Retreat in northern Greece, advance to Albania, return via Italy

The Pindus mountains in northern Greece are breathtaking and an ideal place for retreat and reflection. Some of this personal work has been painfully challenging and as I ponder the return to life back in the UK I realise that regular retreat needs to be part of that life. Paul Swann's book on 'Sustaining Leadership - You are more important than your ministry' has been a profound challenge. I commend it to anyone in Christian ministry, paid or unpaid!
Our final destination in eastern Europe is Albania and we arrived in a hot and humid Tirana, 40.5C according to the car heat sensor! This is one of the most unusual capital cities I've ever visited.
This is the famous concrete pyramid in the middle of Tirana, built in the dying days of communism, in tribute to the paranoid and evil dictator, Enver Hoxha. He impoverished and terrorised this country for over forty years. If you enlarge the picture, on the right hand side you can see two boys on their way to the top. I managed to get a quarter of the way up before feeling very unsafe! I have wanted to see this, now rotting, edifice for some years. I love communist concrete!
Just a few photos from our afternoon stroll around the city, including Mother Theresa Square (well, she was Albanian, even if she was born in Skopje, Northern Macedonia),

a walk-on art instillation,
The exit to an enormous, eerie, communist bunker, now museum, with an unusually painted building behind,
and Skenderbeg Square, with a statue of the c.14th Albanian hero where one one of Stalin once stood.



A very smelly and polluted river runs through the city...
... with a bridge of toadstools over it.
Why are we here? To visit a Tirana-based missionary family our church has supported for some years. We're looking forward to meeting them later today.
We've also finally made the decision on our return journey. We're booked on the night ferry from the nearby Albanian port of Durres to Bari in Italy on Monday. This will enable us to visit the co-grandparents of our granddaughter Aiya who live not far from Bari, and avoid crossing multiple eastern European borders. 

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