I took today slow since I'm still pretty worn out from all the activity in Kotor. I spent much of the day just wandering around the city in the general direction of the big Venetian fortress that overlooks the whole region. Everything's super cheap, probably explained by the fact that this is now the poorest country I've been to so far. It's got a very third world feel to everything, though not in a terrible way. It's very obvious that people don't have much money though. Albanian is a strange language that isn't closely related to any other, though it ultimately is Indo-European (as are virtually all languages in Europe aside from Basque, Finnish, Estonian, and Hungarian). That said, I recognize a surprising amount of the words and can puzzle out the meaning of even more with only a small amount of context. The fortress is at the south edge of town and isn't really marked at all - you walk toward it through run down residential neighborhoods and then you're just at the doorstep? There are very few gift shops or throngs of tourists. I'm trying to imagine what something like this would look like if it were in Rome or a more frequented city; it would undoubtedly be rendered almost inaccessible by the number people trying to pack inside of it. The fees listed at the turnstile said it was 400 lek to enter, so I gave the guy a 500 ALL bill. He asked where I was from, I told him the US, and he gave me a 200 back. I don't have a ton of faith in the Albanian school system, but unless it's so bad that they can't count I think there may be some preferential treatment for Americans here.

The fortress is awesome. It's ruined, but there are still plenty of nooks and crannies to explore and many different hidden pathways that you might discover by clambering over a wall. Because it's on a hill it has incredible views of the surrounding area, including the mountains and the lake. The landscape looks very much like some impressionist paintings I've seen, though I can't place them exactly. I was up there for long enough that the sun began to set behind one of the nearby hills and the mountainous backdrop lit up pink. It was really beautiful.

I went back to the hostel and tonight it was much more lively. Lots of French people and cyclists, and only one Australian. I wish I'd had more time with some of the people here but they're all moving on - the city itself doesn't seem to be that much of a draw. I met some people who'd taken a shuttle up to a guest house affiliated with hostel in a tiny mountain village up north and did some huge day hikes. It sounded awesome and I'd love to do something like that, but with my time constraints I'm not sure it makes sense. I also don't want to do any big hiking like that so far outside a city by myself, and I don't think anyone else here has much of an appetite to join me. I might look into doing something like that in Kosovo since the terrain is similar but I imagine things are even cheaper and there's probably even less to do in the city proper. Heading to Pirzren tomorrow evening.