Berat & Gorican

This was taken from the third floor balcony of the restaurant where we ate lunch in Berat.  Berat is about a two and a half hour drive more or less south of Tirana.  At Berat the "good" road ends and a not-so-good mountain road continues south into the mountains.
Pedestrian bridge over the river.  This is looking south, or probably actually southeast.
Looking northwest on the road back to Tirana.  Also from the restaurant.

Berat is known for its architecture, especially the "walls" of windows and the houses built on the sides of the steep hills.  These two pictures are of opposite sides of the river.  Berat was recently listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
This is the school at Gorican.  The kids loved posing for pictures -- not sure why.  We were there for a project planned by USAID.  This Saturday's chores were to plant trees along the sides of the long walk pictured above, clean off and line the soccer field seen on the left, put up two goals and netting, and around behind the school, to put up two basketball goals and a volleyball net, spreading dirt/sand for the playing surface.  Someone from USAID arranged collecting all the materials, and I must say she did an excellent job.  Everything was there and ready, including a whole lot of people.
This is the soccer field and one of the new trees.  Took this picture during the ceremony, so there was no one on the walk of the field.
Site of the ceremony.
One of the soccer goals standing upright, and the crackerjack international team of concrete mixers.

The man pointing to the camera here asked me who I was going to vote for.  He was very relieved it was Obama.  If the election were going to be held in greater Europe, it would be a huge Obama landslide.  He kept asking me which of the Albanian parties I supported, and I lied a little and said I didn't know enough about them to know.  There was no doubt who he and his buddies supported (not the incumbents), but he let me off the hook.