Yes, it has been a really long time, and for that we apologize. It is amazing how fast time keeps going by even while at the same time it seems to creep. Now that October is here, the crowds are long gone, but we still get the occasional cruise ship and the ferries from Corfu are still coming once a day. Life in Sarande has slowed down, not enough to quiet the motorcycles outside our roadside balcony but enough for the discos to close down and stop blaring the Rocky Theme at 2am. As a side note, since the city is built on the side of the hills facing the sea, there are several long stairways in which one could reenact Rocky’s run up to the Philadelphia Art Museum, but if you want the music you have to do it at 2am.
So to make up for our slacking we are going to do a three part series this week (if internet stays on long enough) covering the month of September. Enjoy.
Part one: Tirana
As some of you more diligent TIA blog readers may remember, I was elected to the Volunteer Advisory Committee, which is a body that serves to represent volunteers’ concerns to staff. I like to think of myself as union boss but with absolutely no power. The VAC meets quarterly with the Peace Corps Staff and our fist meeting was at the end of August. Tirana, the capital of Albania, is only 137 miles from Sarande but due to the conditions of the roads and the buses that travel the roads, and the donkey carts that block the roads, and the thousands of Mercedes that speed across the bad roads, the trip takes about 8 hours. So even though they have Chinese food and real super markets, the hassle of the 16 hour round trip ride makes going to Tirana one of the last things on our “want-to-do” list.
So, as a means to ensure a quicker trip, I decided to hitch a ride North. Two other volunteers and their friend were also going to Tirana. During the summer many people from the capital vacation in Sarande and usually don’t mind picking up an American guest to chat with during the drive back. Magically within 10 minutes a nice new Mercedes pulled up and offered us a ride within an hour of the Capital, as long as we didn’t mind the little dog in the back seat. Without coming to Albania it is hard to explain the large amount of Mercedes here, there numbers seem to rival what I can remember of Germany. But whether they are used, rebuilt, or have “fallen off the back of the truck”, I am not sure, but I would guess that 1 out of every 3 cars here is a Mercedes Benz. Not only did our driver take us all the way to Durres, he called his friend and had him pick us up in Durres and take us the last hour to Tirana. I think travelling with 3 young women probably sparked this hospitality.
Tirana is the largest city in Albania with a population of over 500,000 and growing by the day. Like many developing counties large amounts of people have left their homes in the country side in order to find jobs in the capital. So much so that it is expected in the next few years, Tirana and the close by port city of Durres will merge into one large metro area that will be home to over half of the country’s population. When communism ended in the early 90’s, Tirana had more horses than cars, legal building were thrown up all over the city and large amounts of unemployed people moved in from all over. While today the ubiquitous Mercedes has taken the place of the horses, Tirana itself has made some headway under its current artist turned mayor Eddie Rama. Seeing the dull, dilapidated, decomposing communist style building everywhere, Mr. Rama decided to make the city his canvas. While critics would suggest that painting buildings is not quite cleaning up the city, many people of Tirana have embraced the idea, so much so that Mr. Rama is now head of the Socialist Party and recently lost the election to become Prime Minister, although, he is still demanding a recount and he and his party have refused to be seated with the new Parliament. They are even talking of starting protests this weekend. So we will see maybe we will be painting our city soon.
One thing that Mr. Rama could do would be to at least paint some street names on the sides of buildings. The lack of street signs and even street names makes getting around the capital a very interesting game of oddly named landmarks. Example: from the bus station go to straight until you get to the UFO store, to your left will be the statue of Skanderbeg, continue to walk so that he is staring you in the back. Next turn left at the “looks like it is about to launch a space ship” building , look for a rock with a piece of metal sticking out of it, go through the cave and then the second door on your left will be your hostel. If it sounds crazy in English try it in Albanian.
The VAC meeting in and of itself was uneventful, but it was nice to get to see some of the other volunteers and even nicer to eat some American food, like a Cheeseburger, BBQ chicken and a milk shake. The VAC meeting was at the Peace Corps Office, which I can’t even being to explain the directions to, but it is close to the US Embassy. I got to see most of the staff that I had not seen since swearing in ceremony in May, and I also had my ankle looked at by the medical staff. It is doing much better but still not 100%. The bus ride home was also thankfully uneventful (no one threw up). Since the trip is so long there is a built in “Pilaf” stop, where everyone gets out and uses the rest rooms and can buy a bowl of pilaf. This is just a big bowl of rice, sometimes with some beans, sometimes with tiny bits of beef like stew poured over it. It hits the spot for 50 cents and I have learned that you should always eat where you can see the bus driver, this will let you know when he is about to leave, and you won’t get left behind. This happened to us on another trip, where we took too long finding a bathroom and when we came out the bus was gone. Fortunately, someone noticed the Americans where not on board and the bus had stopped about 300 yards down the road. After the Pilaf break, we got back on the road and continued the journey though southern Albania which is definitely a sight for the eyes. We passed though small towns and big ones, followed a crystal clear river and transversed though both mountains and valleys. Lauren was very happy to have me home, but very upset that I had not brought her back some of that BBQ chicken, burger, or milkshake.
No comments:
Post a Comment