Jan and Cora Gordon in Berat

In their book, Two Vagabonds in Albania, Jan and Cora Gordon described (from pg. 182) their 1925 visit to Berat. First appearances were not encouraging.

'THE hotel in Berat was the crudest we had yet encountered. The ground floor was compounded of a dark drinking den, heavily arched and unlit passages with earthen floors, and a reeking stable without windows. Upstairs we found it like the hahn at Elbasan, but dirtier - a huge barn with three or four little lath-and-plaster bedrooms huddled at one end. The rest was empty, echoing space, the floor of very uneven plank with holes worn through here and there. In it half a dozen soldiers had set up their beds and were always to be found asleep or half undressed; they never wholly undressed. As the only lavatory accommodation was at the extreme corner of this impromptu barrack-room, and was, moreover, a very semi-private kind of erection, this experience was one that Jo would rather have forgone.'

'In our bedroom also we lacked much of the privacy we would have preferred. The keyhole was cavernous, and with our experience of Albanian curiosity we distrusted those soldiers outside our door; but our windows gave on to a very narrow street, and the house exactly opposite had been commandeered for a troop of the volunteer forces from Dibra—hired bravoes, to be exact—who were massed in the more agitated parts of the country to keep them overawed. There had been rumours of an important political conspiracy in Berat, and so the Dibra bullies here were particularly numerous and overbearing. Being mountain men, they, of course, despised the lowlanders and took no pains to hide their feelings.'

A view of Berat by Cora Gordon.

Jan described a later meeting with the Mayor's son. 'I was sketching below the walls of the castle, making a preliminary composition of the town beneath me with its red roofs and its minarets. The valley beyond was arabesqued with the river, and the great back of Tomori lay in the distance.'

 The schoolboy approached, he was a lad of seventeen educated at the American Missionary College of Salonika.

The Boy: "Good evening, sir. May I introduce myself ?—Niko Papajanni; my father is the Mayor. What are you doing?"

Myself: "I am making a picture, as you may see." The Boy: "I do see. It is for a map, I presume?"

Myself: "No, it is not for a map. It is a picture."

The Boy: "I understand. You will represent the city. I, too, have done a year's engineering drawing in the Salonika College." 

Myself: "Splendid! "'

Cora Gordon made numerous pen sketches of the people she encountered.

Cora Gordon's sketches of the women of Berat. For more examples of her rapid sketches, see https://www.janandcoragordonart.com/2014/05/cora-j-gordon-sketching-in-hyde-park.html , https://www.janandcoragordonart.com/2017/11/a-1934-exhibition-by-jan-and-cora.html , and https://pbase.com/hajar/jan_and_cora_gordon_in_the_balkans 

A gypsy one day called the Gordons over to see a dancing bear. Cora Gordon reconized that it was the same bear they had seen dance on the road between Blazuj and Ilidza in Bosnia three years earlier." Jan Gordon called out to the gipsy: "Hey, there! Were you in Sarajevo three years since?" The Gipsy (recognition lighting his eye) replied, "Surely, surely. It is the same lady and the same gentle-man. Give the bear an extra baksheesh for old times' sake lady."

Cora Gordon went up to the bear and patted it on the shoulder. 'The Crowd (in an awed murmur): "The woman has dared to pat the bear."'

This is Stanko the bear, who Jan and Cora Gordan had encountered three years earlier in Sarajevo as described in Two Vagabonds in the Balkans.

A century later, parts of their description can still be recognised, such as the 'red roofs and minarets', the valley 'arabesqued with the river', and the 'great back of Tomori' in the distance.

View of the river from the north side with typical roofs in the foreground

The portion of Berat on the south side of the river

The castle wall

Narrow street in the town on the north side of the river

View of Tomorri from the castle.

The Gordon's had a conversation reflecting the hope of oil discoveries to solve Albania's problems.

'We were coming up from the bridge through the lower town. A small, anxious-looking little man in crumpled European clothes stopped us.

The Crumpled Man (in bad American): "Excuse, say, I wanter know. You 'ant Mr. S maybe ?"

Myself: "I am not Mr. S"

The Crumpled Man: "I tho't maybe you was. I wrote Mr. S. He 'ant answered. I thot mebbe you was him."

Myself: "No, I am not Mr. S—

Did you want him for a particular purpose? "

The Crumpled Man (hopefully): " Say, you'ant come from Mr. S maybe? You see I wrote Mr. S I can't make out why he 'ant answered."

Myself: "What was it about? Perhaps The Crumpled Man: "Why, Mr. S- he's the manager, Pershun Oil.

I wrote'm offerin' my services. He 'ant never answered a word"1

Myself: "May I point out that every Albanian who can speak American and write English has certainly written to Mr. S— to offer his services? Say one thousand applications. Could he be expected to answer them all? It would cost a lot of money in stamps, you know."

The Crumpled Man: "Well, say, wouldn't he'a bin more perlite if he'd 'a' jus' put an advertisement in the paper sayin' he don't want no more offers?" Myself: "No, I don't think you must accuse Mr. S of rudeness. Advertisements cost money too. And, after all, he didn't ask for your offer, did he? "

The Crumpled Man: "No. I can't say he did— honestly. I guess you're right, sir. Anyway I can be useful to you? Command me. Say, though, 'ant this a bum country?"

*This conversation is more important than it seems on the surface. The whole of Albania's future is gambled on the finding of oil in the Malakastra. Every evil is to be cured with oil, loans raised and already spent are to be liquidated with oil, the cost of government is to be paid by the oil, the unemployment problem will be solved by the oil, above all, palms oiled, and so on. The trouble is that at the moment of writing the oil hasn’t been found, and never may be.'

In April 2026, however, we passed an area north of Berat with many 'nodding donleys',  part of the Kuçova oil field, discovered in 1928, just three years after the visit of the Gordons.

Kuçova oil field with Tomorri in the background.

The aftermath of their stay in Berat was not a happy one for the Gordons.

'We left Berat for Durazzo in a motor-car—a long ride, often over almost trackless wastes in the low-lying lands of the Muzekija, where the malaria beats down the people, draining them of vices and virtues alike, leaving them as yellowed husks that barely carry on the comi-tragedy of life. The car was packed because a woman and a boy thrust themselves in on us at the last moment.'

Having arrived safely at the Consul's house in Durazzo,

'That night a third of Durazzo Bazaar was burned. There was a wild shooting off of guns to give the alarm. We almost imagined that another revolution must be in progress. Two days later we fell ill with that Kölcyra fever, and took to our beds for a time.'