Corn

Some things in life seem so simple.   (Or, Tales in Cultural Anthropology)

I periodically get Servet and we go all over town, pazar to pazar, looking for something I desperately need, like basil or sage or pickling cucumbers.  I have discovered that the plentiful Albanian variety of basil is a small-leafed variety, which tastes okay, but I don't like it as well as the Italian version.  I've ordered some sweet basil seeds to solve that problem.

Sage has proved elusive also, and seeds are coming to solve that problem.

Cindy mentions every time we see a fig tree how much she likes figs.  I saw some figs at one of the pazars, and they were a little "old" shall we say, and I was picking through them to see if I could find a handful, but Servet let me know that these were too far gone and I wouldn't be buying any of those figs.

Seeing little grills at street corners with people roasting ears of corn, I thought it high time I went to the pazar and bought some corn on the cob.

 After going to five or six pazars and seeing no corn, and none in the grocery stores, I decided I needed some help from the locals.
I thought surely there would be a source of fresh corn.  After all, I've seen it growing all over the

country.   

So after asking Rosa, my language teacher, the word for corn in Albanian (misra, which turns out to be uncomfortably like misery), I enlisted Servet in the search for fresh corn.

Through his daughter, Vilma, who speaks very good English and graduated from the American High School here where Taylor went in the spring, he quizzed me at length about actually what it was I wanted.  I couldn't tell him "like they have at the pazar" because they didn't have any.  I told him "to eat and to freeze."  He's seen me can tomatoes, so he understands the food preservation idea.  There does not appear to be a size of measure comparable to our bushel, so I said I wanted 100 ears.

He was still pretty puzzled, but after he and Vilma talked between themselves for a good while, he called his friend Ibrihimi, who lives in Varosh.  Varosh is a small village, to build it up a bit, on the old road between here and Durres.  Servet said Ibrihimi had just what I wanted, but we'd have to go in our four-wheel drive Mercedes because our old Ford Taurus wouldn't make it up the hill.  

So at nine o'clock sharp on the morning of August 20th we left for Varosh to buy 100 ears of corn.  Arriving in what I assumed to be Varosh, Servet slowed down to a crawl, on the highway, of course, and after looking around then pulled halfway off the road and attempted to phone Ibrihimi, but got no answer.  So we made a U-turn and went back and started down a little lane, which soon abruptly turned and started a steep ascent up the mountain.  It was steep and twisting, but in short order we arrived at Ibrihimi's house and I met his wife and one son.  After a little conversation, Servet, the son, and I got back in the car and went back down the mountain, where we found Ibrihimi waiting on the other side of the road.  He and Servet made the universal gestures for "where in the hell were you?" and so forth, and after exchanging the kiss-on-both-cheeks Albanian greeting for old friends, he got in the car and we proceeded at a crawl down the highway for about 200 yards before pulling off into a very narrow one-lane gravel lane, where after about 100 yards we saw two cars stopped, facing each other, a little down the lane.  The occupants were out of their vehicles talking, visiting, and more of concern to me, paying no attention at all to us.  Ibrihimi got out of the car and walked down to where they were and joined in the conversation.  After a few minutes Servet started laughing and said something under his breath about Albanians, and drove on down and went up and they all continued talking and having a good time.  I have no idea how a plan was decided on, but soon Servet got in the car and backed up past a house, the second car backed up and into the driveway, and the first car came down the road and through the corn field stubble around us and left.  We followed Ibrihimi to a field, where Servet stopped the car and we got out.

I knew something was not quite right.  Not only were the corn stalks all stiffly brown, but some had started to be cut and tied into bundles.  The ear I was shown was brown and very hard.  I was just tapping on the kernels to see if one would fall out, wondering exactly what to say.  

"Good?"  Servet asked, and I looked up and saw them waiting with eager anticipation.  "Well," I said, and managed to convey that I really wanted something more soft, with water content, and green husks.  Servet and Ibrihimi just looked at each other, not knowing what to say or do.  Ibrihimi's son said something and gestured toward another field, and we all walked over to it.  The stalks were still green, and we pulled and inspected an ear.  There weren't 100, but we put 50 or so in the car, and headed off for coffee at a bar/ristorant on the highway.

Being the guest, I was asked to order first, and I asked for a cappecino, which I have found to be the best alternative option for me.  The waiter I think said he didn't know how to make it, or they didn't have it, I'm not sure.  But a long discussion ensued between he and Servet, and I understood enough of it to realize Servet was telling him what was in it and how to make it.  Eventually he just got up and they went into the ristorant, returning finally with my cappecino, which tasted great, and was -- hot chocolate!  It may be that there was a little coffee in it, but I couldn't taste it.  I may have gotten it because they figured if I couldn't handle espresso I didn't need coffee at all -- after all, it was ten o'clock in the morning, and Ibrihimi was already drinking raki with his espresso.   

We returned to Tirana.  I suspect Ibrihimi will relish telling his version of my visit.  He's probably still trying to figure out what I wanted, and why I wanted what I got.  He and his family were very nice, though, and Albanians I have met have been unfailingly friendly and hospitable, but I wouldn't expect that to stand in the way of a humorous tale.  

I shucked some of the corn and boiled it for supper.  It never got done.  I think it was already too dry, or maybe not a corn-for-fresh-eating variety.

After interrogating Servet on the way back to town I discovered corn is not a food Albanians seem to eat fresh.  The corn Ibrihimi had was dried and they grind it for cornmeal.  They do eat cornbread, and polenta is readily available in grocery stores.

I imagined that was the end of my Ibrihimi acquaintance, but yesterday Servet told me that we should go out there Saturday to get figs.  So he and his wife and Cindy and I are off to Varosh Saturday.  

I have corn seeds on the way, two packets of Silver Queen and two of Mirai.  I'm expecting better things next summer.  

I may give them to Ibrihimi for Christmas.

Saranda

The beach in Saranda, the first looking north and the second looking south.  More people and clutter and nonfunctioning hotels than I enjoy.  The beach was packed, and I had heard that it would be.  August is vacation month in Europe, and lots of people come to the beach for a week or two or three.  This year, however, the Greeks and the Macedonians are feuding over their name, and visa issues led many Macedonians to come to Albania.  

The bottom picture is of Lake Butrint with one of the mussel nurseries.  It was taken on the path up the hill between the first and second city walls.

I have resolved to sit at home next August.  Maybe just planning ahead would work, too.  

Return From Saranda

The top two pictures are of the highway, with olive groves on either side.  A lot of groves are being cut down to make room for all the construction.  In the top one the Ionian Sea is visible -- the groves went right down to the beach.  Maybe I should have labeled this post something to do with domestic animals.   The cows, goats, sheep, donkeys wander around the highways.  This cow was one of the group eating out of the trash bin.

The white paint on the tree trunks looks like what we used to have on our apple trees when I was a child.  I think it had a heavy dose of lime in it, and is supposed to protect against insects, I assume the bark borer type.

The bottom pictures are of the goat herd.  The crossed the road in front of us, followed by their herder (hard to tell if he was herding or chasing).  They walked through this house under construction, although work has temporarily stopped.  I don't have a picture, but the cows like to lay on the floors.  A bit hard, I would think if I was a cow, but out of the sun, and the concrete should be cool.

Butrint

The amphitheater at Butrint dates from 3rd C. BC, and held about 2500 people.  This is a Greek theatre, for plays and performances.  The water table has risen to the point where the orchestra is flooded, but it is covered now with a wooden stage and performances are still held here periodically.  Notice the lines chiseled into the amphitheater seats -- lines of demarcation between the "seat" part and the "foot" part of the folks behind you.  Sort of reminded me of occasions (surely very rare) when my father felt the need, because of impending violence, to draw imaginary lines on the back seat of the car that we children were not to transgress.  I have read several descriptions of theaters and coliseums, but none have mentioned the presence of petrified bubble gum and sticky coke residue.

The middle picture is of the baptistry at the Byzantine church built here over Roman baths.  The baptistry has very nice mosaic tile floors, which are covered most of the year by about 30 inches of sand for protection.  The Roman temple walls are largely intact, but a very small portion of the mosaic floor.  As was common, as the city developed parts of old structures were used in the new.  The city eventually had three walls around it; as the city expanded, the outside of the first wall was used as the back of a new line of buildings.

Butrint Lake actually opens up behind Butrint from a small channel connecting it to the Ionian Sea.  The Greek island of Corfu is only about two miles offshore.  The lake has been "planted" with several wooden pylon "tree" farms for use as black mussel nurseries.

The last photo is outside of the "Lion Gate," so named by the Italian archeologist who first did work at Butrint in the 1920s.  Mussolini funded the work evidently to rediscover the glory of Rome, and in the process Luigi Ugolini, the archeologist, apparently destroyed much of the Byzantine over-layer of the city.  Nationalism is such a destructive force!  But the lion of the lentil is eating a wild pig.  The lentil was moved from another place when the original door in the wall was made smaller for extra security.  The original opening was taller, and you can see the curved "crown moulding" at the top.  My photograph makes it look more like a chamfer than a curve, though.

The site itself was like Syri i kaltër, cool and pleasant in some parts.  The views from the top, where there is a museum and a reconstructed 15th C Venetian fortress, are quite good -- Corfu across the Ionian Sea to the west,  the Albanian mountains to the east.

This area around Gjirokastra and Saranda is close to the now-Greek city of Ioannina, and was the central part of the territory controlled in the 1790s-1820s by Ali Pasha Tepelena.  Lord Byron visited his court at Tepelena, if you remember your English lit classes.  I will have to write you a short biography of him -- he was an interesting fellow, until he got a little too ambitious for the Ottomans and they captured him and cut off his head.  

Along the Highway

The town square at Libohova.  This is the largest plane tree in the Balkans, and is about 500 years old, they say.  I didn't know deciduous trees lived that long, but I'm no botanist.  It was big, though.  

On the way to Saranda we took a little detour to see the Blue Eye (Syri i kaltër, in Albanian).  It is a deep and very large spring with quite a fast flow rate, although the flow rate varies.  The picture is looking straight down at it.  It looks like a blue eye to those who are not imagination-challenged.  The third picture is the river which flows from the spring.  It was nice and shady and cool under the trees.  

The last picture is of the beach at Ksamil very close to Butrint.  The amount of construction is really mind boggling.  There is no planning, so whoever wants to build whatever builds it, whether or not there is any infrastructure to support it.   Bank financing is available, but it seems to constitute a small portion of construction.  The majority of construction is self-financed, and construction stops when the money runs out.  Some of the houses in this picture will probably look the same this time next year, while others will be in varying stages of completion.  Some may even be finished.

Different Style Houses

To say that the Ethnographic Museum in Gjirokastër is located in this house would be slightly misleading.  I think a more accurate description is that the house is the museum.  The house happens to have been the family home of Enver Hoxha, the Communist Party head in Albania who pretty much ran things from right after WWII

until his death in 1985.  The house has been restored and period furniture located.  The ground floor was mostly storage and work rooms, with high windows for security.  The second and higher floors were for the family, all however many generations there were.  The second picture is of the men's meeting room where men of the family and male friends would get together and lounge about and smoke and drink coffee and raki and swap tales and generally have a high old time.  It would also host important meetings and clan gatherings, depending on the house and the rank of the owner.  A similar house north of Tirana in Kruja has a balcony with wooden carved screens.  This is where women could sit and listen but not be seen or participate.  The kitchen photo is mainly of the oven.  

The last two pictures are more bunkers, the first ones in a field close to Libohova guarding against attackers from the south, and the last ones perched on the mountainside above the Ionian Sea, waiting for some crazy soul to land on the virtually nonexistent beach  below and slowly climb up to the bunker.  

Safety Issues

I thought I'd just post a few pictures of some of these things before they become so familiar I don't even notice any more.  The top picture is of a set of stairs.  They could stand a little repair.  But they're at a restaurant, out in the open, and they illustrate the need to not only watch where one is going in general, but also to watch where the feet are going, in particular.

The next two are in Gjrokastër, and show a pile of limestone patiently waiting for the stonemason. It could be a long and lonely wait.  Or someone may come tomorrow.  As they say in Mississippi, there ain't no way of telling.

And the bottom is Cindy's favorite ferry at Butrint.  For some reason she categorically refused to board, so we returned the way we came.

Hotel Kalemi

 The paving on the streets in Gjirokastër is an interesting art form in itself.    The paving stones are either a black basalt-type rock, or a white to pink limestone.  The limestone has been polished over the years so it is very slippery; the basalt is not.  On a slope the basalt is raised maybe three-quarters of an inch above the limestone, so donkeys (and people) can get traction.

The top picture is a street and the bottom two pavement designs.  (For those who were not sure.) 

Picture two and three are our hotel room.  The house dates from the early 19th century, and is a upper middle class dwelling of the time.  Houses of this type would hold several generations, still a custom here.  The ceiling is carved pine.  Actually, this pattern is laid out in long boards with the carved portions covering the cracks and making the little squares.  The carved rosettes in the middle of each square are different colors.  The fancy center piece now has a wire hanging through it which in turn holds the lamp.

The next picture is of the end of the room.  The door has carving around it and the little cabinets are carved and painted.  It was pretty fancy. 

Gjirokastër

Gjirokastër was my favorite city on the tour, and the only one not on the beach.  The top picture is a view from our hotel window overlooking the old town and the Drinos River valley.  The roof covering for most all the old town houses is slate, but the one right in front has a red tile roof. 

The second and fourth pictures are of the mosque school and the mosque, respectively.  The hill is so steep that the top of the minaret barely rises above the street in front of the school.  The middle picture is of our hotel, taken from the castle.  The hotel is actually an old house, which I'll cover in a separate post.  

Bottom picture is the clock tower at the castle.  The slate roof right in front has grass growing on it.  If you blow up the picture you can see how thick the slate is -- that's a lot of weight.  

If any of you have read Chronicle In Stone by Ismail Kadare, this is the town and this is the castle, and that's the valley where the airfield was. Kadare is the most well-known Albanian writer now living, living in Paris, as a matter of fact.  He gets nominated for Nobel prize but doesn't seem to muster the votes.  Maybe some day.  Gjirokastër is his hometown.  Another of his books I liked is Broken April, about the blood feuds of mountain tribes of northern Albania.  Two book club recommendations for my Bethesda friends.

Albanian Highways

Our recent trip to south Albania ended with Cindy exhaused from the constant vigil of driving on the highways.  The roads are bad and the drivers are worse, as she's explained.  

The top two pictures are headed north along the Ionian Sea from Sarandë to Dhermë.  For a good bit of the coast there is no "sand" beach, or even a pebble beach, just sea meeting mountains.  In some places there are little beaches accessible only by boat, and some others  accessible by auto.

Pictures three and four are looking south over Dhermë.  This is probably the "deepest" indentation along the beach, and it is building up quickly.  The pictures are taken from the top of the mountain shown in picture five, which is about 1100 meters, or 3600 feet.  That is a pretty steep climb, as you can literally see sea level.

Sarandë is close to the Greek border, and there is a ferry and hydrofoil from Corfu to Sarandë, so it was the first town to start developing.  Durrës and Vlorë, because they're closer to Tirana, I suppose, are also developed and developing.  Dhermë and Himarë are still fairly isolated, and the road is bad, but they are building up fast.  The highway starting at Sarandë is under construction and/or in  various states of disrepair all the way to this summit.  Some places were paved two lanes, some paved one lane, some compressed crushed rock, and some we drove over five inch broken up limestone.  It was an interesting mix.  

When the road is finished it will be nice and smooth, but still dangerous, since the local drivers don't mind passing up a hill and around a corner past which they can see nothing and know nothing.  There are many, many roadside monuments to accident victims, but they seem to make no impression on the drivers, whose motto apparently is, with apologies to John Dunne, "Never send to know for whom the bell tolls, it will never toll for me."

Driving Mr. Dave

For those of you who read the blog on a regular basis, you will notice right away that this is not a "Dave" posting - I am not nearly so eloquent.  We just returned from a vacation through southern Albania.  We first went to Gjirokaster, then Saranda and Himara.  Dave will post later with pictures and descriptions of the towns.  I am writing to describe the nerve wracking experience of driving in Albania.

The first leg of the journey to Gjirokaster was uneventful - we went on some very small roads, through the mountains and back down, but all in all, it way okay.  In typical Albanian fashion, we traveled about 140 miles in 6-7 hours.  The roads are so small, and in some cases not paved, so unlike most Albanian drivers, I do not drive very fast 

Traveling the beach roads coming back north was quite a different story.  Dave took lots of pictures and will post some, I'm sure.  We almost hit a big, blue truck, sort of like a dump truck, on one mountain road.  We were creeping along at about 10 mph, about to round a curve on a road that simply did not have room for two cars to pass.  In a split second, I heard a short horn blast and slammed on brakes, just in time to avoid a head-on collision with the big, blue truck.  It had beeped its horn to let oncoming drivers know that it was coming around the bend.  After we both stopped and I started breathing again, the next problem became what to do - I managed to back up enough and hug the cliff on our right side, giving the truck just enough space to get by.  We had several encounters like this, and I finally learned at some point to roll down the window and pull the rearview mirror in, so that it would not hit the oncoming cars.  In one of the very small towns, I did manage to graze a pedestrian with the passenger-side rearview mirror, but he was still standing as we drove on.  People standing in the streets don't feel the need to move out of the way, even when the road is not large enough for two cars to go through.  They just stand and stare at you.

We also encountered what we have come to describe as the typical Albanian driver.  It is not sufficient to just watch what is ahead of you, because the folks coming up from behind are always in a hurry to get somewhere.  Albanian drivers will pass you on a single lane road, on a hill, around a curve, with a cliff on one side and nothing but air on the other - even all of the above at the same time.  I have finally learned that I feel much safer with no one behind me, so I often pull to the side, if possible, to let people go around.  Then, at least I only have to watch in front.

In addition to the cars, both in front and behind, Albania presents many other challenges to driving.  We encountered donkey carts, horse carts, cows (which do not like to move no matter what), herds of sheep and goats (which are much more cooperative than the cows).  We also saw many scenes which are just hard to imagine including cows eating from a garbage dump, cows sleeping in a partially constructed building (these partial constructions are a whole other story - maybe Dave will do a post about it), goats being herded through partially constructed buildings, and what may be the oddest of all, a rooster chasing a cat.

We made it home, although my nerves were a little shot by the time we arrived.  Dave said a few times that he wished he had a tape recorder to document some of the things I was saying to the drivers.  For the sake of my child, I am quite glad that he didn't.  Yesterday was Saturday and I never left the house or even got out of my pajamas all day.  I think we have both decided, at least as long as I am the family driver, that flying somewhere and staying for awhile would be much more relaxing.

Dave will post pictures in the coming week  - despite the roads and drivers, the scenery was beautiful.   

On the family front, Taylor is still in Mississippi visiting her Dad and lots of other folks.  She returns later this month.  I have never been apart from her for this long before, and I really miss her.  The house is very quiet without her around.

That's all for now - some of you who are reading, post a comment now and then to let us hear from you.

Cindy

The Google

A couple of people have questioned my use of "the google" in some posts.  So I feel compelled to explain that I have borrowed the term from one of our presidential candidates.  I won't say which one, but he's the one who, in the last couple of months, has said he knows nothing about economics and it wouldn't bother him if we stayed in Iraq a hundred years.  He also has said he knows virtually nothing about the Internet, but is trying to learn to connect, and hopefully he'll learn enough soon to be able to do email and maybe even the google.  Maybe the google was a dance when he was a child; if so, maybe he could teach it to Paris Hilton.  Two empty minds could unite in a common cause.

I don't mean this to be unduly uncharitable.  I'm sure the man is not nearly as mean-tempered as he is made out to be.  I respect the man for his military service, POW years, and time in the Senate.   But what does that have to do with qualifications to be president of the United States?  Is every former POW "qualified" because of that unfortunate experience?  Every Senator?  I realize that a lot of people will vote for whomever because they have an R (or a D) behind their name.  But it says volumes to me that our senior senator from Mississippi seems not to be able to stand the guy.  But don't worry, be happy, go do the google.