New Year's Eve

My last post of the year -- I'm actually surprised I posted as many as I did, even accounting for the long periods of nothingness.

The weather is cool/cold here, but clear, so I'm looking forward to a good view of the fireworks tonight. We were going to go downtown and watch them from a friend's apartment right off of Skanderbeg Square, but all of our Albanian friends kept pointing out how packed the square would be at midnight, to the point of not being able to move. So instead of going downtown at nine and not being able to leave until two a.m. or so, we're going down the street to a house which has an unobstructed view towards town, and we'll go up on the roof (three storeys) and watch from there. Sounds much better. All this presupposes that I'll still be awake, of course.

We have nothing much planned for our four-day weekend. We're off Monday too because Saturday is an Albanian holiday, so since it falls on Saturday we're off Monday.

Over the last few years I've made a pot of gumbo for my birthday, and I'm planning on doing the same this year, and maybe some red beans and rice. The problem is that there are no gumbo crabs here, nor is there any andouille. There is no substitute for gumbo crabs, and not a real substitute for andouille. But there is a very small German store here that sells kielbasa and other types of sausage, so I may have to try some for the base. I'll have a report in a couple of weeks.

A giant mall has opened in Tirana, called City Park. Not sure what all they have, but I think we're going one afternoon while we're off. They are supposed to have a very big and nice grocery store. The company is out of Slovenia. Each time a new store opens there are new products available. When we got here April of 2008 sour cream was not available, or buttermilk, or several other things. Since then I've seen sweet potatoes (only once, but I saw them), peanut butter, intermittently and not very good, Kraft mayonaise -- it says Kraft, but it's different. So a new grocery store brings hope -- vanilla extract? Cottage cheese? We'll see.

Ten years ago today I was in Ocean Springs, Mississippi, babysitting Jackson the dog while his owners were in Belize. The intervening 10 years have seen a lot of changes, not the least of which is that the Ocean Springs house washed completely away in Katrina. Cindy and I got married, completely remodeled a house, then sold it and moved to DC and now Albania. We're both enjoying our life here, and even enjoying being "homeless."

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! Gezuar viten i ri!

Baku

Our trip to Baku was very restful and enjoyable for me; a lot of work for Cindy. The old part of town (Icherisheher) has been settled since the 5th Century B.C. At one time Baku produced over half of the world's oil; it is still the main source of Azeri income. Baku started producing oil commercially in the 19th century; by the turn of the century it was a wealthy place. Outside of the Old City it is Parisian architecture, laid out with parks and boulevards and French-styled buildings and fountains. Then beyond that is the Soviet part, which is pretty drab and unimaginative.

Friday afternoon the Azeri prosecutor who had been coordinating and presenting the Azerbaijan government positions took us on a tour, and this is one of the places we went. This is a good brief website for further info. http://www.sputnik.in-baku.com/inbound/atesh.html

Atashgah Temple on the Apsheron peninsula.

This is also from our Friday afternoon tour. It is a defensive position now on the outskirts of Baku. Our guide told us that when the Russians took over Azerbaijan in the 18th and 19th centuries, they tore most of these down. He said something like 30 to 40 large ones were torn down. They left this one because it is so small and they didn't feel threatened by it.

The view back towards the city and the Caspian Sea from the castle above. It overlooks some of the oilfields, which I think are pretty polluted. Not much in the way of environmental standards in the 19th Century, or during Soviet times either. Stalingrad, now back to Volgograd, is not too far north of here. The World War II battle of Stalingrad was initiated because Hitler, against the advice of his generals, decided to try to capture the Baku oil fields before he finished his capture of Moscow. Bad decision -- he lost both.
The Maiden Tower on the Caspian Sea in downtown Baku, in the Old City. This is taken from our hotel balcony restaurant, which fortunately had an inside part as well.
The new theatre. Modern plays as well as Shakespeare were on the marquee.

The minaret at one of the old mosques in the Old City. Much of the city is built with sandstone, which is carvable without a lot of difficulty, which accounts for the delicate carvings all over.

Dave on the top of the Maiden Tower. The guard wanted to take my picture; then he asked me if I had any cigarettes. When I said no, I offered him about $1 in coins, but he wouldn't take it.
Old city wall. The entire wall around the old city is still almost entirely intact. it used to extend to the Sea, but in this century the "beach" was extended a hundred meters or so and is now a long promenade.

Sharm el-Sheikh

We just returned from a little trip to Egypt over our Thanksgiving holidays. Because of three Albanian holidays and Thanksgiving and a weekend, we get six days off. So Cindy, Taylor and I went to Sharm el-Sheikh, at the very tip of the Sinai peninsula, and took life easy for a few days. Sharm used to be a quiet little fishing village, but now is a destination tourist resort, owing entirely to the spectacular coral reefs and tropical fish close by. Sharm is at the very top of the Red Sea, where it divides into the Gulf of Suez to the south and the Gulf of Aqaba to the north. The water is very, very clear. This first photo is of a small batch of coral close to the shore. It looks sort of like seaweed or something, but it is a coral bed almost to the surface.

This is also taken from the boat. The entire Sinai landscape is exceedingly desolate looking. Mt. Sinai is about 75 to 100 miles north of here. Other than the new resort city, hardly anyone lives on Sinai, and haven't for thousands of years. Since it's a peninsula it is not on the way to anywhere, there is no water, no vegetation, and few people. No wonder the Children of Israel got annoyed wandering around here.
On the boat, after a couple snorkling outings (three for Taylor; two for Cindy) recuperating.
The view from our balcony. Red Sea in the distance. Palm trees imported from somewhere. Grass -- all this stuff is imported. It reminded me of Las Vegas.
Another view of the Red Sea and Sinai. Flying over it on the way in I could see nothing green. The mountains go on for mile after mile, and nothing seems to be growing. Desalinization plants seem to provide the water.

More Lisbon/Boston Earthquake Musings

John Adams, Harvard graduate, mentioned in his diary an earthquake he felt in Braintree in 1755 -- it was a few days after the Lisbon earthquake, but before Boston knew about the Lisbon earthquake. I forget how many days after, I think a couple of weeks. Adams mentioned chimneys being damaged, among other things. I think it is an interesting tale to recount, because I think it shows just how little things have changed in 250 years.

Benjamin Franklin had conducted experiments, famous not only in America but also in Europe, demonstrating that lightning was electrical current seeking grounding to earth. He had recommended placing lightning rods on houses, church steeples, chimneys, et cetera, to intercept and channel the electricity to ground without actually hitting and destroying the houses, steeples, chimneys, and so forth. This was seen by some as a rather brazen attempt to insert human action as a mitigating effect on God's wrath, and of course caused great consternation among a certain segment of God's chosen, in this case a fundamentalist Boston preacher named John Prince. Fundamentalist is a more modern coinage -- he was just a Puritan, a spiritual descendant of Increase and Cotton Mather, famous Harvard grads and Puritan preachers, father and son on different sides of the Salem witchcraft trials. (Yes, even in the late 17th century there were autobiographies and self-serving spin, after the fact, about what one really thought of witches and the trials.)

John Prince railed against the placement of these iron points as being against God's plan. Earthquakes were God's direct intervention in the affairs of man, being sent to, a., warn us of our sinfulness and lack of adherence to God's laws, or, b., punishment for our sinfulness and lack of adherence to God's laws, or both. If you've ever listened to Pat Robertson or James Dobson, you understand John Prince. (Katrina as response to gays in New Orleans, anyone?)

John Winthrop, Harvard professor and one of John Adams more influential professors, motivated by ensuring using scientific discoveries to promote the public good, was moved to give the scientific response to Prince's sermons. (Condoms and Dr. Joycelyn Elders, anyone?) They alternated publishing pamphlets on the subject, and frankly I don't know how it all played out. I see lightning rods still, though. News of the Lisbon earthquake would have arrived during the pendency of this great lightning rod debate; maybe it ended it or intensified it. I don't know. Most likely, then as now, people went on believing what they believed, despite any sort of outside evidence.

The conflict between science and religion goes on, of course, and it is sad sometimes to realize the silliness of the arguments. Some of them take on a sort of Greek mythology aura, gods struggling with humans, with other gods, with the natural world. Sort of like John Prince. I mean, if he believed in an omnipotent God who sent earthquakes to warn and/or punish sinners, what possible shield could a lightning rod be? But people do get worked up about it.

For his part, John Adams and the major founding fathers tended to Deism; basically that God created the universe according to natural law and rules, within which we operate. You've heard it described as God winding up the clock and letting the universe play out. The founders believed it, as did Voltaire, a contemporary, whose Candide was prompted by the Lisbon earthquake. (These things have a life of their own -- Leonard Bernstein's Candide, to a libretto by Lillian Hellman, is a modern classic). Candide was about an eponymous man, Candide, whose saga contradicts the prevailing outlook of mid-18th Century Europe that the world and all that happens therein is a result of God's beneficence and master plan. Events like the Lisbon earthquake caused thinking people to question if that could really be true; and if it was true, what was the purpose of 100,000 dead Portugese (and more in other places in Portugal and Africa) Christians sitting in church? I have no way of knowing, but later in life John Adams mentioned in a slightly self-congratulatory way that he hadn't attended a church service in over 50 years, and I can't help but think (wishful thinking?) that the Lisbon earthquake weighed on his mind. Two hundred and fifty years of soul searching, from Schliermacher to Tillich and Niebuhr(s) and we're still grappling with the issue of why bad things happen to good people.

Why do bad things happen to good people? That is a serious question with which many great minds have grappled.

Here is a frivolous question, but one you can grapple with yourself: If the whole earth flooded (enough flood to cover Mt. Everest, we presume), notwithstanding where the water came from, where would it recede to?

Back From London

I'm back from London, and it
was an okay trip, but not too enjoyable, and long. So here's the
details:

Got there on All Soul's Day and had an uneventful transfer from
Heathrow to my hotel on Baker Street. All Soul's Day is one of the
more important feast days to me, for quasi-religious reasons. It was
the day in 1755 when Lisbon was destroyed by an earthquake -- a very
large earthquake, followed within the hour by a tsunami, which was in
turn followed by a great fire which burned out of control for days.
It so happened that Nov. 1 was on a Sunday in 1755, and the several
hugh cathedrals and smaller churches were full of people. Lisbon had a population of about
250,000 people, of whom about 100,000 died. The reason I think of it
often, especially on Nov. 1, is because of the effect it had on
philosophy and subsequent thinking of the enlightenment philosophers,
including our founding fathers. The obvious question was how could a
loving God do this to so many innocent people, especially in church on
a feast day? And the answer, marking a big break with entrenched
religious thinking of the day (and still with us, sad to say) is that
He didn't do anything. Most of our founding fathers didn't think God
had a lot to do with our day-to-day lives. They thought the world ran according to natural laws and God didn't intervene.

Anyway, the following day, Monday, I met the retired British Foreign
Service diplomat whose apartment in Pimlico I was renting, and settled
in, and made it to Harley Street for my two o'clock appointment with
Mr. Hadi Zambarakji, my ophthalmologist. To digress again, in England
they are Mr., not Dr., and they are consultants, not doctors.

My consultant, Mr. Zambarakji, examined my eyes and concluded I indeed
had a secondary cataract in my right eye, which he zapped with a
laser. It has recovered very nicely, and now I have 20/25 vision in
that eye. The laser didn't hurt at all. I felt nothing, and the only
thing I heard was him "pulling the trigger" 10 or 12 times.

I was scheduled for cataract surgery at 7:00 Friday morning at
Wellington Hospital at St. John's Wood, the same place I went to for
the detached retina last year. Because my Visa card had had some sort
of security restrictions placed on it, so I effectively couldn't use
it. So I spent Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday emailing my bank in
Jackson, Security in Charlotte, etc., to get my card activated. But I
was able to get enough money to pay for the doctor. I had to pay up
front for the hospital and doctor and I'll submit a claim to Blue
Cross.

Things went well after surgery; I left the hospital around noon
Friday. By Saturday morning I was having an allergic reaction to the
drops I was putting in the eye, but I didn't realize it. But by
Saturday sometime in the night I knew it wasn't right, so Sunday
morning I called and ended up going back to the hospital to see Mr. Z.
He thought I was allergic to the preservative in the drops, and
changed drops, and I started recovering. He also discovered I had
somehow gotten a scratch on the eye, which was somewhat painful. And
he said I had to stay beyond Tuesday -- I had appointments on M, W and
F, and left Saturday morning early to come back to Tirana.

My left eye is steadily improving and I think it will end up about
like the right eye. Mr. Z. said he was trying to match the left with
the right eye, and I think it will end up that way. If it does, then
I probably won't get glasses, as 20/25 seems damn near perfect to me.
I'll have to get reading/computer glasses, though.

Gunpowder Day also came while I was in London. Or Guy Fawkes Day. November 5, 1605 the plot to blow up Parliament was discovered. Now it is celebrated with fireworks, not just on November 5, but for a few days before and a few days after. I didn't venture out to see any, but I heard a lot.

The apartment was nice, and the only drawback was that the man in the adjoining apartment was obviously a Chelsea football fan, which in and of itself was of no moment; however, Chelsea had two big games while I was there, and the win over Manchester United really got him excited.

So much for London. It was cold, wet, dark -- very much like Seattle in winter.

I got back to Tirana at one, went to the wine store with Cindy on the
way back, and chilled out until we went to the Marine Ball that night.
My eye was droopy, but I enjoyed sitting at the table chilling and
talking to the people who weren't dancing. I did dance once -- I'm
sure I did an excellent job.

I've been to work two days now, and tomorrow I think I'm coming home
early to rest my eyes. Reading is a little difficult and irritates my
eyes, so I don't do a lot of it. Monday morning going through emails
was about all I did for the rest of the day.

He's Coming Home

Well, Dave has been in London since November 1 dealing with his eyes. He went up there to see what they could do for his eyes. For those of you who have (or have not) been keeping up, on his right eye, he's had a detached retina (twice) and cataract surgery. Since then, he has developed a secondary cataract on the new lens on the right eye, and all the while he was developing a cataract on the left eye. With his eye issues and the fact that his hearing is shot, he keeps saying he just needs a head transplant - but, that's another story. Anyway, he goes to London, and right off the bat, they zap the right eye (what we have been calling his bad eye) and it's doing great. A few days later, he goes to have the cataract removed from the left eye. All goes well for a time, then he has an allergic reaction to some of the drops he is using and somehow gets a scratch on his cornea. So, instead of coming home this past Tuesday, he will come tomorrow, just in time for the Marine Corps Ball. Taylor and I have eaten pizza, Chinese food, stuff from the freezer, etc. And, we have now developed an attachment to a new puppy. We have promised to let Dave name him Rover if he agrees to let us get the dog. We will see. He says he's ok - we'll see when we get a look at him.

I finally moved into this century and got a Facebook page, but have not yet convinced Dave to do so. If anyone's reading, send him a comment and let him know you're thinking about him.

Cindy

Grammar lessons unlearnt

I’m in London for eye work, and so far all I can read are the headlines. Like this one: “Chelsea sit pretty after ugly victory over United.” I thought, well, sports page, you know, they left off the “s” on sits. Then this one: “England need a back-up plan to counter their forward failings.” Why not “needs”? And then “Battling Chelsea are sitting pretty.”

I got it! Sports teams are plural! Our sports teams may or may not be plural – we would say “Yankees are sitting pretty,” but we would never say “New York need a back-up plan.”

As all of my great insights, this one are completely useless for any known constructive purpose and wholly lacking any commercial possibilities entirely. In short, it can’t be “monetized,” and if something can’t be monetized, what good are it?

Barcelona

Here are some pictures of our trip to Barcelona in July. Cindy and I met Elisabeth and Valena in Rome and flew on to Barcelona. This picture is in front of the fence at Familia Sagrada.

The Miro mosaic in the sidewalk on Las Ramblas.

The view from the landing at our apartment, looking down the stairwell. We had a third floor walkup.

TThis is the conduit array from the electrical service entrance to the apartment. It's in the entry hall -- sort of a nice geometric pattern.

Elisabeth and Valena in Place Real, close to where our apartment was located.

Place Real in the Barri Gottic, not far off the Ramblas.

Traveling

We are entering a short stretch with lots of travel. Sunday I'm going to London to see about my eyes. Expect to come back early the following week. A friend at the British embassy connected me with a retired couple who have a London flat they rent to British diplomats. They made an exception for me. So I will be staying in Pimlico, SW1, and riding the tube around. The over Thanksgiving is our annual happy confluence of holidays -- we have six days off, starting with Thanksgiving Day. We'll come back to work on Wednesday. We're tentatively planning to take a five day trip to Sharm al-Sheik, Eqypt, right at the point of the Sinai peninsula. That's still tentative. Alma, our friend who owns a travel agency, found out about it. We're waiting to see if there is enough interest. Dec. 5 - 12 we'll be in Baku, Azerbaijan. Cindy is going to be part of an OECD anticorruption assessment trip with people from the EU and I don't know who else. I'll just be a tagalong tourist. (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development). OECD is headquartered in Paris, and Cindy is supposed to go to a followup meeting there in March. I'll plan on going with her on that one too.

Our embassy has an OIG team here now for our two-week inspection. Some of the career State people are a little nervous -- it is amazing how the lack of continued job prospects make one have a much more nuanced view of these things. In short, I'm not real worried about it. I figure it is sort of like a professor writing an exam -- he has the option to write one no one can pass, one everyone can pass, or something in between. So we'll see what these folks have in mind.

Weather has been nice -- in the 70s today. Supposed to be near freezing Friday and Saturday mornings.

There is what we call the German store across town near Embassy Row, and I was able to find some cheddar cheese there Sunday. A successful outing. The American embassy is across town from Embassy Row, so I don't make it to the german store much. But this turned out to be well worth the detour.

The Lura Lakes

The approach to the first lake. This is the second vehicle in our caravan. The man at the hotel said our Mercedes 4-wheel drive vehicle would not make the trip. That should have told us something we needed to know, but of course we took it at face value and all loaded into the appropriate vehicles -- Range Rovers, Land Cruisers -- like I say, it should have told us something.

The first and the lowest in elevation of all the lakes. There are seven lakes that make up the "Lura Lakes" region. It is a national park, but illegal logging has mostly left it barren. The highest one is at about 1600 meters. This one I thought was the prettiest in its present state.

On the walk to the third lake.

The last of the lakes, Lake of Flowers. It has suffered the most from logging because of the silting. In the next two pictures the grassy portion is very boggy. I don't know how long it takes for silted in areas to become "firm" or if they ever do, but this one has a ways to go.

As far as one could see, the remains of a forest. None of this has been replanted, either, and there were no seed trees left to provide natural reseeding. I saw very, very few little new trees coming up anywhere.
A good section of the road. This is on the way way down. Some sections were so bad that one of the ladies got out and walked a hundred yards because she knew the car was going to roll off the side of the mountain. Besnik had to stop several times and roll big rocks off the road that had fallen after we drove up. We all agreed that we would have been better off to have seen the first lake and left the mountain, but now at least we can say we survived.

LURA

The first three photos are from the hotel looking down at Lura. There are actually three little villages called Lura: Krej Lura, Fushe Lura, and Gur Lura. We were in Gur Lura. Gur means stone. Gur Lura is the highest in the valley. These little mountain villages are snowed in during the winter. One of the guys at work is an ex-military officer, and he commanded a battalion based at Peshkopi, on the other side of the mountains. When I told him where I'd spent the Fourth of July weekend, he just laughed. He had a company based in Lura; in fact, the old barracks are just down the road from the hotel. He had to visit several times a year. Besnik, who we rode with back from Lura, is from a little town close to Peshkopi, and he told us when he left home to attend university in Tirana, he walked from there to Kurbnesh to catch a ferganz or hitchhike to Tirana, an all-day walk. Same with my work colleague, when he came to visit his family in Tirana, he would walk to Kurbnesh to catch a bus or hitchhike. The copper mine in Kurbnesh blocked the road so there was no through-traffic. There's not a lot of traffic now. There are scores of these little mountain villages in Albania, and understandably they're losing population. In Tirana we know people who live in Tirana but were born in places like this; not unlike Mississippi, where it is not at all unusual to meet people born and raised in the now little and forlorn dried-up towns around the state who have moved to Jackson.

This is supper, waiting to be served. There were about 30 of us on this trip, and a couple of the guys had made the trip a few days before to arrange accomodation for us all at the hotel and to have the meal prepared. They brought me the head and put it in front of me -- Cindy said I was the guest of honor. I guess because I was the instigator and they knew I really wanted to make the trip. Turns out barbecued goat brains are kind of sweet.

After supper they started making toasts. Someone made a toast to our Fourth of July, so I made a toast. Cindy said it was more like a short story. But I explained that we didn't know how to make toasts because of Thomas Jefferson. They were very popular in colonial America, and as happens with anything involving drinking, the more they drank the more toasts that were made, and the more toasts the more they drank until sometimes they became rather rambunctious affairs. Anyway, when Jefferson was in Paris he discovered the French did not play this particular drinking game, and when he became president he discontinued the practice. So it is his fault I don't know how to make a toast. But I'd already toasted enough that it seemed the proper thing to do.

TO LURA II

On the "outskirts" of Kurbnesh. Kurbnesh is about halfway between Rrëshen and Lura. Rrëshen is where the paved road ends. Kurbnesh is close to Oroshi, which if you've read Broken April is where the blood fued killer goes to pay his death tax.

A nice mountain meadow. They are gathering sticks and putting them on the horse to carry back for cooking. Out in the country one sees a lot of this black dress/white scarf mode of dress for older ladies.

Finally, the billboard for the hotel!

And here is the driveway to the hotel, from the hotel looking toward the mountains where the lakes are. The elevation at the hotel I think is about 3000 feet or so.

On the Way to Lura

I had wanted to go to the Lura Lakes region of north central Albania since reading about it in our guidebook. There are seven lakes high in the mountains, and it was by reputation one of the most beautiful places in Albania, albeit somewhat less than in its prime due to illegal logging. It looked reasonably close on the map, and the highway was a nice big red color so it should be reasonably accessible. The prosecutor who is the head of the JIU was familiar with the area, having grown up not too many miles away, and he volunteered to organize an expedition. We left Tirana on July 3rd in a caravan of seven vehicles. These photos are in reverse order.

Immediately below is the old copper mine smelter in Kurbnesh.

You can see the highway from the left of the photo down through the middle. All three of these pictures are looking more or less to the west, the direction from which we had come.

About an hour out of Tirana the paved highway ends, and this photo is the beginning of the "real" trip. The road got progressively worse and worse. It is about a two and a half hour drive from here to Lura with Cindy driving, although our driver on the way home was determined to make it in two hours. It rained once we got there, and on the way back the road was muddy and slippery. One of guys drove our car and we rode in another car.

London

As it stands now, I will be going to London on Nov. 1 for a week or so to have my eyes checked out, and have cataract surgery on my left eye if that's the proper step. I remember being there in April/May of 2008 and writing a lot on this blog -- I've sort of tapered off, if anyone has noticed. But trying to make plans to go has brought back some of those memories.

November no doubt is going to be wet and chilly/cold, don't know which yet. I got my airplane reservations made this morning, appointments confirmed, and now I'm looking for a hotel. The place I stayed before is 132 pounds a night, which will come out of our pockets this time. So I'm looking on the internet for a hotel that is cheaper. I don't know if London is still the most expensive city in the world, or by what measure, but I don't think there are any cheap hotels. I just want one close to a tube station in an area with places to eat. That's not asking for too much. The best deal i've found so far is a Radisson hotel for about 87 pounds/night. That's $142. So wish me luck.

The New Orleans-NY Giants game was on Armed Forces TV last night, so I watched the second half. My first football outing this season. I haven't watched any baseball. I'm not sure I'd know who any of the players are, the newer ones anyway.

So I'm going to post this, and maybe it will help me get back in the blogging spirit.

Election Monitor

Tomorrow Cindy and I will be going out as part of the Embassy election monitoring mission.  Our team is me, Cindy, and Bruna.  Our assignment is the Central Election Commission here in Tirana.  It is not a polling place, but they will collect results.  Its main function is to set the rules and rule on disputes and answer questions from poll workers around the country.  Other teams left today for cities around the country.  I think we have about 15 teams.  They will be going to actual voting places.  It should be interesting.

Here people vote for the party, not a person.  Albania is divided up into 12 voting districts.  Each district has so many representatives alloted by population.  The biggest and smallest are Tirana with 32 and Kukes with 4.  There are 140 seats in Parliament.  There are 33 (I think) parties on the ballot.  A party has to get at least 5% of the votes in a district to qualify for a seat.  Most of the 33 parties will not have a representative.  In order to have some influence, though, many of the smaller parties enter into a coalition with a larger party.  There are 4 parties in the SP and DP coalitions.  They're the two big ones.  There are two other coalitions, but I'm not sure how many parties.  In each district the parties list the names of prospective members of parliament from one to whatever.  In Kukes there may be five and in Tirana maybe 40.  Then after it is determined how many seats each party gets the MPs will be named.  The tricky and horsetrading nature of it all is that a party can give a percentage to another party.  So say if the SP has 34.5% in Tirana, and it takes 32 % for 17 seats, they are going to waste 2.5%.  If their coalition partner G99 has 3.2, SP can give 1.8 to G99 so they can meet the 5% requirement and get a seat, and the coalition will have 18 instead of 17.  This goes on in all 11 districts.  These deals are not a matter of law but of whatever the coalition agreed/agrees on.  So, as I say, it should be interesting.

Birra Korça

I sometimes walk home from the embassy.  It takes about 45-50 minutes if I don't stop anywhere.  Yesterday, though, we got off work at 2 pm so as to avoid the traffic and general congestion which was increasing because of final large rallies for the two biggest political parties ahead of Sunday's election.  So three of the guys I work with went to the Birra Korça (Kor-cha) place by the Dinamo soccer stadium and had beer and qofte (meatballs, sausages-- qofte seems to be an all-encompassing term.)  We got there about 2:30, and it was full, I guess because that's a more normal eating time.  Most days when we stop there it is about 5:30 and it's mostly empty, 5:30 being about halfway between lunchtime and suppertime.  Anyway, about half of the tables were filled with either men and women, and a few just women.  My colleagues commented that five years ago it was extremely rare to see young women out by themselves, but of course it is widespread now.  They seemed to think this was an improvement, adding what one described as a "softer" ambience. Guys here are much more discreet in their girl-watching.  They will follow someone with their eyes, but usually not turn their head and stare.  So I caught one of the guy's eyes following someone down the sidewalk, so I asked him what was he looking at?  He was real embarrassed, and of course the other guys piled on until he turned red.   They're all in their 40s -- I doubt it would embarrass the 20s age group, but I don't know.  It was an enjoyable rainy afternoon diversion from working.  Bledi says the biermeister at Korça spent time in the Czech Republic, which is what he claims gives Korça its Pilsner quality.  I don't know, some people say it is the Korça water.  All I know is it is pretty good beer.

Hagia Sophia

The area from the Topkani Palace, Hagia Sophia, across the Hippodrome to Blue Mosque, covers only a few hundred feet.  It has been a focal point of western history for centuries.  Traveling around Europe one sees churches and chapels built in honor of one military victory or another, or for deliverance from some terrible clamamity, but Sultanahmet built the Blue Mosque more as propitiation for a loss to the Persians, a blatant attempt to get Allah back on his side.  The 17th Century was hard on the Ottomans -- they started the century being stymied in their attempt to expand eastward, by the Persians, and ended it in a disastrous loss to the Hapsburgs at Vienna, which ended their northward expansion.  They spent the next two hundred years in more or less steady decline, earning them the "Sick Man of Europe" moniker.  

 Their defeat by the Hapsburgs opened the way for attemp ted Hapsburg expansion into the Balkans, and while they were never fully successful, they succeeded in creating enough animosity that Slavic groups organized against them, the most notable being the "Black Hand," the Serbian group which orchestrated the assassination of Mr. and Mrs. Grand Duke Ferdinand of Austria 95 years ago this month, and which of course led to the beginning of World War I two months later.   Had the Ottomans won the battle in Vienna, the Danube might now have an Asian side and a European side, culturally if not physically.

So on to Hagia Sophia, built in the early 6th Century in what was then called Constantinople, seat of the patriarch of the eastern church, what we in the west call the Eastern Orthodox Church after the Great Schism of 1054.   The official name of the church is longer, but most people call it either Hagia Sophia or Santa Sophia, but the Sophia is not a female saint, but comes from the word "widson," so the name means literally "Holy Wisdom."  I wonder just how much holy wisdom it's seen in its 1500 years.

One of the early Christian-era mosaics in a side-entrance hallway.
Sultanahmet Mosque in the backround, from a second-floor window at Hagia Sophia.


The second floor main balcony which opens on three sides to the main level below.  Access to the second floor is via a ramp which switches back and forth through one of the outside piers.  
One of the early mosaics from the Christian era.  The Ottomans covered them up when they turned it into a mosque.  Some are slowly being uncovered.  It is pretty time-consuming, painstaking work.
From the balcony level, looking toward the main entrance. The railings are carved stone.  On one level it is a disappointment to walk in and see the scaffolding erected, but on another level it is good to see the buildings being cared for.  The sheer number of ancient structures in southern Europe is astounding.  Many deteriorate simply because funds aren't available to keep them up.  
A section of the ground floor marble flooring.  The slabs are roughly the size of a sheet of plywood, probably more like 10 feet.  Widths vary.  Cheaper grades of marble were used for flooring, street paving (remember the Dubrovnik photos -- this is not a test!)

and other assorted structural needs.
A one-piece marble urn.  There are two in the back of the church.  They hold water; you can see the sphigots toward the bottom.
This little house is inside the Hagia Sophia wall, and is where the man stayed who calculated the time for prayer.  Five times a day, set on a celestial schedule.
Outside the church, water fountains for foot washing.  And other things, I suppose.  I don't know if it was reserved for foot washing.  At Blue Mosque there were long rows along the courtyard walls, and all I saw were people washing their feet.