That Corporate Life

So I have a job.  Apparently it's in "Finance" or whatever.  I'm already lining up "I Hate Mondays :(" cat memes to send to coworkers, and brushing up on topics to discuss around the water cooler.  Get ready to climb this corporate ladder!

This was my first desktop background.  I mean, just the poster.  I just figured it made more sense if I also included Marge Simpson. 

Back to BP

I woke up on the train just south of Belgrade for like the 15th time in the past year, and when the train slowly entered the station I looked anxiously at the time and worrying I could be just a bit too late to catch the 7:30 train out to Budapest.  But we arrived at some awful hour like 6am, and it was cold, and I walked up the hill to Ruski Tsar for my usual slice of pizza, and then back down to the station to enjoy a coffee and then hopped on my train to Subotica. By the time we crossed the border it had become evident to me that the Hungarians were onto my game and two conductors burst into my cabin before we even crossed the border and demanded payment.  I was trapped.  This was it.  Finally, all my shenanigans had ended here.  I handed over the ludicrous sum of 2,600 HUF and sat in my seat like a scolded child.  Finally my past had caught up with me and the chickens had come home to roost.  It was somewhat fitting, as well, as I would be starting work the next day and legitimizing my life.  As I stared out the window on the snowy landscape reflecting on the past year and what was to come I thought, "UGH, I have to work for a living?  Why can't people just pay me to do this?"

The Struggle of Struga

Actually Albania this time around was just a lot of hard clubbing at the hottest spots in Tirana: Mummy,  Honey (I think this is the name...there was a pole there) and I'm sure some others.  It was such a whirlwind.  And I stayed in some embassy compound house.  It really was an extravagant visit, and I was chauffeured around by US Marines everywhere in a Hummer.  There was nothing more exciting than being a superpower tag-along, especially when in Albania.

After I finished with my antics in Tirana, I headed south to Elbasan, where I stayed with another PCV before  making my way to the Macedonian border.  I got ripped off by a furgon driver, and then walked through the border hassle free.  There were a few taxi drivers around the crossing who wanted an exorbitant sum to go all the way to Struga so I decided to walk.  I did ask a bus if I could hop on but they said that within the border zone they weren't allowed to pick up passengers.  I kept walking and then the bus passed me and asked if I wanted a ride, but for some reason I declined.  No idea why I did that because I ended up walking forever until a nice man in a Yugo picked me up.  His name was Slobodan and he took me right to the bus depot, where I learned that a bus to Skopje had just left.

So I walked to the centre of the city which was actually a really nice touristy town perched on Lake Ohrid (but not nearly as scenic as Ohrid itself) and exchanged a very small amount of money, bought a bit of food, and used some free wifi to find out that MY WORK PERMIT HAD ARRIVED.  Shit.  I needed to get on that train and get back to Budapest fast, because I was, like, a working man and all now.

I boarded the bus and began the excruciating 3 hour trip to Skopje, ideally to arrive at 9pm just in time for the 9:10 train to Belgrade.  My nerves were shot the entire time, so luckily I was placated by a Russian movie shot in Malta that I still can't find to this day but it was really intense.  I even understood parts of it.

We then arrived in Skopje at, like, 9:09, and it was unbearable.  I was so overcome with stress I wanted to die.  But after I leapt up the stairs and onto the train and exploded myself into a cabin, I realised that they were in no hurry and decided to wait for an additional half an hour while this couple near me spoke to each other in horribly accented English and kissed and told each other how much they will miss each other.  Gross.

Lezhe

At the turnoff to Lezhe I hopped out of the furgon and walked across the bridge into the city.  It was at the approaches I realized that this is the city I had always wished I had stopped and visited when I was on the bus from Durres to Shkoder on that cold February morning after sleeping on a neatly stacked pile of bricks in a construction site in downtown Durres.  I was just too tired to deal with Lezhe at that point, and no one can blame me. The reason I was so delighted to be here was that there is the tomb of Hoxha, or Skenderbeg, or someone important and Albanian, and it's on the waterfront and looks quite picturesque.  

Anyway, I crossed the bridge into the downtown, took out some lek with my Raiffeissen bank card, and discovered my phone did not work.  My phone never works.  I actually don't know how to use phones, but I thought that T-Mobile, being everywhere in eastern Europe, would at least be able to accommodate my needs in Albania.  It either couldn't, or I couldn't figure out how to make it work.  In any case, this didn't bother me, because Albania is easily the least stressful place I have ever been in my entire life, so I just went to a cafe, ordered a coffee, asked for the wifi password, and just immersed myself in the Balkan mystique.  

Shortly after emailing Laura, my friend Adam's girlfriend, I received a reply back with instructions on how to get to her place.  I walked up a muddy hill and found a nice row of homes overlooking the plains to the sea, and there was Laura, waiting with some hot tea, or wine, or something.  I dunno.  But she was a gracious hostess, and greeted this weary traveller with open arms.  We made some soup and then another PCV came over and we played cards and enjoyed some of the local raki (made by their landlord) and also listened to some hot jamz.

The next day Adam arrived from Peshkopi, after being caught in some sort of mudslide, and we enjoyed how amazing the city is, and even tried to find me used shoes at the local market but to no avail.  We hiked up to the top of the fortress, drank some delicious chai male, and the next day set off for Tirana.  

Huh. This post was kind of dull. 

I actually do have a bit more to say about Lezhe.  Have you ever seen the 1995 GFSS production of Fiddler on the Roof?  Well, there is the dream sequence where Fruma Sarah chases Tevya through the graveyard and screams "If Tseitl marries Lazar Wolf!" then rattles off a list of things that will happen as a result.  Anyway, what I am getting at is that 'Lezhe' and 'Lazar' kind of sound similar to one another and I always think about that dream sequence whenever I am in or around Lezhe.  See below the clip.  It's actually quite terrifying. 

Albanian Weekend Getaway

Dealing with both central European and Canadian university bureaucracy is almost unbearable, and as a result I needed to get away from all the stress by embarking on an absolutely stress-free excursion to the Balkans to see my friend, Adam, from university, whom had recently been posted to Albania in the Peace Corps.  I sent him a vague email explaining that I was thinking about coming to see him, and then immediately went to the train station and hopped on the first train to Szeged.  The first snows were falling in Budapest at this time, and I dreamed of the warm waters of the Adriatic splashing playfully against the sun-baked Albanian shores.  

The train arrived in Szeged around 10am, and I had decided that for this crossing of the Serbo-Hungarian border I would try the little commuter train that runs between Szeged and Subotica.  As you know, of course, the two cities, while large and close to one another, are not well connected, and the main route to Belgrade from BP goes through Kelebia to Subotica, and does not touch Szeged.  And Kelebia is…not much of a global force.  I knew about this litter commuter train because I had taken it the other way in 2007*, and had arrived late at night to discover no trains were leaving for Budapest and that I needed to wander around the city to find a place to sleep.  There were no hostels but I managed to find a university dorm that I was allowed to sleep in for incredibly cheap.  This time I didn't leave the station because I would be taking the same commuter train back the other way.  I had a bit of time to kill so I went to the restaurant in the station and ordered a beer**.  The bartendress asked for my ID and when I gave her a puzzled look, she gestured that I looked young.  Unfortunately did not know enough Hungarian at this point to have a snappy comeback like, "Younger than what?  6?" because….Europe. 

Anyway, shortly thereafter I was on the little commuter train going to Rozke and then to Subotica, where I detrained and waited at the station for the train to Bar, which was some sort of special train that only left on special days and went directly from Subotica to Bar. This was fantastic news for me, as it would deposit me in Podgorica at 8am.  I ate at some cantina near the station, loaded up on a couple of beers, and got ready to make myself comfortable in a first-class cabin on the train.  I had just uploaded the new Girl Talk album and also the Notorious B.I.G's greatest hits to my iPod, so with fine Serbian beer and a 14 hour train ride ahead of my, I was basically in my comfort zone.  The train even went through Bosnia, but didn't stop, so I didn't get any passport stamps, and therefore was not worth it.  

When I awoke in Podgorica, the weather was balmy, and I was ready for a long and pretty heinous walk to the Albanian border.  Apparently no trains/buses/anything actually goes to the border, so I just toughed it up and decided to walk the 10km to Tuzi and beyond to the Hani i Hotit border crossing.  I passed some winery, which actually produces wines I've seen in Canada, and groups of school kids who giggled at me, and then got picked up by a Mecedes heading to the border.  It was full of boxes of dates and nuts, and I had to really squish in the back.  There had been heavy rains the night before and many areas on the road were flooded.  Just after the border we went though a massive puddle and the car started filling with water.  I immediately retracted my feet, as water began to gush into the floor of the car, and I was worried the car would stall and we would be stranded there, in the middle of a puddle in Northern Albania for the rest of our lives, but we managed to push through and are stronger for it today. 

Once we arrived in Shkoder I was pretty happy to see furgon service to literally anywhere, and I never felt more comfortable about how to get around and what my next steps would be.  I went to give the driver a kindly tip of 200 lek and he refused and said "5 euros."  I was flabbergasted.  I said no.  He pressed for more.  I acquiesced, thrust 300 lek in his hand and shouted, "You have no recourse!" as I darted into the first furgon I saw headed for Tirana.  This is my favourite way to make an exit.  In fact, in the future, I hope I have the opportunity to exit every unpleasant encounter by getting into a Tirana-bound furgon. 

* Oh!  Can we please talk a little bit more about Szeged?  Okay, so the Hungarian "Sz" is pronounced the same way as an English "S" and not at all like the Polish "Sz" which is pronounced like an English "Sh". This isn't even remotely interesting or funny, unless you know Hungarian and know that the word "segged" (pronounced "Shegg-ed" means "you ass" and not the name of a city so when I asked the ticket lady in 2007, "Kaphatok egy egyet Segedbe" I was basically saying, "Could I please have one ticket to your ass?" which, no matter how broken my Hungarian was, was pretty clear.  And for some reason no Hungarian seems to think that there is a remarkably coincidence between the two words.  

**Ugh, whatever.  It was probably noon, and even if it weren't, whatever, who are you to judge?  I was unemployed at this point, and there is nothing unemployed people love more than having a beer at 11am, amirite? ;)