It's Albanian to Me :).

Friday the 13^th of May we spent the night in Albania! Before coming to Greece I wouldn’t have even been able to locate Albania on a map, but since then I’ve learned quite a bit about that small Balkan country. As I’ve said before, one of my classes was ‘Greek-Albanian Regional Tensions’ and a project for that course was the purpose of travelling there. We wrote 10-page research papers on a modern issue involving Greece and Albania and were to interview both Greek and Albanian students on our topics. My paper focused on worker’s rights and the problems that lead to many Albanians immigrating to Greece to find work and I found that these countries’ relationship is a bit like the US and Mexico, but not exactly. I interviewed some Albanian graduate students studying English at the University of Gyrokaster. Honestly the animosity between the two countries is kind of ridiculous because they are so similar in culture and even geography. Traditional clothing and food at least are pretty much identical. Greece is more developed, so it was less clean and advanced than what I have grown accustomed to, but Albania was surprisingly beautiful, with mountains, fields and the ocean. Small towns would be hidden up in mountain valleys with the main valley open for agriculture.

After interviewing the students, who were all extremely nice and helpful, we visited a nearby  castle, still fully equipped with cannons, tanks, cannon balls, huge iron statues, and a crashed airplane from WWII. It had a great view of the entire valley. The next day we visited an Albanian beach town called Sarande, which actually reminded some of us of California, with the lined up palm trees and shops lined up on the waterfront. Initially I wasn’t all that interested in visiting Albania or even learning about it at all, but I am thankful for the unique opportunity to visit such a different country.

Journey to the center of...this one hill in Ioannina :).

Now that I’m just chilling on the beach on Athens until Sarah and Yana arrive early Thursday morning to start our 3 week backpacking trip, I finally have time to catch up on my blog! I have about an entire month to write about so here goes nothing:

During the week of May 2^nd the excursions were to the Perama Caves and Lake Island in Ioannina and we also went to the town Arta to see some byzantine churches. I’ve come to the conclusion that they never let you take pictures in the coolest places, so I couldn’t take any photos in the caves, but it was amazing. (this is a photo i took of a poster.) The caves were the first in the country to be opened to the public and were initially discovered by locals who used it as a hide out during WWII. I usually get a bit freaked out in claustrophobic situations, but the caves were so beautiful that I just didn't focus on fact that I was underground walking through tiny passage ways. Everything looked so cool that we all agreed it seemed more like a ride at Disneyland rather than real life. I learned a lot about caves, like that stalactites and stalagmites are the same thing, just crystallization of water, the first from the ceiling down and the former grow from the ground up, from the dripping of stalactites. The only living creatures that actually live in the caves were tiny scorpions and not so tiny spiders that we found out about because a big one jumped on Kacey’s back! They weren’t harmful to humans, but it was still a bit creepy after that surprise. Due to the difference in air pressure, every step in the cave was equivalent to 3 steps on the surface, so it was a bit tiring even if we didn’t actually walk all that far. If you’ve never had the chance to go inside caves like that before I would really recommend it because the experience is difficult to explain clearly.

Then we took a boat to the Island in the lake in Ioannina, which is famous because the leader of  the area during Ottoman occupation, Ali Pasha, lived and was assassinated in his home there. Unfortunately it was a bit cloudy that day but we enjoyed ourselves nevertheless. We visited Ali Pasha’s house which has been turned into a museum. Even though Ali Pasha was a Muslim Ottoman Turk ruling an area that was majority Greek Orthodox Christian, the Greeks still liked him because he wanted the Muslims and Christians to work together in political and civic life. After the museum, a group of us were brave and decided to sample the island delicacy, fried frog legs. I’d never tried them before so it was an interesting experience. It was a bit creepy because they just looked like frogs with batter on them. There wasn’t much meat on them obviously but it felt like fish meat but tasted more like chicken then seafood. They actually tasted alright, but probably one of those things that I just needed to try once :)

Later that week we drove to Arta where we visited several Byzantine churches including the Church of the Paregoretissa and the Church of St. Theodora. I saw relics from the 13^th century of Queen Theodora who became a nun after her husband dies, displayed were some bones and things recovered from her tomb which is still in the small church. The Church of Paregoretissa was much larger than the first one, with 3 stories. At its founding, it was the metropolitan church of the entire area. No longer utilized as a church, today it is just a museum. It was interesting to explore this church, we could go where ever we wanted including the places like behind the altar area which is prohibited to see in an active church if you aren’t a priest or altar boy. Later we visited the bridge of Arta, made famous in a legendary folk ballad which made fun of how long it took them to build it, saying “all day they were building it, and in the night it would collapse.” Sounds like some of the construction on the uw campus to me ;) After that we went to another beach town, to have lunch. We would pretty much have the exact same thing for most every meal: bread, appetizers made of fried filo/feta/spinach combinations, greek salad, potatoes and some kind of meat, usually grilled chicken, souvlaki or calamari. I never used to eat squid, but I managed to get used to it here and its at least better than frog legs ;)