gjakova and I stayed there while the Italians went on further to visit other places in the Kosovo.

Yes, this Norwegian HipHop song doesn't fit to the topic. You can nevertheless enjoy it while reading:
Multicyde - The Claptrap

Gjakova has a long and interesting history. Its inner city is beautiful and there are many things to discover. Because of the long period under the influence of the Ottoman culture you find there typical Ottoman houses, mosques and also some Tekke. The most impressive part of the city is the old bazaar which consists of several streets. After its heavy damage during the Kosova war the European Union funded its reconstruction and even rebuilt some parts that were damaged before the war. For example the clock tower was once destroyed in 1912 by the Montenegrins. The rebuilt result is impressive, despite that there are still some parts under construction:

The clock tower

There are a lot of stores with wedding background.

Parts of the main road through the bazaar were still under reconstruction.

Some streets in the bazaar are not yet filled with live because most houses had to be rebuilt from scratch and they try to re-animate the former structure where certain artisans were made and sold in different streets.

One of the "empty streets" All shops are closed and some houses empty..

Inside the bazaar area is the Hadum Mosque:

I liked are the many nice courtyards in the town:

This is the courtyard of the Hani i Haraçisë ("the new inn").
Here you can try out delicious traditional food.

When walking through the streets you will notice that there are many shops selling wedding clothes, hairstylists, agencies specialized in wedding photos and videos, jewelers and shops selling all kind of bling-bling. The reason is that Albanian wedding entourages consists of several hundreds of persons and the largest hall in the Kosovo is in Gjakova in the Pashtriku hotel. I stayed in this hotel (I can recommend it) and they managed to host 3 weddings a day. I could talk a bit with the son of the owner who explained that Kosovars marry mainly in July and August. Of course because there is good weather but also because this is the time where the relatives from abroad are in vacation and can join the wedding. There are for example about 100.000 Kosovars living in Switzerland. (I will come back to the reasons in a separate post about the history of Albania.)
The Kosovars from abroad are special. They of course have much more money than the local people but they think they have to show their prosperity all the time. There are countless big cars with Swiss and German license plates circling around in the city. Some drivers do this in a ridiculous way: tires are burnt, senseless full stops and kickstarts are made etc.. Moreover these persons prefer the bling-bling style: jewelry, pink plastic Kitsch, mobile cases with fake diamonds etc. As most of them speak German I could talk to some of them and it turns out that they are often not confident with their situation. They believe that the local relatives expect that they are rich but they live in small flats at home. Some of the big cars are only rented or they are bought on credit to sell them soon after the trip to the Kosovo. On the other hand the locals don't like that their relatives from abroad show their money at every occasion. Nevertheless many locals depend on their money. The situation is like you own a car but you depend on your brother to give you money for its gasoline.

A typical bling-bling shop.

The problem of specialization on a certain market is that one depends on it. The locals told me that in the non-wedding season the city is kind of dead. The unemployment rate is dramatically high and unemployed people don't have money to buy things. That is why there are also abandoned places like this one:

A former market in the inner city.

A good place to relax is the Çabrat hill. There are some restaurant where you have great views to the city and the surrounding hilly landscape:

View to the old town.

View to the northern, modern part of the city.

View out of the Pashtriku hotel.

The churches of Gjakova were destroyed in the Kosova war but are already rebuilt. This is the catholic cathedral of St.Peter and St.Paul which is a complete new building and which was opened a few weeks after my visit:

The town still hosts an Italian KFOR military station. You also find some monuments concerning the fight of the UÇK and earlier riots, like the protests in 1981. For example this one:

The girl in the image lives in Germany. She therefore spoke  German with his brother which the locals didn't like. The man in the image ranted at her that she should speak her mother language Albanian and that she should be proud of it. She replied in German that only poor people speak Albanian - ouch!

At last some travel tips: Going from Gjakova to Tirana is only possible once a day at 6 AM. The buses start in front of the closed main bus station. In summer it is recommended to reserve a seat because the buses are often full. Going from Gjakova to other cities in the Kosovo like Peć or Prizren is possible several times a day.
If you have your own car or could catch a Furgon, make a stop at the famous Ura e Terzive.

Rising high

We found a large and hotel at the end of the road of the valley. At first I wanted to hike from there over the Valbona Pass to go to Teth. Fulvio wanted to climb a peak and although I was still taking antibiotics and not completely fit I of course used that chance.
In the hotel they only had one! hiking map of the valley which was glued onto a table and which was obviously outdated. But OK, one can take a picture of the map:

House 15 in the map is our hotel and the red triangle number 5 was our goal. One can see that this map is not very helpful but we thought that there is only one path so one cannot loose it. There is indeed only one path but it was sometimes very hard to find it. There are only very few way marks and especially in the upper part the track is not visible. Obviously there are not many hikers.

You might continue while listening to

The Sound Stylistics - Polariser

The sun is rising

The farms in Kukaj

The weather was perfect. The way up is nice since one has always great views and the beginning is not very steep. At 1700 meters altitude is a small mountain farm where we met a hiking group from Germany and Austria. The old lady in the farm served them Turkish coffee and I wanted to refill the water bottles. There is a tarn behind the farm and when I arrived it a viper came out of it. Wow. I was so shocked! I read that the vipers are poisonous but I did not know that they are so big.

The old Germans at the farm

Although it was hot these days there is still some snow

Some of the tourists joined us a few kilometers and then we were alone and the path was invisible. We often just climbed up the hill as we think. Although the images imply that that the surface is very rocky, it is not. There are so many flowers. Even more impressive was the amount of insects and how large they are. So many bumblebees, beetles and the like. While swinging the arm, it was impossible not to hit some insects. They don't bite or sting so you can enjoy this.

Now you can imagine how many blossoms there are.

Some of the flowers

After reaching the saddle (border to Montenegro) of the valley the track becomes very steep. Fortunately this last part has many trail blazings thanks to the Montenegrin alpine clubs. Eventually we made it to the top of the Maja e Rosit. From the top you have great views because this is one of the highest points in the entire Dinaric Alps. I am still a bit proud that I made it up to the top.

This is the saddle to Montenegro

In the steep section below the peak

The beginning of the Valbonë valley.

View into the valley of the Lim and the town
of  Gusinje in Montenegro.

View to the north-west.

The highest peak in the image is also the highest
one in the Dinaric Alps - the Maja Jezercë.

The Valbonë valley once again

While descending I accidentally kicked a larger stone down the hill that almost hit Fulvio - the steep section was not that easy to climb. Further down in the mentioned farm I met the grandchild of the owners who was learning German. I wondered that he told me that German is the first foreign language at his school. Now I know, see the next blog post. His grandmother told us to hurry up before the dawn begins because that is the time when the bears awake. With the last sun rays we reached our hotel - after about 10 hours and 3000 meters of altitude. Respect to Fulvio who made the tour with normal athletic shoes leading to blisters.

Looking back to the peak.