Montenegro/Albania: Day 9

Shkodër

A rainy day caused a slight change in our sightseeing schedule. Just around the corner from our hotel we first visited St. Stephen’s Cathedral.

*200 years old, became a gym during the communist years when religion was outlawed*

*Next visited a Venetian mask museum. Venice has outsourced its production to Albania.*

*I didn’t bother with the museum part, just looked around the shop*

*the longest and best-preserved Ottoman-era stone bridge in Albania, 1768*

*closest we got to the fortress was a drive by*

*Needing to fill time we drove out to the lake for a picture and a coffee*

Finally we visited the Site of Witness and Memory, a museum dedicated to those imprisoned and/or lost to the brutal years of Communism in Albania.

A brief history: after WWII Communists, in the guise of being anti-Nazis, took over the country with the promise of equality for all, but we all know how that turns out. The country was closed by Dictator Hoxha and by 1960 religion was banned, churches were demolished or turned into gyms, cinemas, cafes. Priests, the educated, dissenters, protesters, etc were imprisoned or murdered. The president had successive bromances then breakups with Yugoslavia, Soviet Union, and China. Finally alone and paranoid by the 70’s Hoxha set dubious world records of 1. smoking the most cigarettes in one day (221), and 2. building the most bunkers (170,000). He dies in 1985, and by 1992 Albania finally votes in a democratic government and opens again.