Berat

BERAT
Over Easter weekend I traveled with another trainee to Berat, a small “city” (so defined by Albanian standards; loosely translated: a medium-sized town in the US). Berat is about two and a half hours south of Elbasan by furgon. All trainees traveled out of the Elbasan area to spend the Easter weekend with current volunteers in order to better understand how PC service plays out in reality. The Easter weekend visit was both a welcome break from tightly-scheduled training and a highly-anticipated opportunity to see a PCV in his/her natural habitat. Hari and I visited the current TEFL volunteer posted to Berat. The current volunteer is about to COS (Close of Service), but she opened her apartment to us anyway. Am I ever grateful! She has a way-above-PC-standard apartment (hot showers every day, enclosed shower stall, European toilet, a TV, a food processor!) in a beautiful town.
Berat is a south-central UNESCO world heritage site seated at the base of soaring blue mountains. Houses surviving from past centuries cling to the slopes of two steep hills, barely saved by packed dirt and genius with stone, brick, and mortar from sliding into the river below. The houses, partially built into the earth, compensate for lack of light on one face by filling the opposite with shumë (many) windows. Thus Berat is known as the City of a Thousand Windows, all rippling glass and white-washed walls quietly contemplating their neighbors on the opposite bank.
The new city of Berat is in a state of infrastructural transition, a ubiquitous sight in Albania. Half-finished construction dots the streets—half-finished either because money ran out, funds conveniently disappeared into someone else’s pocket, or who knows what. Doleful and slathered in graffiti, communist apartments crumble next to their rehabilitated and boldly painted neighbors. People call to one another through the rabbit’s warren of streets, alleys, and high walls. Laundry strung over balconies snaps and shivers in the breeze. A colorful bazaar lines a winding thoroughfare, offering teapots, knobs, plastic “Pumas”, gutted car parts, skeins of wool, bolts of cheaply printed cloth, and dyed songbirds. Roma women sift through the trash, and most streets smell of urine.
Pothole after pothole introduces a new gait to every pedestrian’s gait. Crossing the street between vehicles driven occasionally erratically and then occasionally lyrically by persons with both automotive and artistic licenses requires an entirely different set of foot-eye coordination. Mercedes hum past wizened grandmas swathed in faded black and calico who bounce rhythmically on the backs of gomarr (donkeys). Most of these gjyshas (grandmas) are younger than they look; hypertension, daily headaches, and a steady diet of saturated fats widen their waists and crimp their loving hands.
Wheezing horses pulling two-wheel carts, topped by casually standing drivers with reins and whip in hand. These serene commanders of swaying chariots lean back into nothingness, confident that the tendons in their knees and ankles, the tautness of the reins twined between their knuckles, and the spread of their feet on the rocking boards below will keep them aloft. Like early morning commuters in the Parisian and DC metros, these men rock and roll with the undulations of the transit beneath their boots. There ought to be an international competition…
Young couples and old friends slowly parade, or xhiro, arm-in-arm through artfully littered parks and down gracious boulevards hung with curtains of unfurling grape leaves. Mosques and Orthodox churches call to the few doctrinally-faithful, a fancy hotel hosts a wedding of glittering and heavily made-up guests, the bride poses for three wedding albums-worth of photos on a bridge, the stadium roars and swells with the heroics of local footballers, and yellow dust, always dust, swirls, chokes, cloaks, and settles. Until the next group of children run screaming by.
Above the town on a ridge (more than a hill by CT standards, not quite a mountain by anyone else’s standards) is a castle dating from the 4th century A.D., last modified in the 15th century by Ottoman invaders. People still live within the castle walls in houses without bathrooms and other utilities, per UNESCO standards. But this is Albania, sooo if rules can be gently nudged or easily forgotten, ah, s’ka problem (it’s no problem). A neat shrug of the shoulders and quick mire takes care of that.
There are Ottoman arches, a tower with a precarious perch from which to survey potential invaders, and a stalwart red-and-white stone Greek Orthodox church on the ridge, grandly calling out to the long-gone faithful who used to populate the valley below. You can see for many kilometers and always there is the sensation of being able to gently, even casually, slip onto an airstream and simply glide out and over the shimmering heat, the lazy river, the echoing call to prayer, and all the lives meandering below.
Two other trainees visited Berat’s health volunteer, so we six spent the weekend together. Hari and I wanted to observe the TEFL volunteer teach in a classroom setting, but did not get the chance due to the holiday weekend. In the end, the primary focus of our weekend was pancakes, site-seeing, homemade tortillas, site-seeing, cinnamon rolls, and did I mention site-seeing? I also was able to tap into the health volunteer’s internet connection in order to send out some emails and update virus protection, yay!