Money Troubles con't

So one thing I wanted to mention but I forgot yesterday... for some reason the concept of a float hasn't quite made it to Albania yet. Everything I buy day to day is pretty cheap but if you ever try to give a 1000 leke bill or higher to your average vender he/she looks at you like your trying to use Confederate dollars. They never have enough change to break any sort of large bill. Which sucks cause you only get big bills from the money changers or bank machines. So they give you a pained look and make you fork over the change you had planned on using for a bus. They'll even go so far as grabbing change out of your hand instead of taking the larger proffered bill. And if you insist you'll have to wait while they send someone off to get you change.

Who want's to be an Albanian Millionaire...

So for some reason every Albanian makes the same joke when the find out I moved to Albania voluntarily. "Oh you came here for work? Ok gimme your Passport and I'll go back to Canada..." ha ha. Never heard that.

So one time I was joking around with a friend of mine and said "fine, gimme a million leke ($10,000) and its yours." Granted I think he knew I was joking but he said fine, done lets go to the bank machine (There's bank machines everywhere now but there was one that I knew of in all Albania six years ago.) I was a little surprised that he had that kind of money sitting around, until I realized he was talking in "old lek." Even though he'd served a mission in England, and we were having the conversation in English, he's a very bright worldy business-type guy he still thinks like every other Albanian in "old lek." To get old lek you just add a zero so he thought I meant 1000 dollars. Despite the fact that it's almost been fifty years since they revalued the Lek to keep it pegged with the Soviet Ruble, which had been revalued by the USSR and had dropped a zero from it's own currency, they still like to about everything by adding an extra zero to the price. So a bottle of pop (say one dollar) becomes 1000 leke. And EVERYBODY does this! Whenever I ask someone why they do this they say either because our parents did it, or because Albanians want to feel like they have more money then they actually do. You get used to it, especially when you know approximately what something is going to cost, but it's extremely frustrating when someones throwing numbers around,(because knowing that I'm foreign they'll usually quote both prices when I look confused,) about something your not to sure about.

Sample conversation.

Andrew - How much is this pot?

Albanian - 18000, I mean 1800 ( slighty confused look on Andrew's face as he's trying to do the math in my head to dollars. It doesn't help that these two numbers sound a lot alike. If I'm super lucky [sarcasm] he'll then say)

Albanian - 18 dollare (This never really helps because I'm still thinking about what he just said and all three numbers sound very similar.)

At this point he'll usually get frustrated when I don't understand right away and start calling to his nephew who speaks a little english.

At this point I'm feeling more comfortable with my Albanian but during the first few days when I was renting an apartment and buying a whole bunch of stuff i was severely doubting my language skills.

Funny side bar anecdote. So I wen't to the big Tirana market to buy some stuff for the apartment. Silly me, I forgot that everything shuts down at 2:00pm for the siesta nap. The first picture is the market at like 2:05pm (ghost town) on a wenesday afternoon. The next is the same market at 12:30pm the next day.

Rainy Sunday...

One of the nicest (read only) green areas of Tirana is the park next to the lake. Walking along the paths there you almost forget you're in Albania. Nice paved paths, grass, trees, theres people jogging, some even in what could be called jogging outfits. People even walk there dogs.

(Although unfortunately a lot of Albanians have gravitated towards those stupid macho fighting breeds. Pitbulls, Dobermans, and the like. We saw some boys training one of there dogs on a tree and two dogs actually started fighting when the got off the leash. At least its better than all the stray dogs still roaming the streets

with broken legs and their hair falling out... But back to the story)

So a couple friends of mine invited me to plat Monopoly by the lake. We had to explain some of the rules to those who hadn't played before. It was a beautiful day, the sun was shining, we laid out the game and then the rain started. 10 minutes later we were sheltering in some sort of old communist monument covered in lame grafitti (Lame because the true art of grafitti hasn't made landfall in Albania quite yet. Mostly just kids scratching their names and weird, poorly translated pop culture references.) while the rain poured down all

around us. But as quickly as the rain came it was gone and we were back to our game with a few puddles and a rainbow the only indication that it had rained at all.

Sufllaqe!

So if people in Canada were a little surprised I wanted to come back to Albania, Albanians are flabbergasted. And I joke around with them and tell them various reasons... the weather for one, (I show them a picture of the blizzard we had back in May. ) But I always tell them the big reason is sufflaqes. First off, they're only $1.20 usually, and thats up maybe twenty cents from six years ago. A bottle of coke costs more. And what they do is...

they take a soft pita, coat it in a little bit of oil, fry it up a little...

tzatizi sauce, tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, lettuce...

then rotisserie pork meat(surprisingly not a problem amongst all these muslims..)

thick cut french fries topped with mayo, ketchup, and mustard.

You'd think all those flavours wouldn't go but they do. So what you do is you use the little plastic fork to eat most of the fries and the sauces till you get down to a point where you can start eating the pita part, which is the best part because the pita is soft and greasy and just plain amazing. Seriously delicious. I've gotten at least one a day since I got here. The other thing they do is a doner, which is the same as a sufflaqe but in a grilled sandwich bun. Needless to say I've gotten to know the owner of the local sufflaqe stand pretty well.

10 dollar repair job...

So I broke my glasses. I was actually watching the FA Cup final between Chelsea and Portsmouth (great-great game.) I really wanted Chelsea to lose (go Arsenal) and when Portsmouth missed their penalty shot my hands flew to my head and knocked my glasses off breaking the right arm at the hinge(suck.) So I took the to this little hole in the wall repair shop. Its not an optical illusion, its literally a hole in the wall in which he can sit with a cramped desk and shelf. So he charged me 10 bucks(upfront) and told me come back the next day after assuring me that he was an engineer and they would be fine. Well they don't exactly look as good as new but they work perfectly and look fine form the outside. So in the end its a happy ending...

White shoes were a mistake...

So I loves me my kicks... Love white shoes. I left like four pairs at home. And the two that I brought were my favourite pairs. So this is the view from the apartment I got. Its one floor of a villa thats nice and close to the major inside ring road that goes around the city. Unfortunately, as I kinda forgot, as soon as you get outside the ring road part of the city the paved roads start to disappear along with the sidewalks. Also, as I failed to remember, it rains
in Tirana. A lot... more than Seattle. Which ends up making a lot of mud which makes for muddy shoes. The crazy thing is its not even
an overcast place. It can go from bright and shiny to crazy rainstorm and back again in a period of hours. Sigh...
It just ends up that I permanently have an umbrella in my bag.

Only in Albania...

I took this photo on another one of my "I can't sleep so I'll go explore the city" 6am wlaks. Yah you read that right. George W. Bush Road. And it's a nice road too, right in the middle of the city. I mean it would be one thing if it was the local fish market or sewage treatment plant... but c'mon! Think about it, politics aside, they named a major street after one of the most controversial and reviled men in recent history. I can't think of any other country in the world where he would get an honour even close to this. I think he'd have trouble getting a name change for the road out to Crawford Ranch.

So here's the story. Towards the trail end of his presidency, (when he was doing about 25% approval ratings back home, never mind around the world,) Bush-i came to visit lil' ol' Albania.

At a time when most of the world greeted him like this... (and still do)

Albanians line the streets to welcome him like this...

Why? Well America has long been Albania's patron in Europe and has worked hard to get it into NATO and has pressured the EU to let Albania in. America was one of the first nations to recognize the independence of Kosovo, and helped end the war between Kosovo and Serbia with the bombing of Belgrade. In fact Albania, for a lagre part, owes it's existence to America when after WWI, at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson dismissed a plan by the European powers to divide Albania among its neighbours. And its not just a one way street. Albania has been a staunch(if not terribly helpful) ally in the war on terror in Afghanistan and Iraq. Albania has 250 troops in Afghanistan comprising 0.25 % of the international force there. 120 special forces troops were sent to Iraq as well.

So America can do no wrong in Albanians's eyes, and this just might be the only country in the world, (excluding the US itself,) where I might be better off lying and telling people I'm American.

lol . Check my boy Jon Stewart.

http://crooksandliars.com/media/play/wmv/1549/

Tirana Sunrise...

I'm staying in a new hotel that my driver from the airport

recommended after he told me he could get me a good deal. I feel like I'm paying a lot still though and I'm looking for a different place. My body doesnt know whether its coming or going but I've been up since 4am. So after watching a couple hours of Albanian TV which is mostly music videos, soap operas, news(by the way theres nothing like an Albanian newscaster doing her report a mile a minute and you understanding 1 in 10 words to make you really feel self-conscious about your language skills,) and finally pirated recently released movies, literally filmed with camcorders and broadcast with Albanian subtitles.

So after not being able to get back to sleep I went out for an early breakfast. At 6 am theres really nothing open except bakeries. As you can see the streets are empty. Luckily I found a good Byrektore where they make Byrek with cheese. Then I went to a park and watched the city wake up.

No sleep 'til Tirana...

Sooo...

this is what I'm leaving behind. This is my backyard in Edmonton the Tuesday before I leave. Serious... and this happens every year. And every year all Albertans say "this is sooo crazy, snow in May/June." Except it happens all the time...

I'm sitting in the cafe/lobby of my hostel in foggy London town, just outside the Euston train

station, and I am jetlagged out of my mind. From the Bus on Saturday to Calgary,

to the plane from

Calgary to Manchester,

train from Manchester to London...

I've been in a lot of small seats.

Before travelling to the land of No-McDonalds I thought I'd have one last meal. Way more american food franchises here then I thought there'd be. I also could have gone with Burger King, KFC, Subway or a different McDonalds all on a five minute walk from where im staying.

I didnt sleep on the plane at all despite having three seats to

myself. Unfortunately the armrests didn't go up so i couldnt really

turn it to my sleeping advantage. I was too wired anyways. By the time I felt like I was ready to nod off, breakfast was being served.

I didn't get any shut eye until I got to the hostel, but seeing as how I didn't have a lock to secure my valuables I was trying to keep one eye open for my other roommates who kept coming and going.

It's really nice here though.

Well I'm leaving for the airport in four hours so hopefully I'll have more pictures then.

The View from my Hostel.