New Zealand media: Albania Ready for New Chapter

We go down, away from the water, behind the coffee tables on the sidewalks along the” boulevard. Epidaname” Then we take the left turn on Kale's road and a hot day of XXI-century Albania all melts away from the second century and the Roman Empire throughout its pomp, writes “The latest and most popular Internet information agency in New Zealand.

Surrounded by homes in modern style, built here and there, but visible in its greatness, the Amphitheater of Durres, can still break even without making any major leap of imagination, from gladiators' swords matches and places high on the scale above the arena.

Caroline Perry laughs at me like a winner's mother in the school competition.

You didn't expect it, did you?

No, I didn't. None of us had anticipated it.” On the first visit, Durres is exactly what he expects from the second largest city in Albania. Ships with goods have filled the port, which roars and roars in front of the city's heart, ferryes waiting in line to describe the Adriatic to Bari and Ancona.

Traffic blocks the city's narrow streets. Tourists fill the multistory hotels surrounding the beach areas to the southeast, which have been raised with a rush of construction when the country was liberated from control of communism in 1992.

But the Amphitheater of Durres relates a story with many chapters. Not only the Roman period (he was built during Emperor Trajan's rule) but also the later Byzantine era (V.S.E.), from the time the theater was used as a church, two rooms decorated on the first floor, and the Ottoman period that followed in the 15th century (arena was covered in the 15th century by houses that were massively planted).

And this is just a piece of the fairy tale of a city that was founded as Epidemi by Greek settlers in 627 BC, although the distant period is remembered in statues and pottery fragments that are displayed in the magnificent museum nearby.

Also significant was the city in Rome's conquest, known as Durrah, when the”Egnatia” began, which lasted 70 miles (161 km) east of Istanbul today. Surprisingly, one of the old gates leading to this important road across the Balkans still exists, as part of the vinotec entrance” Porticu”, to” Skender Beta”

There's so much detail to be obsessed with, but we'll try later in the evening, over dinner at the restaurant”Tirona”, away from the cranes and the port, at a Durres resort area.

There are 13 of us, from the beginning of the 40s to over 70s, and we have few stories of travelers telling each other while enjoying our glasses of wine. From travel to less interesting countries like Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, in quieter times, to countries as troubled as Afghanistan, Syria and Libya. But despite our stamps on passports and the strong desire to travel, none of us had had a previous experience in Albania, a country we realized very soon that there was a complicated and glorious past.

We will stay 48 hours in “Illyria Lands”, a nine-day trip accompanied by “Steppes Travel” that actually goes beyond the name it carries, affecting the history of many Albanians over the last 28 centuries of Albania, including mainly the communist era.

The main focus, however, is the Illyrian tribes that flourished during this European crossroads between the V and 168 BC when they were conquered by Rome.

We're very interested in history. Despite the many miles, few of us know the history of farmers and warriors who have existed, along with the ancient Greeks, but who have been neglected in school textbooks.

In archaeological areas, in small cafes, every evening it reveals from an element of yesterday that, at the start of each trip, many of us are unaware.

Fortunately, we have Caroline, an expert on ancient history, who has worked in the British Museum and led several groups in different countries like Iran and Saudi Arabia and has been attracted by a strong feeling for Albania, and has decided to buy some properties near the city of Durres.

It tested its knowledge in Lezha, a town on the Drin River, 45 miles (72 km) north of Durres, where it revolved around an old wall consisting of the remains of “Lysso” (Lezha) An Illyrian fortress founded in 385 BC.

“One of the problems with the Illyrians”, it reveals, ” is that they didn't have the culture written”.

There's no direct data from the story of the Illyrian tribes.

What is known is written by the Greeks and Romans.

However, the ruins speak aloud in support of its diagonal views of the stone, designed to help them cope with earthquakes, anal evidence and intelligence; the existence of the footsteps of Roman hands in a sauna. There is also more evidence.

Once upon a time, an Illyrian temple and later the cathedral of “Shella”, is now a mausoleum dedicated to Gjergj Kastriot, a powerful military figure, otherwise known as “Skenderbeu”, which managed to halt the Ottoman progress in the Balkans in the XV century.

We admire 25 metal shields based on bricks, each representing the battle victories attributed to this military between 1444 and 1468.

“Albania is a file with multiple layers of”, Caroline explains. And that makes up all the joy of its history”.

It was helped by Dorian Disha, with residence in Tirana, to understand more about nation history.

And as we head south, it raises the grim theme of bunkers, a paranoid legacy of the communist years, especially of the 1970s, when dictator Enver Hoxha was convinced that Albania was under threat of foreign invasion.

Dorian finds joy in concrete shadows, near where cows chew grass, even in the capital.

In 1992, when the barriers to movement were removed, we all wanted to go to town. Now, we can't all stand it. Everyone wants to go back to village”, he says laughing.

We go down, away from the water, behind the coffee tables on the sidewalks along the” boulevard. Epidaname” Then we take the left turn toward the Kale Street, and a hot day of Albania of the 20th century melts away, leaving the second century and the Roman Empire in all its pomp.

Surrounded by homes in modern style built here and there, but visible in its greatness, the Amphitheater of Durres, can still break even without making any major leap of imagination, from gladiators' swords matches and places high on the scale above the arena.

Caroline Perry laughs at me like a winner's mother in the school competition.

You didn't expect it, did you?

No, I didn't. None of us had anticipated it.” On the first visit, Durres is exactly what he expects from the second largest city in Albania. Ships with goods have filled the port, which roars and roars in front of the city's heart, ferryes waiting in line to describe the Adriatic to Bari and Ancona.

Traffic blocks the city's narrow streets. Tourists fill the multistory hotels surrounding the beach areas to the southeast, which have been raised with a rush of construction when the country was liberated from control of communism in 1992.

But the Amphitheater of Durres relates a story with many chapters. Not only the Roman period (he was built during Emperor Trajan's rule) but also the Byzantine era of Wednesday (the 6th - century mosaics, from the time the theater was used as a church, two rooms decorated on the first floor, and the Ottoman period that followed in the XV (arena was covered in the 16th century by houses that grew massively).

And this is just a piece of the fairy tale of a city that was founded as Epidemi by Greek settlers in 627 BC, although the distant period is remembered in statues and pottery fragments that are displayed in the magnificent museum nearby.

Also significant was the city in Rome's conquest, known as Durrah, when the”Egnatia” began, which lasted 70 miles (161 km) east of Istanbul today. Surprisingly, one of the old gates leading to this important road across the Balkans still exists, as part of the vinotec entrance” Porticu”, to” Skender Beta”

There's so much detail to be obsessed with, but we'll try later in the evening, over dinner at the restaurant”Tirona”, away from the cranes and the port, at a Durres resort area.

There are 13 of us, from the beginning of the 40s to over 70s, and we have few stories of travelers telling each other while enjoying our glasses of wine. From travel to less interesting countries like Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, in quieter times, to countries as troubled as Afghanistan, Syria and Libya. But despite our stamps on passports and the strong desire to travel, none of us had had a previous experience in Albania, a country we realized very soon that there was a complicated and glorious past.

We will stay 48 hours in “Illyria Lands”, a nine-day trip accompanied by “Steppes Travel” that actually goes beyond the name it carries, affecting the history of many Albanians over the last 28 centuries of Albania, including mainly the communist era.

The main focus, however, is the Illyrian tribes that flourished during this European crossroads between the V and 168 BC when they were conquered by Rome.

We're very interested in history. Despite the many miles, few of us know the history of farmers and warriors who have existed, along with the ancient Greeks, but who have been neglected in school textbooks.

In archaeological areas, in small cafes, every evening it reveals from an element of yesterday that, at the start of each trip, many of us are unaware.

Fortunately, we have Caroline, an expert on ancient history, who has worked in the British Museum and led several groups in different countries like Iran and Saudi Arabia and has been attracted by a strong feeling for Albania, and has decided to buy some properties near the city of Durres.

It tested its knowledge in Lezha, a town on the Drin River, 45 miles (72 km) north of Durres, where it revolved around an old wall consisting of the remains of “Lysso” (Lezha) An Illyrian fortress founded in 385 BC.

“One of the problems with the Illyrians”, it reveals, ” is that they didn't have the culture written”.

There's no direct data from the story of the Illyrian tribes.

What is known is written by the Greeks and Romans.

However, the ruins speak aloud in support of its diagonal views of the stone, designed to help them cope with earthquakes, anal evidence and intelligence; the existence of the footsteps of Roman hands in a sauna. There is also more evidence.

Once upon a time, an Illyrian temple and later the cathedral of “Shella”, is now a mausoleum dedicated to Gjergj Kastriot, a powerful military figure, otherwise known as “Skenderbeu”, which managed to halt the Ottoman progress in the Balkans in the XV century.

We admire 25 metal shields based on bricks, each representing the battle victories attributed to this military between 1444 and 1468.

“Albania is a file with multiple layers of”, Caroline explains. And that makes up all the joy of its history”.

It was helped by Dorian Disha, with residence in Tirana, to understand more about nation history.

And as we head south, it raises the grim theme of bunkers, a paranoid legacy of the communist years, especially of the 1970s, when dictator Enver Hoxha was convinced that Albania was under threat of foreign invasion.

Dorian finds joy in concrete shadows, near where cows chew grass, even in the capital.

In 1992, when the barriers to movement were removed, we all wanted to go to town. Now, we can't all stand it. Everyone wants to go back to village”, he says laughing.

Here it seems to have restraint, because Tirana discovers itself as an increasingly vivid city, with new bars shining in its mode neighborhood “Block”

Tirana also sheds light on Ilirine at the Museum of National History III - century bronze armour before Christ, helmets with long protective tiles that protected the head; a complex stone pole with three rows marked by the same century, each time shows a generation of the family of the deceased who bid farewell to the deceased; here's a V-century terac vase discovered in Kukes in northeast Albania.

To see such things exposed is one thing.

To discover the Illyrian heritage in the setting where it was established, there is another. It's a long road, 145 miles south, in the remnants of Bobbie, but our reward is to see Iliria and Rome interlocked again. Another amphitheater, a tablet of the IIIth century BC, crowns this hilltop. Most of it has disappeared, but its size could have been raised to 40 levels.

We fix our cameras before Caroline takes us to the edge of a steep stream where the Vjosa Tallas River in her valley below, and the name of Augustus, the first Roman Emperor, is inscribed in a granite gate.

The wave continues that afternoon, 40 miles [48 km] northwest of Apollonia ʹ, which was born from Iliria in 588 BC and flourished under the Roman Empire in the second century Christ, becoming a land of wealth and taste. Jehona wishes, six columns of entry into the council room (Bouleuterion) still makes you think about the discussion. An Albanian bride and her young husband enjoy this location, adapting their wedding images to the ghosts of their ancestors.

We are still excited by the beauty of everything when we move towards Berat only to discover that our night stop is as beautiful as anything that has given us Albanian antiquity.

In a sense, this city, Osum, is divided the area of Gorica, on the south bank of the river, is Christian; Mangalemi, north side; Muslim. But together, they roll and smile like a wonderful pocket of Ottoman age, houses placed on the cliff cheeks, sunlight at the front of buildings as tribute to the dominant nickname, the city of one over one window. We sit to dinner, roast lamb and sausage on the roof of the Hotel” Mangalem” and marvel at a day with multiple photos.

There are still many other things. The morning will lead us east, inland, up, the snake's road, the twisted road, faces obstacles, the surface that seems to lose shape. All the way to the rural courtyard of the Ploca, where the remains of Amantia's Illyrian settlement are found, which are not guarded by anyone. Caroline begins showing us a horseshoe - shaped amphitheater where the signs of the volleyball field, marked in a polluted place, indicate that she has not long been used when a backdoor car begins heading toward the village. Here is Lucas, the guard, ready to collect low entrance fees.

We follow him on foot as his car roars on a road to a ranch on the hill, where we walk on our fingertips near a chicken cage -- see the curved stone of gate number six, a large entrance into Amantia, as has been since the century BC. We walked the tracks marked by a tractor in the mud to a place where the ground seems to sink. Below are the foundation blocks of a temple in Venus, a dark summer light. The route will take us south to Butrint another Illyrian-Roman miracle. But here, looking down at this angle, it feels like you're looking at Machu Picchu from the Sun Gate. So far, we expect to find such satisfaction here, but our silent observation is no less appreciative.

Albania Centered on Attention

When you look at the country, it is difficult to understand why Albania is not better known as a destination. Albania lies between Greece in the south and Montenegro in the north and only 70km from Italy, where Otrato Strait is the shortest route between the two coasts. Add the fact that there are 480 kilometers of coastline and Albania's relative anonymity becomes even more unimaginable.

Part of the problem is recent history. Albania was the last country in Western and Central Europe to give up communism, finally setting it aside in 1992, but only after spending 48 years under its fist.

Access to the country is improving. Plans to build a second air centre in southern Vlora are under way. This will complete what is currently the only international track at the” Mother Teresa” airport, which is located between Tirana and Durres, serving both. ”British Airways” flies there from the Gatwick airport and, as a sign that times are changing, ”Wiz Air<x> added a three-week connection from Luton last month.

However, despite an improved road system, Albania is a difficult place to move without escort, making a tour of a useful way to see its wonders.

There is still an undiscovered environment in a land of simple beauty, but soon the secret will emerge.