Hitchhiker's Guide to Albania Part 4: The End

Author's note: All stories and other nonsense herein are meant as homage to both Albania and to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.  I adore them both.  However, I offer my apologies in advance to the former for being a smartass, and to the latter for being a shamelessly inferior exploitation of a classic.  The sections in italics are asides representing (mostly fictional) reference articles from "The Hitchhker's Guide to Albania".  British accents are encouraged.

Author's note: All stories and other nonsense herein are meant as homage to those who can relate.  I adore you all.  I will no longer apologize for being a smartass, and no longer pretend to imitate any classic literature.  The sections in italics make no sense, nor does the rest of it.


The End

Endings, from a storytelling perspective, are complex.  Writers often remain paralyzed for ages attempting to provide a suitable closure for their creations.  Real life, however, has found an elegant way to bypass this literary problem: it simply changes, or demands that we do.  Its character arcs are flawed, and don't do justice to the time readers have invested in them.  Many people vanish from the story altogether, though their last scene gave no such indication or foreshadowing.  Loose ends, far from being tied up, are left in tatters on the desks of the unlucky editors of the subconscious.  Chekhov's gun remains above the mantle, new dilemmas replace the falling action, and the plot moves like a fever dream into uncanny terrain.  

Writers do not live in the real world*, however, and therefore suffer from a compulsion of point-making.  When their points are inevitably contradictory, they bail themselves out by citing terms like "irony," or by quoting Walt Whitman.  This need for meaning is acute, and must be found even where it does not exist.  Or rather, especially where it does not exist.

To this end, our author sends his apologies to both of his audience.  Through his convoluted logic, he has convinced himself that he will find meaning in his crisis of writer's block by succumbing to it.  Part four of his mildly exalted "Hitchhiker's Guide to Albania" has therefore been cancelled, despite the misleading title of this post.  You might be thinking, "Didn't he leave Albania over a year ago?" and if so, kudos, but kindly direct your valid criticism toward someone more relevant**.  

As his editor, I disputed this inaction tenaciously, but being reminded that I am merely an unappreciated shade of a duressed mind, I conceded.  The research team assures me that he is "doing well" in his Ukrainian quarantine, and that as a history teacher can find inspiration by imagining his apartment is a gulag for some well-to-do dissenter of yore.  Also, Netflix.  

*an imaginary place

**George RR Martin, that beautiful, non-writing son-of-a-bitch

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The Beginning

(oh gods, what a labored literary device)

Hey, everyone.  Mom.  Someone else, probably.  So, my last boss was a psychopath.  And I'm in Ukraine now.  And there's Covid.  There is literally no way to bridge all of that, so please accept the ramblings of the pesky editor of my subconscious (or so it calls itself) and let's move on.  I introduce you to:

"The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Confines of 1000 Square Feet"

no...

"I Wanted To Develop Hobbies, but I Just Got Fat"

don't take this out on sourdough...

"Russian Is Really Difficult on the Phone"

true but hardly relatable...

"Staying Sane During Interstellar Travel"

somehow your only decent suggestion...

Okay, it's a work in progress.  If the Washington Football Team can do it to make you forget decades of unforgivable racism, give me a few minutes to figure this out.  Catch you soon.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to Albania Part 3: The Beach at the End of the Universe

Author's note: All stories and other nonsense herein are meant as homage to both Albania and to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.  I adore them both.  However, I offer my apologies in advance to the former for being a smartass, and to the latter for being a shamelessly inferior exploitation of a classic.  The sections in italics are asides representing (mostly fictional) reference articles from "The Hitchhker's Guide to Albania".  British accents are encouraged.  

Perfectly Normal East
The American expression, "road trip" is frequently used to describe an overland journey made in a private vehicle, but it makes two fundamental assumptions which render it useless in Albania.  First, it presumes the necessity of a road.  Ancillary terms and expressions such as "trail", "goat path", "that reasonably flat stretch over there", and "I think the curb is low enough to drive over" must all be incorporated into the lexicon of the Albanian traveler.  Second, the word, "trip" implies a movement of relatively short duration between two fixed points, designated A and B.  This idea must be wiped completely from one's mind while traveling through this region of the western Balkans.  Anomalies along the space-time continuum are common here, and not even Google can aid the traveler who finds themselves caught unexpectedly in 1894.  Additionally, Point B exists in only a handful of realities that may or may not be one's own, thus calling into question the ability to arrive at one's stated destination.  As a result, the editors of The Hitchhiker's Guide to Albania encourage the substitution of "road trip" with the term, "adventure," and leaving subtleties of tone and eyebrows to do most of the leg work.

Other terms must be discarded as well, but for entirely different reasons.  For example, the Latin term "Manic Purgamentum" is the most common idiom used to describe "the abject inability to enjoy oneself due to a ferocious and all-consuming need to find a toilet."  In such instances, the Romans were also heard to use the phrases, "stercus accit" (shit happens), "nulliam prandium est" (no such thing as a free lunch), and, to the confoundment of etymologists, "non sum pisces" (I am not a fish).  In order to have any kind of expression, however, there must be a corresponding and pervasive experience among the constituents of the language.  Albanian fails this test.  By all observations, there seem to be no coherent regulations regarding inappropriate receptacles for defecation, nor for where one is permitted to stop their car.  Thus, the frenetic search for a roadside bathroom is rendered obsolete, and the phenomenon of Manic Purgamentum remains unknown to the region.  

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The Albanian Car Rental System
Albania has much to discover away from the beaten paths of public transportation, and renting a car makes most of the country accessible for a weekend getaway, even if on less-than-ideal roads.  By late fall last year, Cary and I were feeling brave enough to embark on just such an adventure, and went about learning how to rent a car.  The detailed process is described below:

1) Look for a place that has pictures of cars out front.
2) Show them your driver's license and pay 25 euros in cash for each day that you want the car (credit cards not accepted).
3) Wait 10-100 minutes for the car to be delivered, get in, and drive immediately to a gas station, as only fumes have been left in the tank.

Voila!  Our ticket to the whole country was punched.  Previous experiences with furgons and trains allowed us to skillfully ignore the nagging questions about how this rental system could possibly function, and we threw a bunch of bags and a 6-year-old junior adventurer into the trunk and backseat.  Respectively, of course.

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Roles and Duties of Albanian Adventurers 
A streamlined system with defined responsibilities must be established to return from an Albanian Adventure in mostly the same condition as one left for it.  Some of the basic roles are as follows:

1) The Pioneer: Strictly speaking, "Driver" does not quite cover what is required in order to get around here, and implies far too much control over the situation.  "Pilot" gets a little closer, as one may find potholes large enough to bounce the vehicle momentarily off of the ground.  This must be done calmly and in such a way that lands the automobile still oriented in the proper direction.  Pioneer is the best fit, though, as paths must sometimes be found, forged, or bushwacked, and surprises must be recognized and addressed around each turn.  

2) The Cartography DJ:  Due to the situations described above, the commonly used "Navigator"  falls short for the adventurer who finds themselves in the passenger seat.  "The Map is Not the Territory" is a poignant saying to bear in mind, and it is often advantageous to ignore a map altogether in order to better accept the reality before one's eyes.  Cartography DJs, then, must be constantly creating and comparing mental maps of where the adventurers have been so far versus where they are intending to go.  This skill is sometimes referred to as having "metal boogers", which seem to magnetically pull the team in the right direction.  In addition to literal mapping, they must also plot an appropriate musical playlist of between one and six hours in duration.

3) Junior Adventurer:  The primary responsibilities of this adventurer are to provide comic relief and cuteness.  Overwhelmingly, their time is spent coloring, napping, snacking, and asking if they are there yet.  

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Trip to Kruje
The itinerary for our first Albanian driving adventure was to head to Kruje on the first day, and Mt. Dajti National Park on the second.  Historically, Kruje was an important stronghold for the famous Albanian nobleman and general known simply as Skanderbeg.  Or Skanderbej.  Or, sometimes, Skanderbeu.  Regardless of which one you choose, the guy needs just one name, like Prince, or Madonna.  His regional rockstar status is due to his famous 25-year defense of Albania and the wider Balkans against invading Ottoman Turks in the 15th century, and today his name is found everywhere from city squares to commercial vineyards.  

The castle at Kruje was an embattled and bloody site through much of this conflict, so naturally its leading industry today is selling trinkets to tourists.  Mixed into the more typical shops with shot glasses and refrigerator magnets, though, are some serious antique stores that border on museums.  Many of the "postcards" for sale are vintage photographs from the early 1900s, and the collections of old watches, traditional clothing, compasses, bayonets, and WWII-era military apparel will make you very nervous to touch anything.  Luckily, this will usually be countered by the friendly shopkeepers who will encourage you to touch everything.  I challenge you to get out of there without something that you absolutely don't need.  Cary and I were able to get bargains on a pair of Albanian slippers and 1/3 of a rug, while Willow got a piece of free candy in every place we entered.

Albanian slippers really compliment
Ecuadorian pajama pants.

Part of the walls surrounding Kruje castle

After a little meandering and some lunch with a side of power-outage, we hit the road again.  We were heading to Dajti National Park, with reservations at the conveniently named Hotel Dajti.  We had only a vaguely southeastward notion to follow, but luckily we had our handy Albanian Adventure Pack.

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The Albanian Adventure Pack
Any adventure pack worth its salt must accommodate a wide range of possible trips, and should contain only items that are suitable for planes, trains, ferries, and automobiles alike (sorry knives and lighters).  Typical items include but are not limited to: a towel, toilet paper, wet wipes, granola bars, spices, sunscreen, insect repellent, ponchos, pen and paper, a first aid kit, art supplies, and a wine screw.   

The contents of an Albanian adventure pack, however, should include a few specific items that one might not naturally consider. 

1) One-third of a traditional, loom-woven Albanian rug bought in Kruje.  While the absence of the remaining two-thirds has never been properly explained, one's own portion is quite conveniently sized and may be used as a geometrically unique towel, a festive cape, or a picnic blanket for exactly two and a half people.  

2) A portable speaker so that one may use their phone to listen to more than just the four most popular songs of the moment being played in a loop on Albanian radio.  The Guide strongly recommends to the Cartography DJ the substitution of 90s hits.

3) A phone-charging adaptor for even the shortest of trips, as music plus Google Maps' inability to handle frequent u-turns in a sensible manner can deplete a battery in less than one hour.  

4) A collection of 50 and 100 leke coins for when credit cards and large bills are not accepted, for when ATMs don't work, or for encouraging a junior adventurer to practice diving to the bottom of a hotel pool.

5) Burn cream for when said junior adventurer blisters her hands while serving flaming marshmallows on rocks found by the shore during a camping trip.

6) Headlamps that will be used at least as frequently indoors as out.

7) An Albanian Bingo card (pictured below) for keeping up one's spirits.  

The Albanian adventure pack also has some notable exceptions.  These items are typically thought of as useful, but are rather pointless to carry along in this particular region of the world

1) A can opener.  In a strange turn of convenience, all cans have pop tabs.

2) Coffee.  While instant coffee may be recommended for camping trips, the nationwide average distance between cafes is less than 50 meters.  

3) Travel games.  One is either a) already playing Albanian Bingo, b) cannot safely divert their concentration from pioneering and/or cartography duties, or c) have plenty outside of the window to keep them entertained.  A live goat on the back of a moped near Shkoder, for example.    

4) Flares.  They won't save you, so please just get out of the road.  

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A Day on Mt. Dajti
We reached Hotel Dajti and discovered that the hotels have similar practices to the car rental companies.  You show your ID, pay twenty-five euros per day in cash, and are treated to just a faint whiff of gas left in the room.  From here, our impeccable research told us that in the morning we could easily drive to a cable car that would take us to a scenic overlook.  The attendant at the reception desk had other information, however, and between tips from hotel staff and online research, the locals will almost always prove right.  We were told it was closed for "the season", and indeed it was.  While "the season" remained only vaguely defined, and though November in this region doesn't typically require much more than a stiff windbreaker and a plucky spirit, never underestimate the mere threat of winter to the Albanian psyche.

No matter.  We had all of Sunday set aside for exploring, so we drove into and through the park on our own.  No serious weather was encountered, but as we drove over the mountain and deeper down into the park, much of the road and a few bridges were washed out.  We were alerted to these and other obstacles through a series of yellow signs bearing a simple, yet effective, exclamation point.  Its mental effect was jarring, causing whatever objects or features that followed on the road to be internalized as a scream:  U-TURN!  ROCK!  GOATS!  And so on.  The road proved passable if you went slowly, but each hazard crossed on our descent into the valley raised increasingly legitimate concerns about getting back out, especially if "the season" actually arrived to slicken the path.  Thankfully, it did not. 

At some point in all of this, Willow managed to fall asleep.  Cary and I noticed this only when we got to a clearing and parked the car for a picnic.  We decided to let her keep sleeping while we set up a blanket a little ways down the road.  We found the right spot, spread the food and snacks around, and went back to retrieve Willow.  Rather than needing to rouse her, though, we arrived to find her wide awake and bawling, with tear-streaked chocolate melted all over her mouth, cheeks, and hands.  In her perceived abandonment upon waking, she had quickly found one of her candy bars to dull the pain, and I assume ate at least some of it.  There was nothing in the Albanian Adventure Pack to remedy this.  Luckily, after getting her out of the car, we found the area surrounding our picnic blanket littered with acorns and fallen leaves, and she tasked herself with collecting as many as could fit in the belly of her shirt.  Even the moments of solitary, sugary anguish of just moments before were no match for the unbridled joy she found in collecting (and individually naming) those miscellaneous items of nature.

Those windows are painted on...I have no idea why

Stop. Who would cross the Bridge of Death must answer me
these questions three, ere the other side he see.

Junior adventurer fulfilling her role

GOATS!

Late Fall in Albania

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Macedonian Girl Nuts
Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the of the western spiral mountain range of the Balkans lies a small unregarded lake.  This "Lake Ohrid" finds itself along the migratory path of the Albanian expat community once a year, during the part of their annual cycle in which they are highly social creatures.  They hop in their cars and drive in file to the neighboring country of Macedonia, where they purchase enough spirits to tranquilize a hovercraft full of eels* and dine in groups of no less than fifteen (always insisting they pay individually, to the chagrin of workers in the local service industry).   The weekend is then leisurely passed on boats, in the water, and playing a rather odd game involving silly hats that prompts its participants to consider such hard-hitting questions as whether they would rather never trust their seat, or never trust a fart.  They are a sophisticated lot.

Moreover, there is the recent and curious tale of a small expat cub who quite accidentally came upon the rarest of natural wonders indigenous to the region.  After being sent by her mother on a mission to count as many different plants as she could along the shore, she instead returned bearing two acorn-like objects in the bottom of her bathing suit.  "Look at my girl nuts!"  she innocently proclaimed, having no doubt given them female names and, lacking pockets, placed them inside of her swimwear.  As of the publishing date, the guide's research department confirms that this is the last known sighting of the elusive Macedonian Girl Nuts.

* Bingo!

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The Beach at the End of the Universe
We returned safely home to Durres from that weekend excursion to Kruje and Dajti, and explored many other places in and around the country during the year and a half that followed.  However, the trip that most captured the spirit of an Albanian adventure was our journey to the Cape of Rodon that same winter.  According to the map, the cape is located less than 40 kilometers up the coast from Durres, but getting there required us to take a very circuitous route on the highway that would have tripled the distance.  Being in the mood to ignore the advice of Google in favor of a direct route, we decided to forego the map entirely and just keep the sea on our left.  

In hindsight, this plan was obviously doomed to comical failure, but we were filled with the confidence of a crisp Saturday morning.  We drove north out of Durres along a main-ish road, which beyond city limits evaporated into a 2-track path, which soon after narrowed into a 1-track suggestion, which then concluded abruptly at a chain-link fence.  We turned and followed the fence to its end, where we spotted a decent-looking road on the other side of a creek bed.  Gingerly, we coaxed and sweet-talked our rented Toyota Yaris over the rocks and divots of the dried-up stream, and drove a few kilometers to the entrance of a wood.  To this day I'm not sure if the road really continued through this forest or if the trees were just conveniently spaced, but either way, we drove on through to more and more implied pathways.

Hours passed, with Cary providing tunes and following her metal boogers, until reluctantly we consulted our phones to bail us out.  This was a mistake, though, since what we most needed at this point was a place to stay, and Google insisted on many options that were either closed for "the season", still not completed, or outright imaginary.  By this time it was getting dark, and we had been treading the same road, back and forth, for over an hour.  We had passed a restaurant called "Fishland" 6 times, which as it turns out is exactly the number of times it takes to evolve from a joke into a realistic option.  

Finally, enough was enough, and we stopped at a giant "Hotel-Bar-Car Wash-Restaurant-Pizzeria-Gas Station" thing that we had been actively avoiding in hopes of staying in a place that was maybe a bit more specialized.  Other than the taxidermy in the main lobby (which seriously rattled Willow), it turned out better than we thought.  We showed our IDs, paid 25 euros, and enjoyed our slightly gassy residence for the night.  We went downstairs to check out their dinner options and despite advertising both a pizzeria and a restaurant, there were only two menu options: pizza with meat and pizza without meat.  The type of meat was never clarified.  After eating we retired to our room, drank a little bit of wine (juice for Willow), and laid down for some long-awaited sleep.  The coffee was naturally on point the next morning, and we got an early start, finally reaching the Cape of Rodon in the daylight.

It was like someone had photoshopped every natural possibility into a single field of vision. 

For me, this has epitomized my experience here: nothing goes as planned, which is fun at first, but then frustration begins to loom just before I'm smacked right in the face by something beautiful.  Sometimes it's snow-capped mountains towering over the Adriatic Sea, alerting me to the fact that "the season" might be a real thing.  Sometimes it's the goofy, stumbling exchanges in broken English and my terrible Albanian, leading to a serious case of the giggles with a stranger.  Sometimes it's a 6-year old bringing me her Macedonian Girl Nuts from the shore of Lake Ohrid.  You just never know, but I'm glad I'm still around for awhile longer to see what will happen the next time I grab my Albanian Adventure Pack and hit the road.  Or path.  Or whatever.  

Communist-era bunkers fortifying the beach

A pick axe is not recommended for the
Albanian Adventure Pack

A repeat visit to the Cape of Rodon
the following spring

The path to the fortress

Totally comfortable nap

Will they stop this time?

Yes they will :)

The Hitchhiker's Guide to Albania Part 2: So Long, and Thanks for All the Furgons

Author's note: All stories and other nonsense herein are meant as homage to both Albania and to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.  I adore them both.  However, I offer my apologies in advance to the former for being a smartass, and to the latter for being a shamelessly inferior exploitation of a classic.  The sections in italics are asides representing (mostly fictional) reference articles from "The Hitchhker's Guide to Albania".  British accents are encouraged.    

So Long, and Thanks for All the Furgons
According to the research department for the "Hitchhiker's Guide to Albania", a furgon is a van or minibus that carries passengers around the country in quadruple the time one would reasonably assume it should take, and at a third of the cost the principles of capitalism should allow.  The research department believes this is possible due to the fact that these vehicles are a holdover from communist times when people were not permitted to own their own private cars, and are somehow now "grandfathered" into logic.  While the guide's editors have insisted that neither logic nor capitalism work this way, the research department has the actual existence of furgons on their side.

To catch a furgon, one must find the designated part of town where they are parked, listen for people shouting the names of cities that available furgons are departing to, and give a best guess as to which one they should board.  Once seated, passengers will shiver or sweat, as dictated by the season, for anywhere between 30 seconds and 40 minutes while waiting for the vehicle to fill up.  The driver of the furgon will then somehow manage to whisk its occupants both recklessly and very slowly to their destination.  

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My first month in Albania was about gaining comfort with my new surroundings, figuring out where and how to get things, and practicing some language basics such as "hello", "thank you", and "may blood wash over you".  That last one was a bit of an outlier, but I happened to be with a friend who was learning to curse in Albanian when he got his car booted.

One big way I've found to feel more comfortable in a new place is to figure out its transportation system, and for Albania, that mostly meant learning about furgons.  For anyone foolishly using this blog for practical travel tips, I give you this link.  You may stop reading now.

By far the most frequent route for furgons is between Durres and Tirana, just 40 kilometers apart from one another.  Though these contraptions are sometimes difficult to endure, they provide a lifeline for residents of Durres suffering from small town claustrophobia to the nation's capital where they can find a variety of restaurants, a few movie theatres, an escape room, a bowling alley, some live music, and bars and clubs that stay open past midnight.  Though in typical Albanian disregard for copyright laws, one of these places is called Duff Sports Bar.  They didn't even bother to change the logo.

Photo Credit

Image Credit

The lack of any kind of real schedule can make using the furgons annoying, and the fact that they stop running at about 7:00 pm remains perplexing, but they don't come anywhere near the mind-boggling rail system that operates out of Durres.

Actually, calling it a "system" may have been an overreach.  At first glance (and second, third, and fourth...) the Durres train station appears to be nothing more than a mechanical graveyard. The parts of its forlorn passenger trains not covered with graffiti are sun-bleached and rusting, and very few unbroken windows remain on their cabins. When I boarded one this past October to travel to Elbasan with my friend and her daughter, the trip took us four hours instead of the normal one and a half hours by furgon.  As we tried not to sit on anything sharp, we ambled and swayed rhythmically through the sunny Albanian countryside, taking in the rolling hills and abandoned, communist-era factories.  Willow periodically walked down the center aisle for the Albanian grandmothers on board to pinch her 6-year-old cheeks, smile, and say "bukur" (beautiful).  Despite the dilapidated conditions all around, the usher kindly reminded us not to put our feet up on the seats.  Kids outside watched stoically as we passed through towns before switching to maniacal grins as they chased us and threw rocks at our caboose.  The darkness as we passed through tunnels was velvety and complete, indicating the total absence of electricity in our cabin.  And as for the bathroom, I can only assume it consisted of going to the back of the train and performing some kind of "trust squat" over the edge with a reliable and non-judgmental friend.  When we reached our destination, we were plopped onto a platform with no discernible station nearby, in a place that I'm not sure could actually be called part of modern-day Elbasan.

I loved it, and highly recommend it to those with the time (and perhaps large enough bladders) to spend on the journey.  One thing you won't have to spend much of on the journey is money.  I think the whole trip for three people cost less than 500 leke, which comes out to about $3.50.  As you may have guessed, this is not connected to any larger European rail system, and can't be used to travel the wider region.

Photo stolen from Cary Markin

Other than Tirana and Elbasan, though, I didn't start exploring Albania properly until much more recently.  I did just enough to feel comfortable, and I was out of here!

What else is a vagabond to do when placed so close to Istanbul and Dubrovnik? And what about little Montenegro? Oh, and Berlin! And if I'm going back to the US for the summer, I'm basically passing through Spain again, right? And I can't forget about Macedonia...

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As demonstrated by the author's descent into wanderlust*, the phenomenon known as the "traveler's paradox" helps to explain why some people will move to work in a foreign and exciting new land, only to insist there is nothing to do there, and spend all of their free time trying to escape.  

(*wanderlust: meticulously documenting one's travels and brunches, particularly via social media platforms)

The accepted explanation of traveler's paradox is that if one has left home to live in a new place, that new place then becomes their home.  When a traveler finds themselves at home, by definition they are no longer traveling.  At this point, they must immediately create plans to leave, lest they be forced to redefine their identity.  New travel plans must typically be made for dates within 2-3 months of the onset of traveler's paradox in order to effectively safeguard against pesky and sometimes existential lines of self-questioning.  One may easily confirm the veracity of this phenomenon by simply mentioning a time of year in the presence of literally any traveler or expat, and listening to the resulting itinerary.  

This solution is not 100% effective, however, and the coping mechanisms for traveler's paradox may take more complex forms in some individuals.  Notable examples include the following:

Faux-ing Native: Though visiting many places, travelers do not often stay in any one spot for very long.  Yet despite the brevity of their stays, some feel that they should have more to take away from their experience, so they convince themselves that they have become regional experts.  Symptoms of "faux-ing native" include announcing loudly that one has forgotten the English word for something, or arguing with a local about matters of their own culture.  

Finding Religion: If too much doubt begins creeping in about their life choices, travelers may begin to overcompensate by discussing their indulgent wanderings in tones of reverence as the highest form of morality.  Symptoms include the confusion of novelty with profundity, as well as excessive quoting of authors such as Mark Twain and Robert Louis Stevenson, especially in the titles of blog posts.

Expats are especially vulnerable here, as they have chosen to blur the line between career and travel, and while they feel far more entrenched in their towns and cities than tourists and short-time travelers, they often fail to fully integrate into their new society even after many years.  The photo and caption below should serve as an exemplar of some of these coping mechanisms in action:

Hi guys! Greetings from Indonesia, can't you

see it in the background? Yeah, that's my life!

There is so much beauty, I just don't know 
how people can live without a passport!

Anyway, ciao...I mean goodbye...sorry, I have

so many languages in my head that sometimes

no recuerdo quien soy. Oh, there I go again.

The struggle is real! #wanderlust
#blessed #seetheworld #zekefilter

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Damn...the editors of that guidebook can be real assholes sometimes.  Anyway, here is a short recap of some of the travel opportunities that living in Albania has afforded me over the last year!

Istanbul was the first big trip I took with new friends here,
and it did not disappoint.  The Hagia Sofia alone would have
been worth the trip, as it is the building that best represents
the cities many cultural and historical epochs.

Turks take their shisha very seriously...be advised, it can
catch up with you, and you may find yourself battling
nausea on the lawn of the Blue Mosque.  You know, for example...

When school let out, I headed north to Montenegro, and what
was intended as just a stop on the way to Croatia became one
of my favorite parts of the summer.  Here, the old fortress of
Kotor looms over the new city, while a storm looms over all.

While there are plenty of actual historical reasons to appreciate
Dubrovnik, it was actually its history as King's Landing that had
me nerding out the hardest.

While you cannot swim in any of the lakes in Plitvice National
Park near Zagreb, Croatia, its beauty warrants a trip anyway.

The romanticism of Hemingway's Fiesta de San Fermin in
Pamplona has given way to annual debauchery.  Or perhaps
I'm selling Earnest's efforts short...

Either way, no judgment.  I had a great time watching these
other three run for their lives.  Though bullfights are not for me,
I'll leave the ethical debate to the pages of other blogs.

A trip to Lake Ohrid, Macedonia in September is becoming a
yearly trip to break in new hires.

One of the perks of working at a school seeking
IB accreditation: an IB History conference in
Berlin :)

Ah, Paris.  I thought you had been eluding me,
but it turns out you were just waiting for the right time.

Hiking back from Mt. Bromo in East Java, Indonesia

Finally got to go diving again! Here, off the coast of
Nusa Lembongan, Indonesia.

I did nothing to attact this monkey in Ubud.  Photo stolen
from John Lervezuk.

A ferry ride to Italy found me in the ruins of Pompeii,
with Vesuvius still lurking, though somewhat shorter.

Walking the streets of Matera in Italy, Europe's
oldest continuously populated city.  I know,
my money was on Istanbul, too.

Hiking in the Julian Alps of Slovenia over Spring Break.
Everything about this country was a wonderful surprise.

Narrowly emerging from the "Elf of Stars" escape room in
Lake Bled, Slovenia. 

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See what we mean.  It's a wonder he can hold a job.  

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Hey, fuck off, I know what I'm doing.  What kind of travel guide are you, anyway?  Keep the fourth wall up.  

Albania has certainly done this wanderer's heart good over the last year.  Not only with the travel, inside and out, but with the great friends I have gotten to take these trips with.  I look forward to those to come.  

That said, I recognize that I have fallen victim to the traveler's paradox, and have made a much more concerted effort to keep my feet on Albanian soil over breaks recently, and even (gasp!) stayed at my apartment in Durres over a long weekend.  All of which brings us to the next installment of the Hitchhiker's Guide to Albania: The Beach at the End of the Universe.  See you soon.

  

  

The Hitchhiker's Guide to Albania Part 1

Hitchhiker's Guide to Albania Part 1

A little over a year ago, I wrote about the mental acrobatics and daydreams that led to my accepting a job in Albania: a country I had never been to, in a region I knew little about.  April 1st marked a full year of living and working here, and I feel that it is time to squish, elbow, and stomp my experiences into a series of five wholly insufficient and mostly ridiculous entries.

So grab your towels, and until I get my cease and desist letter, I give you, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to Albania"!  It is only a prototype, but when mass produced will be slightly cheaper than Lonely Planet guides, and will have the words, "Avash, Avash" (Slowly, Slowly) inscribed in large, friendly letters on its cover.

Author's note: All stories and other nonsense herein are meant as homage to both Albania and to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.  I adore them both.  However, I offer my apologies in advance to the former for being a smartass, and to the latter for being a shamelessly inferior exploitation of a classic.  The sections in italics are asides representing (mostly fictional) reference articles from "The Hitchhker's Guide to Albania".  British accents are encouraged.  

The Hitchhiker's Guide to Albania
Albania is the third country I've settled into outside of my native United States for my teaching career.  It's the first, though, in which  I was vomiting so uncontrollably after arriving that one hour into my first day of work, I had to go home to hug my toilet for the rest of the day.  In a sweaty slouch of deliberate breathing, I had wobbled through introductions to my new colleagues, trying to pretend that everything was okay.  Later, near-naked and fetal on my cold bathroom floor, I began to worry that I had succeeded.  Instead of believing me ill, what if they thought their new social studies teacher was some kind of floundering idiot with a glandular condition?  I'd been hoping to delay that conclusion for at least another month.

As it turns out, my illness was not the least bit unexpected.  By the time I got there in the spring, the other staff had long-since given it a name: Balkan Belly.  One by one, my fellow teachers regaled me with the times that they, too, had been steamrolled by the merciless and indiscriminate stomach bug.  With my rite of passage safely behind me, it was time to get to work.

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Science has recently discovered that the bacteria and amoebas living permanently inside of our bodies remain at peace with one another (and us) only through a web of carefully crafted treaties and ongoing diplomatic missions.  Our white blood cells were once thought to attack and destroy these foreign entities, but recent observations under up-quark microscopes at CERN indicate that the elimination of bacteria and amoebas are merely a side effect of the fact that white blood cells are, objectively speaking, the dullest conversationalists in the known universe.  This, combined with their complete lack of social cues, paints quite a complicated picture for immunologists.

As specified in the Lymph Node Treaty of 2005, when the population of either bacteria or amoebas grows too high, their own leaders will cull their numbers by texting a lone white blood cell to come and hang out.  Upon arriving at the nearest colony of bacteria, for example, it will immediately launch into an aimless narrative about something it saw on its Facebook feed.  When the bacterium shies away, the white blood cell will shift jovially into a painful discourse on the results of their latest fantasy football match up.  When the bacterium begins to panic, the white blood cell will put a filament around the capsule of its captive and tell it that, actually, it has LOTS of red-blood-cell friends and that it doesn't even SEE color.  At this point, the bacterium will strangle itself with its own flagella, and the white blood cell will cluelessly drift on to the next one.  In this way, each white blood cell will haplessly eliminate up to 10,000 bacteria or amoebas before it stumbles onto a meaningful topic.  Thus, our immune system will remain in relative equilibrium.  Or, that is, until it encounters a Balkan Bug...

Magnified Balkan Bug
(image sources here and here)

A Balkan Bug is neither a bacterium nor an amoeba, but rather a unique blend of RNA, tobacco, and racial memory.  Typically, they will react to a white blood cell in one of two ways:

1) The Balkan Bug will kindly invite the cell into its home, feed it, and listen patiently to all of its foolishness.  When the cell has exhausted all of its talking points, the Balkan Bug will kiss it congenially on both nuclear pores, and send it on its way with leftovers.  Standing in the doorway and tightly clasping a delicious Elbasan Tava, the white blood cell will decide that it never wants to leave.  

2) The Balkan Bug will loudly cite the atrocities committed by white blood cells against its people, claim that its own people were there before the white blood cells, and then perpetuate the cycle of violence by killing it.  A child white blood cell observing from afar will see this, and never forget.

Either of these responses will immediately neutralize the white blood cells, allowing for unchecked growth of the Balkan Bug population.  So while a certain amount of stomach illness is no stranger to travelers, don't be surprised if you spend a sizable portion of your trip to Southeastern Europe scrutinizing each and every intestinal gurgle.  

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By the beginning of June, I'd moved into my current apartment, from which my commute to work is a whopping eight-minute walk (my first apartment was so close, I could log onto the school's wifi from my living room).  This eight-minute stretch is usually fairly routine, but being an infrastructurally-challenged coastal city, Durres keeps its residents on their toes.

The building I live in is not finished, and there are no perceivable plans to finish it.  I live on the 11th floor, and floors 12-18 above me are open to the elements.  One stormy morning this year, I emerged from my apartment to find the elevator out-of-order, and on the other side of me, water cascading heavily through the open center of the spiral staircase.  Apparently, the rainwater being held in the floors above had reached some sort of critical mass, and the levee broke.  I didn't dare investigate further.  I opened my umbrella and navigated down 11 flights of slick marble, only to emerge into a foot of standing water in the streets and sidewalks around my building.  This had happened once before, and I had to pull a Huck Finn, wading across the street with my pants rolled up to my knees, my shoes in my hand, and a mantra of, "no glass, no holes, no glass, no holes..." in my head as I blindly crossed a road I knew to be prone to both glass and holes.  Having decided myself lucky to escape previously, I went in search of a drier path.  I found it, but was soaked by the blowing rain and my own sweat after 15 minutes of poking around and then another 15 minutes of power-walking to get to work on time.  Luckily (sort of), a lot of people had adventurous mornings, and school got off to a staggered start as students and teachers caught on the wrong side of the flooding trickled in.

When the weather is good though, and it often is, there is a slightly longer, but far more scenic route that I like to take home after work.  You start out of the school, cross the street, and turn left.  Walk a short ways until you see two men playing backgammon at a table in the shade.  Pass them, and bear right in order to find your way through the archway of the 20-foot medieval wall that winds its way through the middle of town.  The adjacent modern buildings have used it for their outer wall, making it feel integrated into the present.  Keep walking straight, and on your left you will see the ruins a nearly 2,000-year-old Roman amphitheater.  One of the big ones, too, that they would fill with water for gladiatorial reenactments of naval battles.  Equally impressive, on your right, you can see "Flok Stil", the barber shop where I grudgingly go once every few months to look like I've joined the army.  While it's the only haircut they do for men, you can still expect to spend up to an hour for them to do it perfectly.  This street will take you out to the main boulevard, where if you turn left, you'll find the main plaza of Durres.

They must occasionally step away to order
coffee and bet on sports.

Here, listen for the call to prayer coming from the mosque as you walk to Mama Luli's for some lasagna, ravioli, and unit planning, as my friend Phil and I did one evening last year.  As we were finishing our food, though, we heard live music starting and abandoned the unit planning in order to investigate.  What we found was a beer festival, during Ramadan, outside of a mosque, in a Muslim-majority country, in the shadows of Roman and medieval ruins.  With Italian food in our stomachs, we struck up a conversation with a pair of Albanian women who didn't drink but felt like stopping by to check out the festival on their way home from university, where they were studying to be English teachers.  In this place, and at this moment, I felt that the world could learn a thing or two from Albania.

Then I got home, and the power was out.

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In addition to unreliable power and undrinkable water, one of the most common complaints among *expats living in Durres is the paucity of dining options.  For example, there is pizza, seafood, and Italian food.  And then, if one keeps looking, they can find pizza.  And seafood.  And Italian food.  Upon first arriving, travelers often rejoice at how the Italian food is just as good as in Italy, the seafood is wonderfully fresh, and the pizza is...well, decent pizza.  And all of this can be had at seafront restaurants for under $10 per meal, which includes a few drinks.  

(*expats: group of immigrants, typically affluent and overwhelmingly white, who do not identify as immigrants)

For months, new arrivals will listen in wonder as their more entrenched friends and colleagues despair about the food situation.  Until the fateful day when they, too, find themselves ordering fresh gnocchi with a tone of despondency.  The following visual aid has been created to illustrate this phenomenon, known as "Quantum Dining":  

While initially spiking to roughly 90% satisfaction, this level drops just below 40% by the 1-year mark.  At this point, the event horizon is crossed, and the laws of quantum mechanics take over.  Expats living in Durres beyond this length of time cannot travel back through memory to recall their initial excitement.  The level of satisfaction from here on exists SIMULTANEOUSLY on two different planes: that of contentment over the availability of cheap, fresh vegetables and some comforts from home, and that of placid acceptance that one must keep eating to survive. 

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I have immensely enjoyed my first year in Albania.  For all of my joking around about the frustrations, I already feel protective of my adopted home.  When drinking a few beers among friends, we may vent and take some shots at the country's perceived shortcomings.  But if we overhear others doing it?  Fuck those guys, they don't know what they're talking about.  No one hits my brother but me...

Ultimately we chose to come here, and we knew it wouldn't be perfect.  In fact, we didn't want it to be.  I didn't, at least.  I wanted a place that was charmingly and maddeningly itself, and that is what I feel like I've found.

Anyway...all this has made me hungry.  I guess I have to eat something now in order to continue existing.

Stay tuned for the next entries:
- So Long, and Thanks for All the Furgons!
- The Beach at the End of the Universe
- Mostly Farmless
- Life, the Universe, and Everything