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Great Presentational Video for Albania

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I apologize about this and hope that things will go smoothly from now on.

By the way, if you have not gotten any emails from the blog for some time, then I invite you back to visit: Albanian Blogger.

Regards,

Elvis

P.S. In the next days I will be updating my blog template. Not a major difference, just a facelift

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Here is an inverview after the first rehearsal. I’d like to hear some of your thoughts as well…

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Here comments…

1. A EUR20/night one star hotel in Himara sometimes has no hot water.

2. A EUR100/night five star hotel in Saranda sometimes has no hot water.

3. Himara is now 20 minutes drive from Dhermi, thanks to a new coastal road.

4. Sometimes your favourite seafood restaurant in Saranda from 2008 is no longer your favourite in 2009.

5. Berisha travels via helicopter.

6. Ksamil is one of the most beautiful places I’ve seen in my life.

7. Saranda is booming, and may overtake Gjirokastra as the southern hub of Albania.

8. Police in Gjirokastra are petty and mean.

9. Permet is the city of “cannot find any flowers” and the city of “getting lost on the way to Korca”.

10. Giving locals a lift in the car can be a major educational resource.

11. Fresh fish from the pond to the plate in 10 minutes tastes fantastic!

12. It takes 6 hours to drive from Gjirokastra to Korca.

13. Korca has great coffee, magic byrek, and a serious shortage of nice hotels

14. Thanks to a new highway, Korca to Pogradec is only 30 minutes drive

15. The view of the lake and mountains in Pogradec is just breaktaking

The final (extra) thing I learned on my drive around Albania, is that it is just so beautiful and amazing…

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Two days are truly a short time for such a great city, but luckily I found all the time I needed to visit the places that I had set up to like the Piazza del Duomo and the Teatro La Scala. Both these sites were connected by the Vitorio Emmanuele II Gallery, which was just another unique architecture in itself.

The Duomo
The massive and tall pillars of the Duomo were what impressed me right away as I entered its doors. The huge space inside seemed almost as inexhaustible but so was the amount of detailed work that had gone into all the different features of the building, both inside and out. Truly impressive.

La Scala
The La Scala theater, was truly very close to the Duomo. The building was not that impressive from the outside. Unfortunately I did not get to go in since it was closed at the time that I went. Nevertheless, a guy standing outside did offer me to buy some tickets for the performance that same night, however the price was 5 times higher, at 50 Euro. So my suggestion would be to either reserve them in advance or buy them directly at the ticket counter.

The Last Supper
One other place that I had not thought I would have been to visit was what our Italian guests referred to simply as “The Last Supper”. Meaning, the painting by Leonardo Da Vinci of the last supper of Jesus and His disciples. Also a very unique experience for me as I got to learn a lot about the history of this painting and the fact that Leonardo had not used “the right” technique to paint the afresko (painted mural) therefore causing it to disintegrate with time. There were many interesting details, which I am not going to go into here, but to say that the restauration work had gone on for 21 years, a work which was mainly devoted to taking off the more than 7 layers of additional paint that was used to try and maintain the colors of the original painting from fading out.

No pictures were allowed, so I could not do much about it. Moreover, there were strict regulation in place to try and preserve the painting, like no more than 25 visitors at a time were allowed to enter the room and this could happen only every 15 minutes. The cost to enter was relatively cheap, at about 6.5 Euro, for something that is worth so much more.

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For several days, Kosovo’s Serbs have shown their anger by destroying U.N. and NATO property, setting off small bombs and staging noisy rallies.

On Thursday, the neighboring Croatian Embassy also was targeted by the same group of protesters at the U.S. Embassy, and smaller groups attacked police posts outside the Turkish and British embassies in another part of the city but were beaten back.

Elite police paramilitaries drove armored jeeps down the street outside the U.S. Embassy and fired dozens of tear gas canisters to clear crowds. The protesters fled into side streets where they continued clashing with the police.

Groups also broke into a McDonald’s restaurant and demolished the interior. A number of other shops were also ransacked and people were seen carrying off running shoes, track suits and other sporting goods from a department store.

Doctors at Belgrade’s emergency clinic reported treating more than 30 injured, half of whom were policemen. All were lightly injured, said Dusan Jovanovic, deputy chief of the clinic, adding that most of the injured protesters were “extremely drunk.”

The U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Zalmay Khalilzad, said he was “outraged” by the attack and would ask the U.N. Security Council to issue a unanimous statement “expressing the council’s outrage, condemning the attack, and also reminding the Serb government of its responsibility to protect diplomatic facilities.”

Serbia’s President Boris Tadic, on an official visit to Romania, appealed for calm and urged the protesters to stop the attacks and move away from the streets. Tadic said that violence was “damaging” Serbia’s efforts to defend Kosovo, which declared its independence from Belgrade on Sunday.

Note: Quotes from different sources.

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The image name said: U kry, bacë – It is done! Which is very significative of what was recently achieved by the Kosovar parliament and people.

As a personal disclaimer I should say that I have a good number of Serbian friends whom I love and respect very much, so this post is not meant to offend them or their people, as much as to convey some of my own feelings about past and current unrealistic policies of their government.

Feel free to write your comments and opinions below:

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Sadly, I was not able to go to Kosova to witness this great historic event firsthand, but I was glued to the TV all day watching all the channels I could, both local and international, to try and get a good perspective of all that was going on.

And indeed all programmed proceedings in the Kosovar Parliament went great. The Albanian Kosovar MPs declared Kosova’s independence thus bringing about the fulfillment of a common dream paid for dearly by many people who devoted themselves to the cause, even to the sacrifice of their lives.

Independence Day for Kosovars and Albanians everywhere was not only a reminder of the many hardships and sacrifices endured throughout the many decades under the former Republic of Yugoslavia, but also of the fact that they belong to a greater community of nations and that they should be free to decide that course for themselves.

Some more outside sources

Since this morning I’ve been watching and looking at different sources for news and video and these are only some of the ones I looked at:

• Kosovo MPs proclaim independence, by BBC News
• Kosovo declares independence from Serbia, by MSNBC
• Kosovo celebrates amid Serb protests, by CNN Europe

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Also there is an interesting post by a fellow blogger that goes into more detail about the history and options for the flag of Kosova.

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