Article by Nikos Kakagias
Cover photo by Ευτύχης Τσαουσίδης
Edited by Harrys Pourouzidis
- Berat -
The rain woke us.
“Damn…”
“Quickly, start the dance of drought,” ordered the druid.
And, oh-miracle-of-miracles, Toutatis smiled upon us. Not only that, but he showed us his best face, washing the atmosphere clean. The view from the castle of Berat, at the top of the hill, offered beautiful images, with the river below circling the hill. The castle itself, well kept, remained as alive as ever, sheltering an entire village within its walls.
The colourful crowds of tourists flowing in did not distract us in the slightest from our work, and we barely noticed the time passing until Dimos ordered our exit.
- Apollonia -
We left heading west, and we had to cross almost the entire southern edge of our neighbour before we could cry out, “Thalatta, thalatta!” (Sea oh Sea!)
Along the way, and quite suddenly before we reached Fier, we turned northwest to face the ruins of Apollonia. A brief archaeological briefing followed from the historian of the group, so that the rest of us might know what we were photographing. Then came our wandering through the beautifully maintained site, which holds the remains of the ancient Corinthian city. Together with Epidamnus, it may have been one of the northernmost cities of antiquity within the Greek sphere, although it was far from purely Greek, since the Illyrian element was numerically stronger. What the written sources do tell us, however, is that the two peoples coexisted peacefully, without major conflict.
We learned about the vandalism of the Nymphaeum in our own time — as recently as 2020, in the middle of the pandemic — by unknown perpetrators, and so we photographed the ruins of the monumental fountain. The façade of the bouleuterion and the theatre were still in place, and so our photographic attempt found its meaning.
- Narta -
The valley of Fier carried the stale smell of oil through the air and was scattered with extraction facilities, reminding us that this too is an oil-producing country. We quickly left it behind and, after a two-hour drive, reached the park of the Aoos river delta: Narta. The shallow lagoon, surrounded by sand dunes and wetlands, offers access to its small island through a beautiful wooden walkway, which, it seems, the locals favour as a photographic setting for the beginning of married life.
The Byzantine Monastery of the Transfiguration strongly recalls Kastoria’s Koumbelidiki, and around it one can clearly see the effort being made to restore the site. Narta received its rightful photographic share, and then we left farther south, towards Vlorë.
A major port since antiquity, Vlorë in its present form confirms the view of postmodern architectural thinking that wants every inch of land to be built over with a variety of monstrous structures — an approach I imagine the locals acquired through their close relationship with their southern neighbours. In any case, already weary of such familiar images, we escaped after a stop of only a few minutes. Ahead of us, and farther east, the long mass of the Ceraunian Mountains stretched along the Adriatic. At their far end lay the final destination of the day: Sarandë.
