Ersekë is a little town in the south-eastern part of the country and is one of the most elevated cities in Albania. The town is very near from the greek border. The point is that an alpine mountain range does divide the south-eastern border of Albania, acting as a natural frontier for both countries, and Ersekë is stucked just on the foot of the mountain.
Ersekë is proud to be a post-communist town with an improved system of their community facilities, with an economy based on agriculture and also with a quite high human capital level.
We went to Ersekë thanks to KSay’s hospitality, who hosted us for a couple of days. Via couchsurfing‘s web we met her, and she invites us to Ersekë. So this post is dedicated to her!
Ersekë was our first stop during the southern route. We wanted to see the inside part of the coutry after spend a whole week in the coast. We definitely feel the diference; the air became wet, there was more vegetation and the roads were empty. Also the structure of the towns became quite different: more rational and more associated to modern times. So, we pass trought the old-kind-structure of cities like Berat or Gjirokastër and enter to a more communist sytle, in places like Ersekë, Permet or Pogradeci.
Ersekë is quite an extense town that we can strongly recomend to stay due to its surroundings. The town is surrounded by nature and beautifull towns similar to the ones that we can find in alpine-middle mountain scenarios, like could be our Pyrenees.
We specially enjoy Ersekë thanks to Katie, that shows us its surroundings [also Korçë], shared with us her experience in the country and because of her, we could play football [soccer xD] in a prefabricated futsal field with artificial grass!
As usual, when we travell arround, we allways try to play a football game. At least to know how does other countries play. In fact, albanian people play a good football. They’ve got our mentality!! i.e. play with lot of passes before a shoot takes place.
During that match we can say that Guillem had injured the best player of the other team, a really good and young player that have been playing for the KS Skënderbeu Korçë – a first division team – before he seriously injured one year ago.
So, long live to albanian[-Kosovar] football and also long live to KS Gramozi Ersekë who just came in the Albanian second division!!
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