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Published: November 13th 2010
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Grapes
We visited a small village named Lini A steel plant, bunkers and some other stuff
The last days in Albania we spent around Lake Ohrid in the eastern part of the country. We didn't do much sightseeing these days at all. We visited a small village named Lini. The village is next to Lake Ohrid and we guess that the people living in the village mostly are farmers because everywhere we saw people working with various kinds of produce and they also grow a lot of grapes in the village.
We also went to a place named Driloni to see Enver Hoxha's old summer home. It wasn't very interesting but the coffee in the café was good and it was nice to watch the local ducks swimming in a pond there. How do we know they were local ducks you might wonder. They didn't have any passports. If they had been tourists like us they would each have had a passport.
On the way to Lake Ohrid we passed a city named Elbasani. In Elbasani they used to have a huge steel factory named Steel of the Party. The steel plant was not efficient enough to be able to compete with foreign competition when Albania
Grapes
They grow a lot of grapes in the village Lini opened its borders so most of the business had to shut down in the 1990-ies. Some smaller industries are still running in the buildings that used to house Steel of the Party but most of the old factory is today abandoned and empty.
Emma was at first not too happy about visiting this old industry. She felt awkward about going there because it is not a tourist site and they don't normally get visitors like us. But Ake thought it could be an interesting thing to see these abandoned buildings so he drove the car down to one of the many gates. After some negotiation with first the guard at the gate and later the manager of the site we were let in and allowed to walk around and take photos.
The manager of the site followed us around and gave us a kind of improvised tour. He didn't speak any English but he still managed to explain some of the things we saw. It was an interesting experience that Ake absolutely loved and Emma eventually enjoyed too. We actually had the same feeling in this place as we had in the abandoned cities
Chernobyl and Pripyat in Ukraine.
View over Lake Ohrid
The village Lini is next to Lake Ohrid and from there you have nice views over the lake One thing we have known about Albania for many years was the bomb shelters or
bunkers. When the communists were running the show in Albania the leaders told the people that the surrounding countries will invade Albania as soon as they get a chance. So to prevent an attack the people of Albania must all be ready to fight off the enemy at any time. It is obviously an effective way for dictators to remain in power for many decades because exactly the same kind of tactic is used by the leaders of North Korea. The way Albania was supposed to fight off any invaders was that each and every man in the country who was capable to fire a rifle was, if Albania was attacked, supposed to climb down in his own armed foxhole and sit there and shoot at the enemy. These foxholes were built so strong that they could withstand a bomb or two so they were often referred to as bomb shelters or bunkers instead. According to Wikipedia over a decade 700,000 of these bunkers were built all over Albania.
These bunker were made out of reinforced concrete and are difficult to remove. They are
Lake Ohrid
View over Lake Ohrid seen from the beachfront in the city Pogradeci often not enough of nuisance that they even bother to dig them up and remove them. Instead they are mostly left where they were once built and are still there today. If you have read the first two blog entries on Albania you might have wondered why we didn't mention them before and why we didn't publish any photos of them then. The reason is simple, we saved them all for this blog entry.
The bunkers is not the only thing we have saved for this last blog entry on Albania. We have put a whole bunch of odd photos we took in various places.
A favourite of ours is the photo of the cup holding French fries. Emma bought those French fries in a restaurant called Kolonat. When you look at the photo it is obvious that they shamelessly have used the colours normally associated with McDonalds for their logo, making use of that brand to promote their own food. But their logo is a "K" instead of an "M" and that is how they avoid getting sued. But how did they manage to make the "K" look just like an "M" totally beats us.
They
Lake Ohrid
View over Lake Ohrid seen from the beachfront in the city Pogradeci don't have any McDonalds at all in Albania. We did find one place named "McDonalds" but they didn't even serve hamburgers.
This was all we had to say from our vacation in Albania. Next time we update the blog we are not sure where it will be from. We have some things coming up that probably will make it into the blog in the future.
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Maria T
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Albanian fries
These fries actually look more like the Western fries - I never met "K"s in Albania (in '92, mind you). But the fries I rembember looked much more 'homemade' as coming from a potato. And when we ordered some more, they looked at us a bit surprised, and it took a looong time before they eventualy came. Then we realized they didn't poor them from a readymade bag into the oil for a few minutes, but got some more potatoes, peeled them, chopped them, precooked them and then put them into the oil before serving us more. I have in particular enjoyed to follow your travels in the Balkans!