75 miles on a coach along some pretty dilapidated roads and through and through countryside of unremitting squalor.
After I had been on the coach for about half an hour a girl of about 15 came to talk to me. She was clearly exceptionally intelligent and spoke near perfect English with an american accent, she said that she had learnt it by watching American movies and that's what all the young people do if they want to get a good job. She was with her mother, her brother and her sister and they were on their way to Durres for their annual holiday, it was the first time that she had left Berat since last year, it was clearly a very exciting event.
I mentioned Enva Hoxha and the old communist times and she told me that many of the old people preferred things then and wished that nothing ha changed because the everyone had a job and everyone was equal, there were no rich people and no poor people. I heard a comment like that from a Latvian once who said pretty much the same thing.
She wanted to see my photos on the phone and was looking at the ones of Australia, I was surprised, despite her obvious vast general knowledge that she didn't seem to know about emus, possums, kualas or wombats although she could identify a kangaroo.
Many of the children here are very confident - in a nice way - they come up to me as I am walking along and want to chat, it seems surprising, considering their surroundings, that they should be like that.
I'm sitting in my hotel room with the Aircon on full blast trying to cool down after walking, with a rucksack, for about an hour, across Tirana