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Anne Yeaw     
Traveler, Author, Editor

 

With the exception of a couple of months near Elbasan, in the center of the country, I mostly lived in the small city of Girokaster. G is a World Heritage Site about an hour north of the Greek border, and it was my home for almost two years.

This is a compilation of emails sent home  plus a very few, very short essays. They are sometimes funny, sometimes tragic, and sometimes bizarre but each one is a snapshot of quintessential Albania—a country almost completely cut off from the rest of the world by a paranoid dictator until the late 1980s. 

The Little Street of Crazy People—Photos

Ali Pasha's Bridge
Homemade Albanian Saddle
Entrance to the Kadare Home/Museum
The lower end of Sokaku
Section 2 of Sokaku
Section 3 of Sokaku
Section 4 of Sokaku
Section 5 of Sokaku
Looking up Rr. DVL from Rr. Fato Berberi (my street)
Spar grocery store
Spar produce stand close up
Typical of her age, the customer is wearing a nice dress and heels.
Part of a stall in the produce market
The blue plastic grocery bags are used in every store and every market. They end up being a big part of the garbage and litter in the city.
These people are selling just a few things they've grown in their own small garden. They are too small an operation to have a large stall like the ones across the street (in the other photos).
Notice the street sign attached to an old WWII shelter (I think). The next photo is of the road that belongs to this sign.
Rruga (Road) Siri Karagjozi. Yes, that's what I said. This is a road in Girokaster, Albania, complete with signage.
The front of this old Ottoman-era home has been destroyed but the back of the roof provides a great shot of the stone roofs that you will see on just about every building in the Girokaster's old town—just below the castle.
This is the rear of the old museum. It's no longer in use, but its very private and always shaded patio was my favorite reading spot in the entire city.
This is an artisan in the old town section (called the bazaar) of Girokaster—just below the castle.
This is the view from the other end of the patio at the rear of the old museum. You are looking out across the town of G below and across the valley to the mountains on the other side.
This is just the back half of the castle. The two-story section on the far left has a museum on the second floor, and the front half of the castle extends out from there.
This is the sign at the back of the museum. I call it the back because a family seems to be living in the front of the building, but this is next to the former main entrance.
Three bunkers. They would be entered via now buried passages into the rear of each. The opening was for the use of guns or binoculars. There are thousands and thousands of these throughout the country.