E Dua Beratin

The mural reads, "A woman with a book and pen has the strength to move nations. A woman with a mind and voice has the strength to change worlds."

Albania is home to 4 UNESCO World Heritage Sites. These include Beech tree forests, the Lake Ohrid region, Butrint, and Berat and Gjirokaster. The two cities of Berat and Gjirokaster are lumped together due to their shared Ottoman architecture. I visited Berat recently as my first ever solo trip. I made unexpected connections along the way and enjoyed fantastic Albanian language practice.

I visited the castle on my first full day in Berat. Since November is not tourist season, I had the castle mostly to myself (people still live there - it's a living castle). Unfortunately, the museum and churches were closed. By sheer luck, a man unlocked one of the Byzantine churches as I was passing by. Soon after I entered, a German couple and their tour guide joined. The guide began talking to me, and to his utter shock, I responded in Albanian. That launched a whole conversation about what I'm doing in Albania, how I know the language, etc. He was familiar with PC and invited me to join his tour free of charge! I tried to be a fly on the wall for the rest of the tour, but the guide was very inclusive and explained everything in 2-3 languages. He told me that the church in which we stood (Kisha Shen Mari Vllaherna/Church of St. Mary of Blachernae) was painted by Onufri. Since the church murals significantly postdate Constantine the Great, none of the paintings feature him. Blasphemous, I know! My Byzantine/East Romania History professor would be shaken to the core. However, there was a giant bust of Konstantin i Madh ("Constantine the Great") by the church's cistern, a structure that used to be a church too. We saw a massive cistern by the fortress. The cavern probably had phenomenal acoustics, but I didn't stand on the narrow, slippery stairs long enough to find out. We also saw two Ottoman mosques with great minaret remnants. You might wonder why both mosques and churches co-exist in Berat. When the Ottomans invaded, they did not demolish churches because Jesus is considered to be a prophet like Muhammad. Christianity and Islam are significantly intertwined.

Much of Berat's charm lays in the Ottoman architecture of its two historic neighborhoods: Mangalem and Gorica. The neighborhoods were full of twisty, stone passages. Stone was everywhere. A tree had grown through a cracked stone path, and someone circled more stones around its base as decoration. In his book Kronikë në gur (Chronicle in Stone), Ismail Kadare described Gjirokaster as a city of stone. I do not have the experience to compare Gjirokaster and Berat, but the same seems to apply to Berat. Berat's "official" nickname, however, refers to a different architectural feature: "City of a Thousand Windows." Something that made Berat even more beautiful were the Christmas lights. They even had a Christmas tree in the square! I attribute the lights to two things. First, Berat is a tourist location. Second, Berat has an active church. I didn't realize that I missed Christmas lights until I saw them in Berat.

Berat doesn't have dialect! I only ran into one dialect word. Everything sounds so crisp and standard! It was incredible. I could talk to anybody!!! I talked with the hotel owner constantly since she was an extrovert. We discussed everything from the hotel to her poetry. I talked to the tour guide at the castle. I talked to a guy playing chess in the castle. Some ladies outside a mosque started talking to me too. That was less successful because my head covering obscured sound. They were mind-blown and impressed that I, as a woman, was traveling alone. I am thankful to live in an area where I feel comfortable traveling solo. As a whole, people are always willing to answer your questions, and they are curious about who you are and what you're doing. It was an immersive experience, and I can't wait for my next solo trip.