Week-end escape
It is only 20 or so kilometers from Tirana, if that. A tiny little village hugging the ridge of one of the low-lying hills that encircle Tirana. A lovely little oasis where you can spend an hour or two relaxing at the weekend. A place where you run into the locals, friendly and hardworking, and at the same time, go back 1500 years in history. This location is called The Castle of Preza. It is as if it doesn’t even exist until you discover it.
Preza is like a home-coming
At 15:00 hours, just as the Hoxha in the local mosque begins prayers, a group of teenage girls, secondary school pupils, emerge from their houses. However, there does not seem to be any connection between the Hoxha’s chanting and the appearance of these young girls in the narrow little alleyways of the village. Not only the girls, but the other locals seem somewhat indifferent to the sound of the Hoxha’s voice and his message. The mosque and the tradition of the Hoxha’s chanting in the afternoons, especially on a Friday, is nothing more than a ritual, a remnant of times past, which probably has very little bearing on day to day affairs and the work the locals do. There is a battered old Mercedes Benz waiting for the girls, with a radio blaring out hip hop music, which, I must add, almost drowned the voice of the Hoxha. Sporting jeans (You can’t tell these days whether they are village girls or the ‘Bllok’ in Tirana). Twenty years ago, their mothers would have walked through the same narrow village lanes, with heads covered and dressed in the traditional baggy trousers. With classes out for the day at the village secondary school, the girls want to immerse themselves in the noise of Tirana. So different from only a decade ago, today, no one impedes them from doing what they think is reasonable. Two or three shops, in the street below, obviously constructed with the money emigrant family members have sent home, are closing for the lunch break and their owners roll down the front shutters.
At the same time 75 year old, Tahir Dervishi, as he does every day, has stopped working in the little vegetable patch in front of his house and walks into his comfortable home, which he shares with his eldest son, to have some lunch. This old man is one of the “intellectuals” of the village, seeing that he was Director of the Secondary School of the entire zone for thirty five years; publishes the newspaper “Preza” once every three months and is Chairman of a cultural association. Neither Tahir nor any of his family have any intention of leaving Preza.
This little pearl of a village called Preza, 20 kilometers North West of Tirana is a wonderful natural oasis, which becomes quite appealing as a week-end hide out for a few hours, away from the noise and the dust of Tirana.
Tucked away snugly among the olive trees on top of soft rising hill, this little village and its stone alleyways seem to meander along the ridge line. The road that snakes up the hill, becomes the main street of the village. It is lined with little white houses, with their pots of flowers and herbs on the window ledges, the little white curtains at the windows- typical of villages of the Mediterranean, and with their womenfolk forever sweeping the front yards and porches. Preza really is like a little hideout.
“People are very mild in this village,” says Mr. Dervishi. “With its fertile soil, abundant production of bread-grain and other crops, Preza is known, in particular for its olive crops, which are of the highest quality for their food value. The village lives well. Without exception, the men folk work their own land, some of the young men and women from our village have emigrated to “absorb the western way of life.” But some of them have also come home and have made small investments, at the most, opened a local shop. Now, in Preza there are more vehicles than there were mules in my time, whilst our children grow up healthy and strong in the clear air of this small but attractive little community.”
A Little Gem
Younger men in the village also share the opinion that Preza is a “real little gem.” Arbeni, a man in his early forties, is the owner of the Bar and Restaurant “Preza.” One of the most interesting in the whole zone. He says it never occurs to him to shift to Tirana. He has created a business, which has very good prospects, a guaranteed livelihood, right here in his own village.
With the help of his brother, Arben built the restaurant inside the surrounds of the old castle, designed to fit in with the character of the ambience, the old castle walls and other period objects. The Bar-Restaurant is a typical Albanian rustic-style structure, complete with wooden tables and stools, with the old built in wall cupboards, copperware and ornaments taken from local houses, and wafting out from it is the good smell of local cooking. Bread is baked at home in the old oven that dates back to World War One, the juicy chickens of the fields down below and the local meats sizzle in its oven. Its no wonder that the villagers here have never heard of genetically modified foods.
“There is nothing more healthy than home grown vegetables and food.” says Arben. He thinks that this has been a key to the success of his restaurant. Home baked bread, home made wine, good cheeses and the fragrances of the plum tree blossoms in the Spring.
In the garden of the restaurant, with all its fragrances and the aroma of good cooking, you can look out over the walls of the Castle of Preza, and see the walls of the Castle of Kruja and of the Castle of Petrela. (The three castles could communicate by using torches).
During the day, on every half hour, you get a breathtaking view of aircraft as they come into land at the Mother Theresa International Airport at Rinas, the runway of which stretches out at the foot of the hill, directly below the walls of the Castle of Preza. With the aid of some old binoculars that Arben has installed, on a fine day, you can see as far as Ulqin and even the coasts of Italy.
“This is wonderful,” cried a very special friend of this restaurant, when he first visited, the former US Ambassador to Tirana, Joseph Limpricht. But this is how so many foreigners have reacted, who have found out where to go to get out of Tirana for a rest in the week end. The Albanians are much slower.
The former Manager of RognerPark Hotel, the Austrian, Herr Shmid had “fallen in love,” with this “marvel of nature,” and he organized a very special wedding here for an Austrian bride and an Albanian groom.
“The restaurant is always frequented by foreigners,” says Arben, perhaps with a twinge of regret as to why Albanians want the more up-market restaurants and can’t relax in the beautiful surroundings their country offers them.
Preza is truly a beautiful tourist spot. The Castle, the last restoration work done on it was twenty years ago, the objects full of historical value and particularly the story of the Mosque of Preza are all sources of genuine interest and curiosity. The bell tower, according to old documents, used to have a bell that weighed 2-3 kilograms in gold, prior to World War One. Although the village resisted, the Austro-Hungarians removed the bell and today it is located in the Museum of Vienna.
If you were to close your eyes for a moment, Preza could be one of dozens of very similar little tourist hamlets throughout Europe, which thrive on the revenue generated from their historical values, tourism and local arts and crafts. This is really good. You can imagine Preza like this, with its God gifted location and scenery, intertwined with the historical values of the Castle, and very good future prospects.
What are the prospects? The middle-aged generation of the village seem to have a clear idea on this subject, those who have already invested in their businesses inside the village. One alternative is to build a system of small wooden chalets, characteristic of the craftsmanship of the zone, to rent out for weekends or holidays. Some of these chalets will be ready for use this Spring and will transform Preza into a popular haunt.
Retiring to Preza time and again would be like a home coming for everyone, even for the teenage girls who, for the time being, have their sights fixed on Tirana.
Revisiting History
The earliest historical source that mentions the Castle of Preza, 20 kilometers North West of Tirana, is a note by the Historian Barleci in his work, “The History of the Life and Deeds of Skenderbe. Apart from this, Preza is mentioned in an anonymous report on Albania, of the year 1570, in a dispatch of the Venetian Ambassador Bernardo in 1591.
One of the first foreigners to have visited the castle was the Austrian scholar Hahn. The Castle is mentioned in the studies of Ipen and Shuflai, while in the years of World War One, Preza was visited by the Austrian archeologist Prashnicker.
In the report of 1570, it is stated that the Castle was built by the Turks. Croatian scholar Shuflai has probably based himself on this report too, when he deducts that the construction of this castle belongs to the Turkish period. However Barleci’s mention of the Castle,( according to him, in 1450-1467 during the Sieges of Kruja, Preza was in ruins), reveals that it had been built far earlier. The more likely variant is that the first phase of the construction of the castle dates back to Centuries 4-5 AND, as the Austrian archeologist Prashnicker thought. The castle was small and powerless to withstand powerful assaults and protracted sieges. It was originally built as a vantage point to control the very important route at its feet leading into the Plain of Tirana. The garrison of the castle also collected taxes and other levies from the population of the region.
Its construction at other historical periods had the same purpose, such as during the period of the principalities and in the time of the Turkish invasion, doing the repair work on it at later stages. For the population of the area, in the report on a journey through Albania, by the Venetian Ambassador Bernardo in 1591, it is stated that, “here too it is said that healthy and robust men are born, and when they are given rank, they become formidable horsemen.”
