Gjirokastër – Riding Through Stone and Silence
The climb is sharp, but the reward is surreal.
Gjirokastër rises like a memory carved in stone. Cobbled streets twist upward, polished by centuries of feet and hooves. When you push your bike through the old bazaar, you feel the weight of stories stacked like the Ottoman houses on the hills.
This is the city of Ismail Kadare, Albania’s most revered writer, who once described it as “a city where houses speak.”
And they do. Some whisper of weddings, others of exile. Some still echo the sound of zithers and lullabies.
We rested near the castle wall, where a rusting American fighter plane from the Cold War rests — a quiet relic of a time when even the sky was suspicious.
Lunch was in a shaded courtyard — qofte grilled in thyme smoke, white cheese like snow, tomatoes warm from the sun. And later, coffee in the shade of a fig tree, overlooking the Drino valley.
“Here,” our host said, “history is not behind us. We live with it every day.”
You’ll believe it.
