Albania and Northern Greece 2023: Part Four - Ioannina, Greece

Gjirokaster-Ioannina – 8^th June 2023

As we’re in the area, we’re now going to Northern Greece, which I can almost see from Ali’s balcony. Most people would return to Saranda, then Corfu, then a ferry to Igoumenitsa, then a bus to Ioannina, but I hate doubling back and why go the long way around? What could go wrong?

Ali kindly did some research and the buses to Ioannina are going at six in the morning or nine at night, neither of which are ideal and so, after another huge breakfast, he kindly arranges a taxi on our behalf for a very reasonable 2000 lek (£17). This is to get to the border, 30km away.

I was expecting huge queues of Albanian lorries, trucks full of migrants etc. but are just four cars. We walk through the barrier for foot passengers, have our passports stamped by a smiling official and engage in a conversation with a customs guy, who speaks very good English, and who is lovely, because every Albanian we’ve met here is lovely. ‘You’ve just got clothes in your bags, right?’ Yup. ‘Have a good holiday!’ It’s as if Hoxha had never existed.

We walk 500m through no-man’s land in the sweltering heat, aware that the Stalinist-Maoist-Hoxhaist Hoxha had mined this border in order to keep foreigners out and Albanians in. Nobody passes us except a white cat and an old gypsy woman who seems to be allowed to wander between Albania and Greece as she pleases. Perhaps she had been born here, unable to get into either country. Perhaps she held the begging franchise for the area.

The Greek border is another matter. It appears that there was a bus, although perhaps it didn’t bother to stop in Gjirokaster, and 100 or so Albanians are waiting in the hot sun where the Greek border guy can’t be arsed to check their credentials and doesn’t really want to let them in. This is the crossing for individuals.

We decide to become a car and wait behind several other vehicles with our wheelie luggage. Within fifteen minutes our passports are stamped. Just customs to go. While the Albanian registered cars have everything searched, and the odd Greek, Austrian etc. car has to wait behind them, we decide to take on the mantle of gormless tourists and casually and slowly jump the queue to the Greek side. It works!

On Google maps, Kakavije and Kakavia are clearly listed, given the same focus as Gjirokaster even. I expected a village broken in two by centuries of Balkan wars, with families torn apart by geopolitics, lovers on each side of the fence. There is a snack bar each side of the border. That’s it.

An old guy by a bus stop beckons us over - he might be the bus station/shack master, who knows. He points to a timetable in Greek (I can read Greek). The bus I had counted on, because online Greek timetables are reasonably accurate, at least compared to Albanian ones, should be in fifteen minutes, but of course that would be Albanian time. The next one is in three-hours.

We wait half an hour. Some guy turns up in a car. It doesn’t say it’s a taxi but at the front is a sign saying Ελεύθερος , and I’ve been to enough Greek toilets to know it means it’s available. Nobody else seems interested. ‘Posi kani?’ I say, having not bothered to learn a foreign phrase for decades as obviously everyone speaks English by now, not even remembering whether that’s Greek or Turkish. Luckily, he speaks international taxi-lingo ‘60 Euro Yannina - fixed price - 75 normal meter.’

So, our suicidal driver drives us over a mountain pass in the Northern Greek style - 70mph or as fast as the poor 30-year-old vehicle can manage, overtaking on bends with sheer drops, right hand and ear on a mobile, left hand on a ciggie.

We’re dumped in central Ioannina in the middle of a traffic jam. I’ve not had any communication from the Airbnb host so we go for a coffee in a cool-looking place with a broken coffee machine, so we go somewhere else. We find the Airbnb and still no instructions. The neighbour is a lovely woman and invites us in while we wait, but the door code info is texted the second check-in time is reached. It’s a strange place within the Castle walls – very clean and modern with a small terrace and ugly garden, no storage space or available plug points. It looks as though they’ve cut through a normal house down the middle. Still, there’s beer and sparkling wine in the fridge, so it immediately gets a five-star review from me.

We’ve been to Ioannina before in 2019 and it’s a great place. Lots of students, it tends to get noisy on weekend nights. We go for a wander and a beer beside the pretty lake, go to the supermarket, back to the Airbnb to relax, listen to music and read, then to dinner. We went to this great place in an old Ottoman house four years ago, perhaps to the day, so return there.

We order a huge delicious fava bean and creamed cheese dip to start. Half way through our hot mains come. The waiter tries to clear our food from our tiny table. We ask for the mains to come later but he tells us ‘ten-minutes limit.’ He brings us a low table and puts the mains on that.

We’re not happy and we’ve lost our appetite. I ask for the bill but they can’t be arsed so I go downstairs to pay. The manager doesn’t care either. ‘This is how we do things in Greece,’ he says to wind me up, as it’s not and I’ve been to Greece more times than he has years in his life. Arrogant service spoiled what looked like very nice food.

Recover in a bar within the Castle walls. Lovely people. Drink coffee and 7-star metaxa on the pavement, little kids approaching us to practice their English.

Ioannina – 9^th June 2023

Apparently, there are some caves on the other side of the lake which are worth seeing. We get to the bus stop early and wait. In my best Greek, I ask the bus driver for ‘dhia billeti Pereahma parakalo.’ He pauses, looking straight ahead and says, in perfect received English with a hint of disgust ‘I have absolutely no idea what you are saying.’

Perama’s the last stop. We wonder if we’re in the right place as it’s a grim looking village half-populated by Asian and African refugees, who the locals don’t seem to have any problem with. It’s a ten-minute walk uphill to the entrance.

It’s fantastic! The best caves I’ve ever been to, and I’ve been to five! The complex was only discovered during WW2 when the locals used it as a bomb shelter. It’s 1,100 metres long, mainly uphill, and the stalactites and stalagmites are amazing and lit beautifully. Mrs Mad tells me which are the tites and which are the mites, but I forget instantly. There’s only six of us on the 45-minute tour. We emerge at the top and there’s an outside café with a beautiful view across the plain and lake. We stay an hour there, drinking ice-cold beers, and no other tourists come through. It’s like nobody has heard of the place.

Returning to Ioannina we take a boat to the island in the lake that nobody knows the name of. The last time we were here all the monasteries were closed, but we’re determined to see at least one. The Holy Monastery of Saint Nicholas of Philanthropenoi is the first. It’s deserted except for a little old lady who seems to have taken a vow of silence – she may be a nun in civvies. We wander around the courtyard, not knowing what to do, eventually opening a door tentatively. Wow! 13th century Byzantine frescos from floor to ceiling across four rooms, in near perfect condition. I’ve never seen any as good before and I’ve seen more than five. Some of the paintings are very grim. The little old lady stands behind me the whole time, not uttering a word, presumably making sure I don’t take photos, which is a shame as I would have liked one of the man being skinned alive. I drop a Euro in the collection box as that’s all I have. The other monasteries are closed, so we reason.

It's amazing that all these tourists flock to places like Corfu where there’s absolutely nothing to do and don’t venture inland to places like Ioannina. I’ll just keep quiet about it.

I’m tempted by the crayfish, eels and frogs’ legs which are a speciality of the island, but the lake-life in the tanks don’t look active enough for my liking. Instead, we go to a very popular restaurant by the main road in Ioannina. We have to wait for a table for a few minutes and then get humungous portions of souvlaki, chips, cheese, bread and salads for a few Euros. The food is great, but I can’t eat my servings, let alone Mrs Mad’s, who has the appetite of a bird.

It's a Friday night and all the young people of Ioannina are out to party. Even though we’re in the relative serenity of the Castle walls, you can still hear their din through the night.

Ioannina (Vikos Gorge) – 10^th June 2023

I finished working in 2019 and immediately after we went on a trip to research my book. We spent ten days in Catania and Siracusa before getting a propellor plane to Athens. After this we were supposed to fly to Corfu where my sister had invited us to stay in a villa. Wisely, I choose not to book the Corfu air tickets as, just before we were due to fly to Sicily, she delayed her holiday by a week. What to do? We could have flown back to London and then a return to Corfu, or we could stay in Greece for another week. So, I extended our time in Athens, which was good because the city, which I hadn’t been to for thirty years, is now great. Then we got a train to the wonderful rocks and monasteries of Meteora, and then to Ioannina. I hadn’t even heard of the place before. The guide books suggested taking a trip to the Zagori region, so we did. That was how we met Costas.

The day trip isn’t cheap because it’s a private tour in a 4x4, which allows you to visit the highest and most spectacular villages up the windiest roads, which you can’t do by coach. He met us within the castle, his broad smile and boyish good looks rightly earning him the moniker ‘Gorgeous Costas,’ which also fits because he’s the guide to a gorge. We chat happily for the first twenty of the 45-minute drive, telling him what’s happened since our last visit, until we get the crushing realisation that he doesn’t remember us. I mean, why would you? If you were a shopkeeper, would you recall a customer who’d last bought something four years earlier?

Then, he suddenly says: ‘I remember who you are now!’ It may have been Mrs Mad’s talk of her allotment. He’s absolutely delighted – over the moon, we’re the first people to ever come back twice for the same tour. Well, we were in the area. He’s determined to make this one different from before, which I think is a shame because I really liked the last one. I’ll go as far to say it was one of the best days I’d had in years.

So, whereas before the Vikos Gorge was one of the last places we visited, now it’s one of the first. It’s a bit like revealing the ending of a good book or film. First, we need coffee, so he takes us to a lovely restaurant in Papingo, which is owned by one of his many cousins, and buys us various delicious home-made spanakopita, the wild greens foraged in the mountains. I ask about the restaurant he took us to four years ago, where I had an unforgettable steak and porcini stew. ‘Oh, it’s over there,’ he says, pointing across the road. I feel a bit disappointed.

The difference in this tour is the element of jeopardy, which is something we really welcome at our age. We drive to the Papingo Rock Pools where the river has created unique rock formations that look like stacked tiles. We journey far into the narrow creek, jumping across slippery step-stones, Costas helping us at every turn and encouraging us to go further, like an excited puppy.

Then we go to the viewpoint for the gorge itself. Just look at the pictures below (Costas took them). It’s one of my favourite places on earth. I even wrote it into my book although it had no place being there. I show Costas the front cover of the second book (it was too long to just be one). ‘It’s the gorge,’ he exclaims happily. ‘You took that picture,’ I say. He’s well made up.

The gorge has a depth of 1,350 metres at its highest point. We go to a different viewpoint from 2019, reached by a scramble up many rocks. Mrs Mad dares not look down. Costas freaks us out by standing on the edge.

All this time we’re chatting cheerfully. Costas has a number of shared interests – history, botany, geology, geography, photography, etymology – and he’s genuinely interested in most everything. Most of all, he just loves the region and, although he lives in Ioannina where he recently got married and had a son (not sure in which order), he can’t get enough of the area he grew up in. We talk about Albania, the border being 40km away, and Albanians, which most Greeks are pretty negative about. He tells us that his father, who was a schoolteacher, used to help refugees who escaped the Hoxha era, and even adopted a couple of Albanian boys who went on to become successful businessmen.

The day is relaxed, there’s no hurry to go anywhere else and see more sites. We take a late lunch in the lovely village of Monodendri at a taverna in the square owned by another cousin. There are no tourists there. It reminds me of the town of Corleone in the Godfather.

Back in Ioannina, Costas stops off at his flat to bring us oregano, olive oil and raki produced at his father-in-law’s farm. Then we give him a guided tour of our Airbnb at dusk and say goodbye. Costas insists that the next tour we take with him will be free. We love Costas. We want to adopt him as our fourth son along with Alan, Donny and Melvin. Okay, so Melvin’s older than me, but he spends a lot of time at our house.