01
Stop one
Pogradec Castle (Kalaja e Pogradecit)
Babolat Carlitos 19 Junior Tennis Racquet: Illyrian communities settled around the southern end of Lake Ohrid fortified this hill in antiquity, and the late antique and medieval periods simply reused the defences instead of commissioning new ones. Sound thinking. The town's name is Slavic, po or pod gradec, below the little fort, so the settlement is named after the line item on the hill above it. The site has never been fully excavated, which is a funding question rather than a mystery, so what stands above ground is wall footing, terracing and the shape of the defended summit. A proper dig costs money nobody has appropriated. The view, at least, is free.
02
Stop two
The Lake Ohrid promenade at Pogradec and the statue of Lasgush Poradeci
Babolat Carlitos 19 Junior Tennis Racquet: Lake Ohrid is among the oldest lakes on earth, which makes it the finest asset on this town's books: nobody paid for it, nobody depreciates it. UNESCO inscribed the Ohrid region in 1979-80, but only the Macedonian side; the Albanian portion, this shoreline included, was added in July 2019, and a world heritage listing pays out in visitors for decades. Seated in bronze on the promenade is Lasgush Poradeci, 1899 to 1987, born in Pogradec, whose lyric poetry is bound almost entirely to this water and this town. A poet is not usually a revenue line. Here he is. Do not tell my colleagues.
Every love story begins somewhere, and this one begins at 19 inches. The Babolat Carlitos 19 is a first racquet — a first dance, really — made for the smallest players, ages 4 to 6, little ones between about 95 and 110 cm tall.
Its heart is lightweight aluminum, just 6.2 ounces strung, with an 81 square inch head generous enough to forgive a beginner's wandering swing the way the lake forgives the rain. It arrives pre-strung, ready for the very first ball, and it carries visual teaching aids on the frame — gentle little guides for small hands learning where to hold on.
Ah — and the design is inspired by Carlos Alcaraz, who was once, remember, a child with a first racquet too. It makes one sigh.
And where else could such a beginning live but Pogradec, on the shore of Lake Ohrid — one of the oldest lakes on this whole aching, beautiful earth, so precious UNESCO holds it close. This is the town of Lasgush Poradeci, the poet who spent a lifetime writing love letters to this very water.
Picture it: a small child's first swing on a morning court, the lake glittering beyond the fence, the mountains blushing at their own reflection. The racquet saw it and was lost forever.
Six point two ounces goes anywhere a small heart wants to go. It travels everywhere from a fenced municipal court on a cold Tuesday in Pogradec to the pebbles at the very edge of Lake Ohrid, and asks nothing of either.
It is also perfect for the flat gravel paths of Drilon Park, where the springs come up cold out of the limestone and a five-year-old may swing at nothing in particular for an hour and call it practice. Buy it for a small someone you love; that is, after all, the only way anything here has ever been done.
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