The Other Toronto

So the next two week in Tirana were spent exactly how life should be spent everywhere: cooking elaborate meals and entertaining for the intellectual elite of the community.  Riding the coattails Garrett’s celebrity status in order to achieve a position of my own, I plotted a course that would have me on top of the social scene by the end of two weeks, which I was.   All the ex-pats in the city made pilgrimages to Garrett’s apartment on the west side of town to eat, drink, be merry, and most importantly, claim that they were there.  

The highlight of these two weeks came when we went to the Coin Tower to watch the latest protests.  Everyone who receives Albanian news e-mail alerts knows that there are two common themes in Albanian news: flooding and political gridlock.  As the opposition had been boycotting parliament and on a hunger strike for however long a period of time, Friday was to be the day that the strike ended, and most were anticipating the government falling, violence and widespread brigandry.  In fact, a Czech girl working for the EU in Tirana called and pleaded that we remain indoors that night because the government was about to fall and that things could get real, real fast.

Interpreting this as a suggestion that we go out and have one of those “I was there” moments to peg up on our walls of privileged elitism*, we set off for the new Coin Tower, which I have every reason to believe is the tallest building in Albania, which had a terrace and a brilliant view of the downtown.  It’s also the only place in Albania where speaking English—which tacitly implies that the speaker is American, which directly implies that he/she has supported Kosovo—does not give one carte blanche.  In fact, we had to dress up, as dressed up as a filthy backpacker on the road for seven-and-a-half months could be (by tucking in my plaid shirt), and set off.  To my delight we were let in and we sipped imported beer and a $6 glass of wine on the terrace overlooking the main square and the hunger strike below.  This was it.  This was our “Let them eat cake” moment.  I felt like the Gromekos in Dr. Zhivago, mocking the revolutionaries just before they moved into their stately apartment and divied up the rooms, headed by a stern party matron.   As it turned out, however, [unfortunately] no plump Russian commissar would be mistress of my destiny.  At least this time around.  The “revolution” sputtered and died remarkably quickly like an old Mercedes.

So aside from this, I attended the opera for an Italian-Albanian cultural exchange, dined on fresh prawns and innovated with both arugula and kitchenware design from old 5L water bottles.  In all, a success for me and Tirana, which has proven itself to be just as, if not more, worldly than its namesake, Toronto.  

*This is very important to people like me, who expect to cap out at $30K a year and want to be able to turn my nose up at the world and say things like, “Yeah, I have no employable skill, but I have experienced the raw emotion of the Balkan spirit.”

Crna Gora-phobia

Oh, so did I mention that we picked up a straggler in Trieste?  He was of Canadian and American stock and was a Fulbrighter in Albania.  We drove him as far as Sarajevo where he needed to get on a bus to Split to visit some friends.  Garrett and I decided to power through and continue to Albania.  Well, we had planned this until we went o an Indian restaurant (in Sarajevo!) and then decided that we would just sleep in the car and get an early start on the morning.  We decided that a school parking lot in a small village right on the border between Bosnia and Respublika Srpska was the best place to do this.  

Being fairly high up in the mountains, it was pretty chilly and I had to content myself with opening my backpack and layering all my clothes, scarves and towels (which at this point consisted of one dish towel that I accidentally-on-purpose carried away with me from Ukrainian State Railways) on top of me and shiver through the night while Garrett lay smug in his sleeping bag.  I initially thought that the chattering of my teeth was probably the most passive aggressive way of dealing with this situation but I think posting it on a blog that no one reads two years later actually takes the cake in this situation.

In early morning we high-tailed it for the border and felt the cold slap of Montenegro’s desperate attempt to get into the EU: a “green tax” of 10 euros for every car entering the country.   And no sooner had we paid this official bribe were we stopped by some obnoxious policeman in Podgorica who claimed we had gone through a red light.  The fact that we had actually gone through a green light is not important here—three other cars followed us and for some reason the police officer decided to stop the car with Albanian plates.  Well, this traffic cop picked the wrong Albanian rental car to mess with and was greeted with a barrage of Ango-Saxonese about how we went through a green light, we’re citizens of the US/Commonwealth, and that we can contact the US/British embassies if there is any problem because we were unaware of the law in Montenegro that Albanians are not allowed to go through green lights at traffic intersections.  Needless to say, we were off in a few minutes and decided we were not interested in spending much more time in Montenegro.

So aside from stopping at the Lake Shkodra National Park at the border to pick some wild asparagus and thyme, we made haste for the Hani I Hotit border crossing and were in the DTTD (DownTown T-Dot) by sundown.  Along the way we played my usual favourite game of naming all 53 countries in Africa along with their capitals, and then counted the number of furniture shops in a 2-km stretch on the Tirana-Durres highway.   There were 72.  I say “were” because as we all know I am writing this two years late and that number has probably doubled by now.  As the old Albanian adage goes: “Where one shop selling cheap, crappy, Italian-themed furniture exists, there is surely room for 800 more right next to it.”  This is also applicable to cafés.  While this is clearly a remnant of the Turkish souk style of retailing, it goes against everything that Anglo-American capitalism stands for and has indoctrinated me to the core.