Balkans – Page 3 – From Pyrenees to Pennines

Balkan Postcards 10: Portraits from Thessaloniki

We’ve had a tiring day, and each of us has a severe case of Museum Foot. It’s been fun and varied too. Perhaps I’ll share a portait or four.

This funerary portrait in the Archaeology Museum impressed me. Did this man, who could easily be The Chap Next Door, really live more than 200 years BCE?;

Here’s another figure from the past, Alexander the Great. He’s posing outside the White Tower, part of Thessaloniki’s defences since the Ottoman era.

Spotted on a wall in town. I don’t know any more about it.

I know how this cat feels. Might join her.

Balkan Postcards 9: Thessaloniki, Gateway to the Balkans.

Our first morning in Thessaloniki: a day in which to find our feet & get used to the heat. Here are a few postcards ….

… and from the Bey Hamami, a peaceful and still beautiful public baths to the city from 1444 till 1968, and closing today at 2.00 pm for two years for much-needed restoration.

And finally, a bit of street poetry, helpfully altered for a twenty-first century audience.

Later, when the heat dies down a bit, we’ll be ready for more.

The featured photo shows the entrance to the Bey Hamami.

Balkan Postcards 8: Breakfast Time for the Great White Egret

After my own breakfast, I had just half an hour to spare to watch this great white egret hunt for his. While I was there, he caught just two small fish. The nearby hens were busy too, as you can hear.

Our Prespa adventure is over now: our Balkan adventure is not. To be continued …

Balkan postcards 7: Pastoral Prespa.

Today was a day of birdsong: of nightingales without end, of golden orioles and hoopoes. It was a day to watch bee-eaters, pelicans, grey herons, night herons flying over the lake. It was a day to watch sows idling away the morning under a shady tree, or goats commandeering the hillside. Or to see a wild tortoise lumbering across the path.

Birdsong in the woods

Balkan Postcards 6: Postcards from Prespa

Today, we journeyed to Lake Prespa, Grecian section. To Little Prespa to be exact. We are staying on an island where we were promised a cacophony of frogs – all night – and a plethora of pelicans. The frogs are delivering: but the pelicans, up to perhaps 80% of them, have been decimated by avian flu. They were not there to greet us as we hoped. But aided by powerful lenses, we finally saw them. Trust me, they’re there, and there in abundance, roughly in the middle of the first shot.

Little Prespa and its pelicans, behind a carpet of asphodels.

I’ll send just one more postcard this evening, taken just as the sun set.

Balkan Postcards 5: Separating the Sheep from the Goats

I’m still in rural life mode, still observing an everyday story of country folk.

Today, we were at Little Prespa, wildlife haven for birds, lizards, butterflies and above all frogs. Yet again, we saw shepherds spending their day guiding their flocks, meandering along mountain paths. What we noticed was that goats and sheep prefer not to talk to one another. Goats in front, surging ahead to find the lushest bits of grass, sheep dawdling behind.

And later, as we ate our own picnics, we saw the sheep sheltering from the hot mid-day sun, huddling up close together, so that as little as possible of their bodies was exposed. Goodness knows where the goats and shepherd were at this point.

And here is a workhorse, carrying a load of wood for his owner.

Balkan postcards 4

Off to the hills around Albanian Lake Prespa today, we got to see something of the tough life of a farmer here. Though the sight this morning of a shepherd with his small flock – fewer than 40 animals – of sheep and goats and three sheepdogs wandering slowly along as they grazed seemed idyllic, I’m sure the reality of this subsistence-level existence is rather different. We spotted several other such flocks throughout the day. Do take the time to look and listen to the grazing sheep with their melodious bells in the video I link to below. It all seems to be from a very different world.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/MMPJTU9VDUUet97aA

Throughout the day, we saw solitary elderly women working alone in their narrow fields, weeding and wielding heavy mattocks. We spotted distant farmers working with ancient tractors. The thin rectangular fields set in regular grid formation in the picture below are a throw-back to communist days, but have been retained because they work.

A grid of fields, shared fairly between local farmers.

Balkan postcards 3

You might notice we’re no longer in North Macedonia, but have moved to Albania. This is not in the spirit of ‘If it’s Tuesday, we must be in …’, but rather that our adventure is to get to know Lake Prespa, which laps the shores of these two countries, as well as Greece. An area largely unspoilt by tourism or any form of agribusiness, we’re here to discover its birds, bees, flowers, insects, as well as its chequered history.

Balkan postcards 2

Here’s who greeted us this morning ….

There are plenty more birds around, from waxwings, cuckoos, reed warblers, black woodpeckers and dozens more. But they’re too camera-shy to get in on the postcard.

And we ended the day spotting a wild boar family: boar, sow, and three little ones. They were camera shy too.

Balkan postcards 1

The first of a series of Balkan vignettes: full story later – postcards aren’t for long stories. Here we are beside Lake Ohrid in North Macedonia, staying in a former monastery. In a modern take on Henry VIII’s Dissolution of the Monasteries, this working monastery, dedicated to Saint Naum, was seized during the communist era, and transformed into a hotel. Yugoslavia and the Communist period are long gone, but the hotel remains. God’s loss is Mammon’s gain.