Website with good photos

- I find the idea of national identity strange cos each country is really lots of different countries inside. Like Paros Islanders is quite different from Peloponese mountain villagers, but sometimes when you cross a border you enter a totally different world. Crossing Into Albania was like this ... It pisses on Greece for a travel experience and makes me think .."I have been wasting my time being in Greece when right next door is a much more interesting country which half the price"

. - www.gjirokastra.org
- www.archaeology.org/online/features/gjirokastra/

- http://wikitravel.org/en/Gjirokast%C3%ABr good summary
- ancient-theatre-of-hadrianopolis map
- united-albania.com/gjirokastra-what-to-visit.html
- good resource

- Gjirokastra is a world class place to visit .. A stunning location and hiking to local villages and ruins outside. I planned 2 days of tourism, before getting down to work. It became 3 days because of a concert.

- 5 Peace Corps volunteers helping in tourism development and health
- square glasses Chris - helps the local house restoration fund - by designing lithographic postcards which local tourist shops sell.
- Chimi - owns the fast food place in the line of shops opposite the trraffic circle .. Next to internet café - lived in England speaks great English
Jon - owns pizza and 100 lek sandwich shop on the main tourist street in old town just before the mosque - lived in Ireland speaks great English
- Mosque guys - the imam at his mates run an internet café opposite the Mosque in old town very friendly
- Kristaq Rebi (civil engineer) in Saraqiniste and Gjirokastra (Pallati NN2) Tel : 06 9227 5492 Il parle francais
- In Lazarat - Mir who speaks good English and Zenel Beasja who also lived in England ... his family are building a new shop next to the furgons Tel : 06 9246 2317, 06 7259 5032

- Walked around old town it's straight up a steep road 15 minutes but the a bus goes around via the highway. At the tourist office I met Alan a Peace Corps volunteer who I'd emailed thro CS so he gave me loads of info...

- Walked further up to castle ...it's got a pedestrian tunnel going right under - Castle is pretty good .. Sturdy, but main thing is the views and the old stone and stone roofed houses cascading below.

- came down and walked upto a typical old house called Zecate ..it was Turkish style with cushions on the floor and ladies gallery etc .. Came down to mosque internet café ... Chatted with peace people all watching game at café.

- This is another dark side to kind Albania - Surely12 years ago all these kind Albanians know their cars are stolen, don't they think it's wrong to drive a stolen car ? If not how would they feel if their car is stolen from them ? UK newspaper, NYT newspaper,

Daily Telegraph (UK) ISSUE 1677Tuesday 28 December 1999 Minister arrives for crime talks in ’stolen’ Mercedes By Paul Anast in Athens Interpol ALBANIA’S Minister of Public Order, Spartak Poci, was left kicking his heels on the Greek border yesterday when his official car was confiscated as stolen. His embarrassment was made worse by the fact that he was arriving for the signing of an agreement to combat cross-border crime. When Greek customs officials ran a computer check on Mr Poci’s Mercedes S-350 luxury limousine, as required by the Schengen accords on movement across European borders, they determined that it had been stolen in Italy. The Greeks explained that they had no choice but to confiscate the limousine because an order for its impounding had been put out by Italy and Interpol. The Albanian minister’s Greek host, Michael Chrysochoides, the Public Order Minister, sped to the rescue by offering a Greek state limousine to pick up the stranded visitor.

- then wrong way see email end up at Saraqinishta ..lucky to meet engineer Kristaq Rebi and get lift down

Wed afternoon Levin told me there was a free concert up below the castle ..so i went up there and met up with Peace Corps people Alan and Chris etc

Time disappeared again - I went all the way up the hill to go back to the bar to try to retrieve my food bag of jam and bread that I had left the night before ..then I got talking to an English tourist ..and then it's lunchtime..then siesta time ..

- So it was afternoon before I was ready to start work ..firs another irritating piece of work came up

- Since my work is broad and technical and on the computer I have to put myself "in the zone" and after 3 hours concentration I am fried. Even if I was in cool England it would take my brain a while to get back to the real world. Here with the 38C heat and Albanian language/ culture to deal with it's even worse. Nevertheless I try to be relaxed and Greek-like by taking time to stroll and time chat with people, but then every flaming day minor crises keep coming up aswell. So then it's usually past midnight before everything is fixed and today's planned work gets put off until tomorrow ... But then cos I went to bed late I will start tomorrow late
- I need 30 hour days, and 10 day weeks if I am to stay on top

- Even before I left Corfu I had a backlog of work ... So the plan was to get to Albania, be a tourist and then get a couple of days work in. Then the night before I leave some virus problem leaves me with the job of recovering 500 files sometime.

- So 2 days of tourism, becomes 3 days because of a concert. Then before I can deal with the backlog another irritating piece of work came up.

- I keep get these situations where a 5 minute action by someone else takes me 5 hours to fix/ counter. And while I work on that 3 brilliant ideas come up in my head, but since each one would take 3 hours to writedown fully, I have to drop most of them.

- So by the end of the day I prepared that material sent half the emails I need to send and I'm almost ready to get back to my original work. But at 11pm I see my memory stick is completely blank. So I run back to the cyber, after 3 hours I have traced the problem. It's not a virus it's a fault with Windows 7, which causes it to erase older memory sticks. In legal copies this was corrected last year, but Albania internet cafes all have pirate versions of Windows 7 so they still have the fault. I had to go back to finish recovering the files, but I made a hash of it. The recovery software I used brought back all deleted files, from the last 6 months . Yes 4Gb of data from a 1Gb card. So it took me all today to go back and check the files. Then tomorrow I'll have to put it all back on the card.

- I was in the internet until 2am ..then all day Friday I recovered the files I just lost
....and Saturday I went and recovered all the files I had lost one week ago in Corfu .. so now I have 3 tidied up memory sticks

Easus recovery free 1Gb

- Just got everything under control - but last thing on Sunday night I got into an incident with 4 stoned teenagers (2 were good, and 2 were dragged along) anyway in the boistrousness they fled with my glasses one of the good kids brought them back 10 minutes later broken and missing a small half finger nail size piece I would need to fix them = more stress

- The full story - - Saturday evening and Sunday I spent most of the day at the PC checking the 500 lost files etc. Then I reformatted the broken memory card tidied the files and loaded them all the back on. 6.30pm Job done I can get back to my real work.

- But first the apartment manager wants me to help him with some work at 7pm ... No it turns out he wants us to go for beers ..he's like Spiro the bicycle man he always wants to talk talk. It wasn't a great experience, beer is boring to me and the atmosphere nothing. So before 10pm I am back at the apartment and I can get an early night and good sleep to have a strong brain in the morning.

- Krudatit a harmless homeless man is at the door.. The owner lets him sleep in the apartment sometime so I let him in. But before I can lock the door he puts his bag down and leaves. I have to lock the door against troublemakers. After 5 minutes there a knock at the door. I am not afraid of Krudatit so I open it, but he is followed in by 4 boys of 15 years old. They all stoned and hyper from drugs or glue sniffing. Krudatit is afraid and leaves...Fucking great ! how do I control this situation ..one has got his hands on my radio and bottle of honey. Another boy is searching the fridge. The 2 "good" boys are sitting on the bed. One starts to ask for money... I tell him there's 30 Mercedes parked outside ... See most of the Albanians have more money than me.

- I'm trying to be friendly but get them out , putting a hand on their shoulders doesn't work .....so I get my phone out... This works they are afraid of the police and run, but they also flick off the lights so I am not sure what is happening

- I lock the door .. I see only the bottle of honey is missing, but at least I am safe.

- I wait 10 minutes and have a thought "they probably dropped the honey outside". The kids have got so I put on my headtorch and go out the door I turn right, I don't see the honey. I look for 3 minutes but suddenly the 4 boys surround me pulling at my headtorch ... Shit ... All I can do is shout and hold my torch. Then one pulls my glasses of my face and runs away... There are people around but no one speaks English 2 12 year olds come out of the café and star chatting.

- Suddenly after a few minutes one of the 15 year olds runs up with my glasses. They were broken .their right arm was off. ... See they were fragile , because they had broken before but I had glued the piece back to the lense... But of course this broken piece was now missing the kids hadn't picked it up.

So I go to sleep after 11pm still shaking

And today I can't do any work until I fix my glasses. I bought these complete glasses for €20 in India 10 onths ago. Sometime I planned to replace the glued lense, but in England and Greece the price is ridiculous ... Here the optical shop quoted me €46 for this lense and 7 days ! If the price was €20 in 1 day I'd buy, but I'll have to find a way to cut a small piece off plastic and glue in place of the missing bit.

Life sucks thesedays : as soon as I move 2 steps forward, some problem comes up and I slide 2 steps back.

- Today it took me a hour to explain to the apartment owner and he wants to get the boys. However that's a waste of time as the kids were stoned so forgot the limits on behavior : that you don't enter an apartment or pull at a man's body or things.

- I found the honey 8m to the left of the door... It had already been runover. If I had turned left instead of right last night, I would have found it and been back in the apartment quickly.

- Of course my head aches now as I didn't sleep properly. So not in a good mood again

- Mon - OK today the 1st thing I have to do is fix my glasses - met Bora and her friends int the internet cafe - I walked east up the hill and upto the highest restaurant - I picked up a broken plastic fork it worked to fix the glasses, but was too thin so I laminated 2 parts together to replace the half finger nail size piece that had been lost.

- I am pretty pleased with that work, my glasses are back to the same as before, the repair I made is strong and people wouldn't guess that there 2 pieces of plastic spoon in the lense ...OK I had 1 step back ... Now I made it back to normal ... So on with work

- Just started to get on with my work, but Levin wanted to go for beer as I had decided to travel on to Berat on Tuesday. I had to sneak out after Levin brought me back to send my work through the internet.

- sudden change of plan - I met Miri who used to work in England "you can't leave withut visiting my village it's the best place in Southern Albania" ..I had the feeling he was joking ..but I decided to postpone Berat and check Lazarat out

- “rebel zone,” police cannot go to in a 2004 report (peace corp and other US government activists aren't allowed to go there)

- Wed - Left on 8am bus - Levin was asking for money, but I'd paid his wife the night before - another piece of stress I didn't need

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