Oh Canada

May 15, 2007

I’ve written before about my frustrations with coffee in Albania. It has nothing to do with the café culture of this country, or any European country I’ve been to for that matter. (I’ve never been accused of being a workaholic, and I’m totally fine with taking twenty or fifty minutes a few times a day to sit with a drink and watch people go by.) But, I also like coffee, and the Happy Meal-sized espressos that are enough for Albanians – and which they somehow manage to nurse longer than the 1.5 seconds I usually take to down one – just don’t leave me feeling like I really had a coffee.

This whole thing was a much larger issue in my life about six months ago, before I moved out of my host family’s house and got my own apartment. Now that I’m all grown up and living on my own in the big city, I’m able to make my own coffee every morning. I got French press hand me down from some American missionaries and my Mom sent me a small thermos, so now every morning I make coffee. Not an espresso, not a macchiato, but coffee. I take my thermos to work, drawing the usual stares for walking down the street with a thing that looks to people like a small missile, and have two enjoyable cups while I sit at my desk and wake up. It’s probably the best part of every one of my days.

My co-workers are aghast at the amount of coffee I drink. And we’re talking about two normal-sized cups. How many people routinely drink twice this amount in America? My hand is raised. Nonetheless, my coffee consumption has been a cause for concern among my friends at work.

“Beni, dude. You know dude, I think this coffee you drink is going to make an attack on your heart.” This is what my friend Gary says to me every day.

This week brought a visitor to the NGO I work at. A fellow employee of WV, he’s a Canadian that works in some kind of regional office in Cyprus or Crete – aren’t those just different names for the same place? Joking. Although who didn’t know the difference maybe just a few years ago? My hand is raised. – The Canuck showed up at the office yesterday morning, let’s go with Zach for his name, so Zach arrives and I learn he will be in town for a week conducting a training with WV staff members.

When I got to work Monday morning I went directly to the kitchen to get my mug to take back to my desk. I found my boss, Mary, in the midst of battle with a coffee maker, not a French press, a real Black & Decker coffee maker. The kitchen was a mess of espresso ground coffee and water. The coffee maker was dripping away with the pot sitting in the sink.

“Oh Beni. Can you help me? Can you fix the coffee machine? I don’t know, I think it is broken,” Mary pleaded.

“Is that a coffee maker! Where’d that come from? Did we buy it?

“No it is Zach’s. He is here from Cyprus. But he is Canadian and he brought with him a coffee machine. He drinks SO much coffee, like you Beni.”

Consumed by excitement, I left Mary as she was putting coffee grounds in the water deposit. I went to my office and met the Canuck from Cyprus – who is also probably a boss of mine somehow – and got right down to business:

“So you travel around with a coffee maker?” I asked.

“Well just places where I’m pretty sure I can’t get Canadian-style coffee, eh.” – he didn’t really say ‘eh,’ but I imagined it.

“That’s funny. I always call it ‘American-style’ coffee.”

“Well, you’re American, eh.” – again, so ‘eh’ was said.

“Ummm, I’m pretty sure that in Paris the coffee drink that we both enjoy is called an ‘Americano.’ I don’t know of drink called a “Canadiano.’”

“It’s just called beer.”

Touché Canuck. Zach and I hit it off. I’ve been to Canada plenty of times and I told him about my giving Windsor, Ontario “Tijuana of Canada” status. Which Zach conceded. He related to the importance I place on my morning ritual of making French press coffee.

“I really look forward to the whole process,” I said. And there is a very particular way that I like to make my coffee.”

“I think you have OCD.”

“Probably.”

John, my site spouse, stopped by and we invited Zach over for dinner. “We just bought a grill,” we explained, “and we can make hamburgers.” Zach was in for burgers.

The grill has been a big step in mine and John’s relationship. I think it’s brought us closer. For the last ten days, we’ve pretty much been grilling everything that we think is food. Like a lot of things in Albania that are at first so exciting because you had given up hope of finding them or being able to do it, grilling is pretty close to what I enjoyed back home, but is ultimately a new frustration because it gets you so close but really just not.

The issue here is charcoal and actually lighting the grill. Here’s how I know how to start a grill: There’s usually a button with a picture of flame. I press this button (in an emergency I empty a bottle of lighter fluid on forty pounds of briquettes). The first trial was finding charcoal for our grill. We didn’t know how to say the word “charcoal”, and actually weren’t sure if it could be found at all. I had the following conversation at several stores around Lezha:

“Good evening. How are you? I need something black that is for meat on a grill.”

“Black meat?”

“No, no. It is for me to cook meat…”

“Pepper! You American. You want pepper.”

“No, no. It is black and goes inside a grill. Meat is then laid on top so that the black thing can become hot and cook the meat.”

I don’t have a very big Albanian vocabulary, and it can become rather abstract.

Eventually, someone understood our request and we were able to buy charcoal. That wasn’t really charcoal. What we bought was a bag of really burned pieces of wood. Like just a lot of stuff left from a camp fire. I do know that charcoal really is just compressed wood, but this was just a bag of charred branches and shrubs. So we learned that charcoal can be a lot simpler of thing than compressed briquettes. And, we also learned that the shit that we bought does not catch on fire again.

Determined to grill things, we’ve persisted over the last week. It takes a lot of paper, fanning and other cajoling to get the twigs burning, but we’ve managed. The Canuck joined us for hamburgers the other night. John and I talked mostly about our relief with the approach of summer.

“It’s so great to see people outside again,” I said. “I didn’t appreciate Xhiro season last year, but I’m counting the days now.”

“What’s Xhiro?” Zach asked.

“It’s when everyone just goes out at night and wanders around,” John replied. “It’s amazing. Definitely the best thing in Albania.”

Zach seemed a little underwhelmed by the whole description. We tired to impress upon him how great Xhiro is. Xhiro is not just walking round. There’s also sitting with a coffee or beer, maybe some fried dough or ice cream can be involved. But mostly, I love the people watching that Xhiro offers. As much as Albanians seem to love staring at me, I know I enjoy watching them even more. Part of it is that staring is perfectly acceptable, also, I can openly talk about people in English. But, the biggest reason I love Xhiro is because people are hilarious and I can give them nick names.

“So Xhiro,” I continued. “We usually meet after work for a drink, then we’ll wander to a difference place, and, remember, the streets are packed with people. Everyone is wandering around for a few hours before dinner.”

“And Xhiro doesn’t happen in the winter,” the Canuck asked.

“No way. Strictly a summer activity,” said John.

“So what do you do for entertainment in the Winter?”

“I started smoking,” I said.

We continued with our expectant talk of the summer. An early beach season has been an exciting development. I enjoy the beach, and during the summer Albanians expect you to have gone to the beach at least two times in the last week. So this works out well. The country can have beautiful beaches, however, it requires getting away from any coastal cities, as they’ve all seen dodgy seaside development, leaving the beaches gross. But, there are pristine places.

The Albanian beach experience offers great people watching in its own right. Of course, just about everyone is laying around in bathing suits, swimming, building castles and doing what you do at the beach. But, there will also always be amusing sights that I can only hope never go away.

“A lot of times people are wandering around the beach dressed just in a completely uncomfortable way,” I said to Zach. “Like girls walking down the beach dressed in jeans, a few shirts, big-heeled shoes, crazy makeup and just looking like they took a wrong turn from the Xhiro.”

“And you also get people completely underdressed,” John added. “Always men. They’ll be in their euro-speedos, or, a lot of times, just laying around in their underwear.”

“There are wild donkeys at our beach in Lezha.”

“Sounds like a scene,” the Canuck offered.

“It’s a gong show. Priceless.”

A year ago I didn’t appreciate the Albanian summer. It was like summer in America without air conditioning. But, winter left me wishing I could just go out, wander around, drink and stare at Lezha’s cast of characters. Wasn’t I talking about coffee? I think I have undiagnosed ADD. Hey, look at that bird!

What is May Day?

May 2, 2007

May Day was yesterday. I’m on my fourteenth month in Albania, I now have two May Day experiences under my belt, but I have no idea what this day is. I’ve been told that Americans have a May Day as well. Is this really true? I have no memory of anything called May Day.

My 2007 May Day followed the standard pattern of most of my days. I sat at café for a few hours, watched people go by and then sat some more. There was at one point a Man Dance sighting in the center of town. In my experience the Man Dance is reserved for weddings and Christmas parties – though it has snuck up on me in what seemed like quiet cafés –a public staging of the Man Dance had to have been in recognition of May Day.

To describe the Man Dance……..Well, it’s never planned, it doesn’t have moves or steps per se, but all Albanian Man Dances have a similar look. That is, a group of men – it could be one guy or seventy – start with a little clapping, the clapping escalates and is then replaced by some twirling around – the guys can be pretty light on their feet – more clapping, the formation of the Man Dance circle, more twirling, clapping and three and half days later the Man Dance might be over.

There are variations, some guys are truly well-practiced Man Dancers, but there is always clapping, twirling around and Man Circles. There is of course a Woman Dance and a Co-Ed Dance. These are the same idea, with either no men or men encircling the women with their Man Dance. It’s truly majestic.

Trench Foot

April 8, 2007

Happy Easter. I’m not counting on the Easter Bunny making the trip to Lezha. Buuuuut, maybe.

A consolation is that Albanians are into dying and coloring Easter eggs. (This is something I didn’t notice a year ago, and am pretty sure is a new development. So what’s coming next? I’m pulling for St. Patrick’s Day and Green Beer). So this was a pleasant surprise, of course, it’s very likely Albanians have been doing this for three-thousand years, I’ve probably been told this, and I’m just an idiot.

My former host family is Muslim, so no dying eggs happening in that house, but I was invited to dye some eggs last night at my neighbor’s house. It was fun, a lot like the egg dying of my childhood that involved balancing an egg on a paper-clip-thing while dunking it in colored water, getting bored with how long it was taking, trying different colors, becoming frustrated with the paper clip, and ending up with a brownish-colored egg.

After drowning a dozen or so eggs I was ready to make my exit and began the routine of saying goodbye, knowing full well this would be met with resistance and I likely wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon. There was a crowd at the house, all of whom I needed to say goodbye to and probably chat with, plus, there was definitely going to be an attempt to force dinner on me. To my surprise, I got through the cheek kissing and head bumping and I managed to beg off dinner, compromising for a coffee and raki. The family offered me one of the hard boiled eggs we had dyed, “thanks” I said, putting the Easter egg in my pocket. “No No Beni,” someone said, “it’s for you to eat. You want to eat the egg?” “Soooo, now we all just eat the eggs we dyed a minute ago” I thought to myself. This was a little different. I usually opt for the chocolate over the egg flavored eggs on Easter, but when in Rome I guess.

I peeled the unidentifiably-colored shell – let’s call it mauve – and found that the dye had penetrated through the shell and colored the egg white the same color as the shell. “Should the weak Easter egg dye be able to seep through an egg shell? Was this “dye” really oil-based garbage truck paint? I got this stuff all over my hands! My skin has got to be more porous than an egg shell. What has gotten into my bloodstream?!!” I was panicking.

I looked up to a room of expectant eyes. “Oh man. They really want the American to eat the Easter egg. How much of an insult will it be if I don’t? I gotta finesse this one somehow. What would not eating the egg do to my reputation? I thought. After awkwardly trying to express my gratitude while also saying that “I just wanted to save it,” I got my wits back and explained that “in America, we only eat the Easter eggs on Easter Day” (this was the evening before). My story was considered, the neighbors glanced at eachother with “so you believe this story?” looks. Finally, they accepted my excuse. I finished the raki, gave a few more smacks to some cheeks and came out having made a good impression on my neighbors. I have gotten so good at lying.

4-20-07

I’ve been lucky in that in the last thirteen months I have been free of the viruses and parasites that seem to afflict so many Americans in this country. Stomach issues are the most common ailment. There are lots of horror stories of people being bed-ridden for days, becoming convinced that they need to be cut open and have an alien removed from their stomach. I know people that have had mysterious eye problems and developed allergies that they had never had. John, my site spouse in Lezha, lives under a power-line tower and is confident that he has brain cancer. While my laptop and iPod have been victims of Albania, as far as my own health is concerned, I’m doing fine.

The strangest medical matter that has afflicted Americans that I’m aware of is something called “trench foot.” It’s was common in the First World War among soldiers from both sides who spent days standing around in cold, wet trenches. Their feet would become numb, black and blue and eventually gangrenous. This is a nasty picture: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/FWWfoot.htm

Now, I don’t think anyone’s feet have become gangrenous, but I do know of two Americans that have been diagnosed as having trench foot. It’s only two, but I mean, trench foot?! Doesn’t this seem like something that shouldn’t happen to people? We’re not standing around in frozen mud all day. I’m wearing flip flops right now. It’s strange, Americans come to Albania overly prepared for a place that we anticipate being something akin to a WWI trench – we’ve got serious boots, coats, all manner of fleece and The International Badge of being American, Nalgene water bottles – and people still get something like trench foot.

Now, it can get a little sloppy, but overall, Albania is a lot like Greece. I call it “Diet Greece,” not exactly the white-washed buildings and turquoise water, but not Stalingrad in 1942.

So I don’t know about this trench foot thing. Actually, I do know. It’s really funny. Was this pointless to write about? I’m hungry.

4-27-07

I’m lucky to work in an organization in which most of my colleagues speak English. Of course, this has meant that my Albanian language skills have not just plateaued, but regressed. This probably owes to the fact that I spend most of my time with Americans and Albanians that speak English. I don’t have a host family anymore to chat up and the encounters on the street or in cafés with curious Albanians don’t seem to happen anymore. I suspect that these days when someone around town sees me who doesn’t know who I am there’s someone else nearby who can explain what the guy in flip flops is doing here.

“Hey, who’s that guy?”

“Oh, that’s the American. You’ve never seen him around?”

“No, let’s go talk to him. Does he speak Albanian?”

“Well…., he can tell you he’s from Michigan, his name is Ben, he’s American and he likes ice cream. That’s about it. I’ve talked to him before, he’s really not that interesting. Just kind of stares at you a lot.”

At least that’s what I would say about me. There’s a pretty standard script that I follow whenever I’m speaking Albanian. I can explain the basics about who I am, but if the conversation moves beyond myself I’m done for – some have said that the fact that I can only talk about myself is reflective of my personality, whatever. – so people in Lezha must just be bored with me.

One guy who I hope never loses interest in talking to me, and this is for purely selfish reasons, is a co-worker of mine named Andi. Andi speaks English well, but he has dialect all his own. I cannot imagine what he has read or TV shows he has seen that have shaped his English such as it is. For instance, I present an actual exchange Andi and I had this week, which inspired me to write something about it:

“Now, beni. What am I thinking right now you ask.”

“What’s that? Oh no, I didn’t say anything.”

“Yes, well, of course. So am I hungry? Yes, this is true. So what I am doing for this? I will be going to lunch, and will I invite you? Yes, Beni, I think we should have lunch. Now, where will we have lunch? Yes, so, there are many places to have our pilaf. But, ahh, Beni, what is the best maybe? I say we can go to Café Nostalgia. And why? Well, because, Beni, because Nostalgia has the freshest meat. So, when to have lunch Beni?

“Ummmmm, so you want to have lunch?”

“Yes, of course. Why have I argued this to you? Because I think we should have lunch.”

“How about in twenty minutes or so?”

“Oh Beni, come on man. I’m no spring chicken! And, and, that is how the cookie crumbles.”

That is how Andi talks. And love it. His favorite device seems to be the rhetorical question posed to himself. He can never quite bring himself to asking or suggesting something with out first posing a series of questions to himself. He also throws in a healthy amount of idioms and metaphors that make no sense – and I’ll be personally devastated if they ever do.

I get so much out of my English conversations with Albanians that I think I have a fine excuse for neglecting to improve my Albanian language skills beyond “my name is Ben I am twenty-six.” But, I think I might try to learn Italian.

I Want My MTV

March 28, 2007

It is exactly one year and five days since I first set foot in Albania. In the last year I’ve made three trips to Europe – which I’m still undecided as to whether Albania is lumped in with. As a compromise, I’ll just refer to places like Italy and France as “Regular Europe.” I made trips to Florence, Paris and London, all places abounding with comforts that I had come to take for granted back home.

A common question is what I miss the most from America. I can say, completely honestly, that material things, that for awhile I let my mind build castles in the air with, I’ve been able to kind of improvise or have just stopped caring about. American-style coffee can be MacGyvered with espresso grounds, the top of a 1.5 liter bottle and coffee filters – which can be found. Surprising, considering the absence of drip coffee makers in Albania. I never really cared about clothes, and now, entirely by accident, I’ve found myself in a country in which I’m one the better dressed people. My parents keep me in peanut butter, aaaaaaaand that would really be about it.

So what I miss the most would be my family and friends. Seriously. Love you guys.

Television is something that I never missed. I have never been a big T.V. person. The only shows that I have ever really cared about have been, in order of formative impact: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, The Wire, 30-Minute Meals, The NBA Tonight, Curb Your Enthusiasm, and, though I’ve only seen a few episodes, I’m gonna put Seinfeld in here. Everyone has told me I would like it.

Albanian television has nothing I would care to watch. There’s a music video channel called BBF – pronounced “buh buh fuh” – a news channel which is simply a still picture of the national newspaper and a voice reading aloud every single article in the paper, Italian soap operas and a lot of soccer games. And I’d rather watch the newspaper channel than soccer. But, like I said, I had never been a big T.V. guy. Albanian T.V. was just funny, it didn’t make me yearn for the stuff I didn’t really watch in America anyway. Now, having been in Albania for a year, having made a few trips to Regular Europe, having – on a whim, just to see what was on – channel surfed a little bit, television has become……, let’s say enchanting.

Firstly, MTV is endlessly entertaining. A week spent in both Florence and Paris, and what I remember the most from these trips, are a few music videos that I saw on MTV. Now, I took in all the sights and enjoyed getting lost everyday, I also just managed to carve some time out for MTV. So I think that’s okay – I mean, some people plan their days around drinking or drugs you know. After careful watching, there are a few lingering questions regarding MTV: 1) Who is this Nelly Furtado? She is beautiful; 2) Why are there about seventeen Pussycat Dolls? I think only one of them sings. I’m not arguing with the idea of stocking a band with models, but their videos can be a little busy; 3) Has there been a resurgence of music being played on Music Television in America? Cause they definitely do it in Regular Europe; 4) Have the Red Hot Chili Peppers disclosed the location of The Fountain of Youth? I think that would just be the fair thing to do; 5) And Britney Spears?!!!!!! Are the flags at half mast in America?

Secondly – and we’re still on MTV here, but this needed its own paragraph – In Paris, I saw this show called “Yo Momma.” It features Fez from That 70s Show, who is a kind of ref for two guys that just stand in some alley and take turns telling “your momma” jokes. It is hilarious, not at all because of the jokes they’re telling, but for completely accidental reasons. The names of the contestants – my favorite I saw was “Big Skrill” – the crowd reaction to jokes that are completely nonsensical, Fez being kind of chubby. It’s all just incredible. I wish I could write well enough to describe how much enjoyment Yo Momma brought me. Tell me this show is still on in America. It can’t just be a Regular Europe phenomenon. I’m not sure I’m prepared to return to a country that doesn’t have Yo Momma.

The third new T.V. addiction I’ve acquired are weather reports. They’re so….in depth and, just really enlightening. The fly-by radar things, a little bit of a meteorology lesson, forecasts for nearly a week at a time. Weather reports have become completely engrossing, and so helpful. I’ve written on this blog at least three times how I’ve been completely defeated by rain and wind in Albania. These guys in Regular Europe can anticipate a weather pattern’s every move. It just takes the guessing out of whether or not I should hang my clothes outside, if I can go for a run or exactly how hot and uncomfortable the bus ride will be.

My mornings in Regular Europe saw me gripped by the forecasters. And it should be noted that these were weather reports being done in Italian and French, neither of which I speak a word of.

“Yup, overcast today,” I’d say to one of my friends.
“I don’t think so man. It looks pretty sunny outside.”
I’d consider the actual, real time weather situation outside. “No I don’t think so. The guy says overcast. Man, I tell you, this weather…I don’t know.”
“Dude, can you stop talking about the weather. You’re an old man, and I can’t believe I hang out with you. Just look out the window, that’s the weather right there.”
“Oh, but looks like sun tomorrow.”

So, MTV and weather reports. Two things I didn’t watch in America but that I now love. And now, back in Albania, I don’t miss Yo Momma or the radar machine. These things are the domain of, and will always be associated with Regular Europe.

Sorry for not writing anything about my life in Albania. But you probably didn’t read this far anyway.

March 30, 2007

One morning this week I arrived at work to find a colleague of mine – who is also my closest Albanian friend, and whom I’ll call Gary – seated at my desk waiting for me. He was obviously eager for me to show up.

“Gary, are we getting coffee right now?” I asked. “I just got here, how about we go in an hour or something."
“No dude,” Gary has picked up on how my friends and I call each other ‘dude.’ “I just wanted to show this e-mail I have gotten from my friend. It is really funny dude.”

I’d been through this before and was ready for an e-mail that would be in Albanian, probably made no sense to me, or just wasn’t funny. It turned out to be an e-mail forward, a cartoon-thing about the differences between Italy and the rest of the European Union. The forward began with a panel across the screen with a heading like “Lines in the EU,” then these little animated dots would orderly get in line and shuffle through. The next panel would be “Lines in Italy” and the dots would be zipping all over the screen and end up forming this kind of pile up. The forward had these dot skits for things like “Talking on cell phones, Elections, Dating” and “Newspapers.” The EU dots were always very reasonable, polite and well-ordered, while the Italian dots were always a complete mess. It was good-natured, and justifiably funny.

“Beni, dude, what do you think? It was crazy right? I mean funny,” Gary said.
“Yeah it’s funny. I should pass that along to some of my friends in America. You know, there are a lot of parallels between the Italian dots and Albania. You know? Right?” I said, asking for confirmation from Gary.
“Yeah dude yeah….But no. It was about Italy not Albania.”
“Right, I mean your right. But you know how Albania is kind of messy compared to Europe. Just like the Italian dots, not bad or anything, just hectic.”
“How does this mean? How is Albania like the dots from Italy?” Gary was very skeptical of my comparison.

I tactfully tried to explain how the e-mail forward made me think of Albania. How people don’t do lines, are rather cavalier about litter, don’t really have indoor voices, smoke in hospitals, “and especially the driving one Gary,” I said. “You know how people drive in this country. And I’ve been to Italy. And there are traffic lights and other driving rules that people follow most of the time…...”

The driving in Albania isn’t one of those subtle, under the surface differences that you begin to see only after spending some time in the country. A visitor crosses the border into Albania and within a minute and half that person will feel a sense of uneasiness. After five minutes the person has figured out that the butterflies in their stomach is a combination of nausea and panic that has been brought on by the style of driving. And that style would be: “Do whatever you damn well please. We don’t really even know what those lines in the middle of the road are for, we’ve just seen them other places. And, ah, try not to hit anyone, but, you know, it happens. We understand.”

I don’t think aggressive driving is the right phrase, it more like violent or destructive or antagonistic. Some aspects of the driving I’ve gotten used to: Feel like we should slow down? Uhhh, I haven’t seen a posted speed limit; Passing on a blind corner. Reckless you say? Well, we’ve got to get around the three-wheeled mini pick up; The centrifugal force might very well launch us off this mountain? Just lean in with the turns.

I don’t drive. But if I did I wouldn’t feel any safer. Somehow, the chaos of the Albanian roads maintains itself, and I think my reasonable driving style would only throw off whatever kind of equilibrium has been achieved here and cause a truly horrific accident. I still can’t totally relax as a passenger. I’m always a little anxious, and the knack I had for being able to fall asleep in a moving vehicle has been completely lost. Now I just get carsick sometimes.

In addition to the style of driving, almost every time I’m on the road in Albania I’m treated to a new sight, that, if I wasn’t seeing it right then, would seem completely unbelievable. Intercity minivans with maybe thirty-four people crammed in, faces and butts smashed against the windows; One car towing another, connected fender to bumper by a man’s belt; The aforementioned tripod truck, with a couch in the bed, with two people sitting on it; Stereo speakers adhered to the roof of a car playing music for, I guess, the other cars on the road that are passing it. These are things I’ve seen.

Last week, I was riding in a van on the busiest and fastest freeway in the country. We pulled along side a car with two guys in the front seat and the entire back seat taken up by a full-grown horse. This was a four-door car, but I wouldn’t call it a sedan or a station wagon. More Honda Civic-like The horse was standing up across the rear of the car, it’s tail waving out the window, it’s head poking out the opposite window and staring at me with it’s big horse eyes as we drove by. I cannot imagine how these guys got a horse inside of a mid-size car. Horses are big, strong and scary. How would someone coax or force the thing into riding in the backseat?! It looked pretty content as we drove by. Once back in Lezha I relayed the story to my site spouse John.

“I mean, why?” I asked. “Right? This was a full-grown horse in the backseat of a car.”
“I’m shaking my head man,” John said, “but you know, I’m not even that shocked.”
“I know. We drove past the thing, I’m like ‘are you kidding,’ and then I try to rationalize it, and I thought of some reasons that were kind of plausible to drive around with a horse.”
“Yeah. Maybe they just wanted to take it for a care ride. Dogs love it.”
“Horses are handy animals, maybe they thought they’d need it for something.”
“Dinner?"
“Sure. Maybe they just found it, like you find a couch in college, and you know if you let it go it won’t be there later, so you just load it up.”

John and I decided, after thinking about the reasons why and given the fact that we are in Albania, it wasn’t that unreasonable of thing to see a horse in a car. Although, it would be the perfect nightmare scenario for me: Driving home from somewhere, something is blocking my rearview mirror, I turnaround and am face to face with a horse that is riding in my backseat. Then I’d wake up in a cold sweat.

“…….So the driving man,” I said to Gary. “It’s pretty dangerous, right?” Gary considered the comparison I had made between the Italy dots and Albania, specifically the driving aspect.

“You know dude, I think the Albanian driving is not so good.”
“That’s all I’m saying Gary.”
“Actually, yes, it is a miraculous that you have not been in a vehicle accident. That you are not dead from a vehicle accident. This is a miraculous.”
“A miracle.”
“A what? Hey dude, how about we make a coffee break now?”
“Let’s do it.”

Service With a Smile

February 17, 2007

There’s a new face around town. A few weeks ago my site spouse John and I were having beers at a café after work. This has become the routine. Lezha loses power around 4:00 p.m., while we wait for the lights come back on we kill time over beers.

(I don’t know any Albanian city that has electricity twenty-four hours a day. In most places there are six to eight hours of no power. It’s usually on a schedule, and one just gets used to arranging their life around when the lights will be on. While I have adjusted, the whole power thing will always be puzzling to me. I’m sure the infrastructure is antiquated, but it’s good enough to work most of the time. And whoever is in control is able to keep the electricity on a schedule. The lights stay on all day for Christmas and New Year’s Eve. So I don’t get it. If there’s not enough power, just make more. Right? If you’re buying power from other countries – and how does that work exactly – buy enough to keep the lights on all the time. I don’t know. I should have learned by now that trying to figure something like this out is an exercise in futility).

We usually go to the same café, we like this place because they give you a little bowl of peanuts with your beer. On this occasion we met a guy who had recently returned to Lezha after living in the U.S. for the last sixteen years. Having overheard us speaking English, the Albanian expat approached us and introduced himself. It was immediately clear from his English that he had lived in the U.S. for several years. He didn’t speak with the formality and awkwardness that is evident among the even the best English speakers who have learned the language, but have never lived in an English-speaking country.

He seemed like a nice enough guy, a little chatty, but a nice guy. I honestly can’t remember his name – he doesn’t know mine either, he just calls me “Michigan” – so lets call him Martin. We got Martin’s whole story. He was given political asylum in the early 1990s, he ended up in Florida with his grandfather, and was back in Lezha for what he said was a “short visit.”

“So what are you guys doing here?” Traveling? Passing through to someplace else? Your not Albanian-American are you?” Martin asked.

“Uh, no, we’re not Albanian” I said. John, who is Asian, just stared at him.

“Yeah I figured,” Martin replied. “He’s Chinese and all..”

“South Korean.”

“Right, so why are you guys in Lezha?”

“We live here actually,” I said. “We’ve been in Albania for almost a year.”

“Oh, you missionaries or something? Your church send you here?”

“Nope. We’re here working. By choice. We came here to live for two years,” John replied.

This was confounding to Martin. “Well…, what the hell guys?”

Since our first meeting we’ve seen Martin around town quite a bit. In fact, the guy turns up seemingly out of nowhere. ALL THE TIME. He’s one of those people, and I think we’ve all known one, who will be suddenly standing right next to me as I turn my head to cross the street. I walk in any number of the different cafés in town and Martin is always there. I’ll go for a run five miles out of town and Martin is there, standing on the side of the road, waving, yelling “Michigan” as I run by. I’ve began to question whether or not this Martin character was a real person.

Did I just hallucinate that night at the café? Maybe he’s just some imaginary guy I keep seeing. But John was at the café to. I don’t know. Weird.

This is what I had been wrestling with recently. “No dude, he’s real. And he’s all over the place,” John confirmed.

“You know his name? I can’t remember. He just calls me ‘Michigan.’”

“No idea. He calls me ‘China.’”

John and I continue to see Martin everywhere we go, most assuredly at our favorite beer and peanuts, lights out café. Last week some new light was shed on Martin’s “short visit” Albania.

“So you’ve been around here for a few weeks man, when are you heading back to Florida?” I asked.

“Well yeah. It’s not really just a visit,” Martin replied. “I’ll probably be here for awhile. I don’t how long exactly.”

“Oh really, how come?”

“Well, you know. I was sent back to Albania. Deported really. You know.”

Now I felt bad. For a month I’d been going out of my way to avoid Martin, and the poor guy had been deported. I was sure it was an unjust thing.

“Why man? What happened? I mean, you’d been there for sixteen years.”

“Yeah I know man. But the judge, he was so unfair. It wasn’t a big deal, and he says ‘you have to go back to Albania.’”

“Why?”

“Well…, here’s the thing…I was convicted of a misdemeanor.”

“Ohhhh,” I said, trying to nod in a way that conveyed sympathy and not the skepticism/wariness I felt.

“You know, second degree assault. So I beat a guy up. You know. Not a big deal. Right? And the judge, he takes my papers and says I have to come back here.”

Martin had gotten a little worked up. John and I exchanged glances. We had altogether lost our compassion for Martin’s situation. And, we were now a little scared of the guy.

Martin is apparently here to stay, and continues to always be around. I’ve decided he’s harmless, but I am a little jumpy around the guy, and I try to be very agreeable. He sees me running and he’ll make the outlandish claim to have run twenty miles the other day. “Wow, that’s great,” I say, trying my best to feign admiration and hide the “no fucking way” sentiment. He’ll offer to be my personal translator. To follow me around and help me buy extension cords and order lunch. “Yeah sure, I’ll keep you in mind if I need any translating. Thanks a lot,” I say. About the last thing in the world I could ever want is to have Martin at my side any more than he already is.

But, I don’t think we’re going to be able to shake him. He speaks perfect English, so I can’t pretend that I don’t understand what’s he’s saying – I’ve gotten good at this game of possum – and, I don’t want him to beat me up.

February 18, 2007

It’s Election Day in Albania and I’ve been warned about traveling and to stay away from polling places. I’m looking out my window and don’t see any cause for alarm, things seem like any other Sunday. Lezha isn’t burning or anything. Two weeks ago I wrote, maybe a little mockingly, how there are two guys running for mayor of the capital city who have almost the same name, Sokol Oldashi and Sokol Oldashin. It turns out that Sokol Oldashin is not another person. The posters I had seen with a picture of a guy that said “Vote for Sokol Oldashin” are actually endorsement posters for Sokol Oldashi. The posters that confused me have a picture of a guy, who I thought was a Mr. Oldashin, a bizarro version of the real Mr. Oldashi. But, it turns out that these are just posters with a picture of some guy who has some prominence and he’s saying: “vote for Sokol Oldashi.” I was thrown off because his name is spelled with an “n” on the end.

I had been going around for weeks telling people how I couldn’t believe that two parties would field candidates with very nearly the same name. Finally, it was explained to me that in Albanian, when a person is the object of a sentence a consonant is thrown on the end of their name. If your name ends in a consonant then you’re given almost a completely new name. “I am Ben’s friend” would be “I am Benit friend.” I’m told that this is a pretty fundamental concept of the language. So, I can barely speak Albanian and certainly have zero understanding of grammar. Not that different from my capacities with English really.

The Albanian private service industry has developed quickly and haphazardly. A hotel and restaurant boom of this kind, in a country that until recently was closed to the rest of the world, has meant that the smiley, eager to please service staff that was familiar to me is absent. The concept of “the customer is always right” is interpreted more as “I’m doing you such a favor by bringing you coffee. You better not ask too many questions or I’m going to get really annoyed.” (To be fair, the overfriendliness that we associate with waiters and waitresses in America is absent in most of Europe. It has everything to do with the fact that American service staff work for tips).

I miss the whole “Hi there, my name is Jill and I’m going to be taking care of you tonight” that I used to find grating. In most restaurants I’ve been to, Jill has been replaced by a surly Albanian who seems barely able to muster breathing. A typical encounter with a waiter – I can’t think of any place I’ve been to that had waitresses – will go as follows:

Waiter: Appears standing over me, looking down. I’m not sure, but I think he’s in a coma.
Me: Hi, do you have menus?
Waiter: Shakes his head.
Me: Ok, what do you have for food?
Waiter: Rice, sausage, french fries, salad, meat soup, cheese.
Me: I’ll have a green salad an…
Waiter: Not have
Me: No green salad?
Waiter: Not have.

This will go on until I have asked for everything that he said they had only to find out that the only thing they can make is rice. So I eat a lot of rice. Sometimes, at the places that are a little more eager to please, they’ll let you order a salad. But this means that the guy in the kitchen has to leave the restaurant, run down to the bazaar, buy vegetables, and return twenty minutes later to make your salad. At that point I wish I had ordered the rice.

The brusque treatment isn’t reserved for foreigners. At dinner one night with a few Albanian friends from work we sat for two hours as each of our orders were brought out separately, about every half hour. The restaurant was clearly making each thing one at time, bringing it out, going back and boiling the same order of meat and potatoes over again. One of my friends ordered fish and the waiter, who deserves credit for his candor, when he brought the fish said: “we’ve never really made fish before, I’m not sure if this is cooked all the way or any good at all.” At that point I was ready to stand and applause.

One thing that waiters are very much on top of is switching out ashtrays. You will never see an ashtray overflowing with cigarette butts in Albania. I’ll sit down to a coffee, dump in a packet of sugar, put the wrapper in the ashtray, and before I sip the coffee the waiter has swooped in and replaced the “dirty” ashtray with a fresh one. If I am actually smoking the ashtray is replaced between every puff. A lot of times I’ll sit down to a table with a clean ashtray and they’ll just take it away and bring an identical clean one. For what waiters in Albania lack in most aspects of being waiters, they make up for in their diligence of switching out ashtrays. Clean ashtrays are the height of customer service.

Exercise Your Right to Vote

February 3, 2007

The water pressure in my apartment has been dwindling since, it seems, the first day I moved in. In October, when I began my apartment search, I had a walk through the place that is now my home. It’s a newly constructed two-story home, a family used to live on the first floor but they’ve disappeared.

(It’s too bad. They were nice folks. They brought me candles when the power went out and one morning I was greeted by their eleven year-old daughter arms overflowing with my underwear which had blown off my clothesline and fallen to their front yard. I returned from work a few weeks ago to find the bottom floor completely vacated. They vanished in literally an afternoon. I speculate that someone in the family won the American Residence Visa Lottery. The “American Lottery” is BIG in this country. I’d compare the anticipation for the results to that of the expectancy that consumes Americans leading up to a Friends or Sex in the City Finale. So yeah, BIG. When people win the American Lottery – and “win” should be qualified, as this only grants permission to come to a country in which gainful employment for a comparatively unskilled Albanian will not be easy to find. And, where a week’s worth of groceries at Whole Foods costs the same as what I pay in rent. For six months. But, when you win the lottery, it seems you also have to leave in twelve hours).

But, it wasn’t the hardships of Albanians that compelled me to sit down and write something for the first time in two months. I’ve got water pressure issues. For the first few months I lived in the apartment I enjoyed a shower with good water pressure. It was a new shower head that could be adjusted to different water stream patterns, and the hot water tank was big enough to allow me to keep the water running throughout my showers, rather than having to get wet, turn it off, lather up and then rinse. Quite naturally, it lacked a shower curtain – characteristic of all Albanian showers, it is simply a shallow basin with a showerhead. Curtains or doors are never involved. These would be some of those little things, like price tags, that I miss.

So for three months I had the luxury of, not great, but good showers. Last week it all came crashing down. My shower and one of my sinks are now just a trickle. One sink just makes coughing noises. It takes about ten minutes to fill a glass of water. Making coffee and doing dishes have become hour-long processes. This really doesn’t bother me that much – if I was so inclined, I could ask any woman in town to come over and do my dishes for me. I’m already looked at askance because rumor has it I do my own laundry. But showering under a few warm drops of water is just dreadful.

February 7, 2007

Country wide local elections are approaching, scheduled for February 18. This is after months of delays – elections were supposed to happen sometime last fall, and at the very least before the end of 2006 – for reasons I have no idea about. As I understand it, every city and town has their local elections for mayor and other officials in the same year on the same date. For the last several months TV news was dominated by parliamentary sessions featuring bickering party representatives, highlighted by a Battle Royal last August in which chairs and fake plants were tossed around. Now that the disagreements over whatever have been resolved, the country is in full campaign mode.

Things have happened quickly. For what they lack in the American tradition of television and radio advertisements and interviews, Albanian campaigns make up for in sheer volume of posters. In the last week Lezha has seen several of its buildings wallpapered in posters. Whoever the campaign consultants are, the prevailing piece of advice seems to be: “you need posters. Lots of them. You don’t even need to make clear who you are or what office your running for. Just put your mug shot on a poster, use an ambiguous slogan like ‘together for Lezha,’ and then put about seventy of them on the same wall of a building.”

Judging by building coverage, there are two leading candidates for, what I can only assume is, mayor of Lezha. One guy got a jump on his competition, securing the three large billboards in town, usually devoted to a cigarette add featuring alternately swimmers, cyclists, or soccer players. And I should say, this candidate has made excellent use of this prime space. His billboard posters feature a smiling picture of the candidate off to the side with his left arm extended presenting a computer rendered vision of “Lezha of the Future.” The background of the billboard is a panorama of a city that resembles Lezha. Kind of. In this version the city has taken on a new greenness and sports an impressive skyline of colorful buildings. There’s a large fountain in the middle of a riverside park. Cafés line that same river, which I had mistakenly thought for seven months was a sewage drainage canal. Someone figured out how to use Photoshop.

In Tirana, the capital, the frontrunners in the mayoral race are two candidates with national prominence. The race is receiving a lot of attention and money from the competing parties. There are the usual posters and billboards, but also, city buses have been completely painted in support of one candidate or another. To its credit, The Public Transportation Agency has remained unaligned, as both candidates have bus lines campaigning on their behalf. Again, beyond the name recognition, it would take some research on the part of the uninformed voter to figure out who exactly the two guys are, what office they’re running for, let alone what the differences are between them. Maybe there aren’t any. It’s not like you can draw lines between American political candidates.

Further complicating the Tirana Mayoral election – and I don’t know why I’m the only one who seems to have noticed this and think it’s hilarious – is that two of the candidates have almost exactly the same name. There’s Sokol Oldashi and then you have Sokol Oldashin. Mr. Oldashi is one of the nationally prominent candidates who is in a tight race with his rival. Mr. Oldashin is one of a handful of candidates from smaller parties who have little hope of winning the Mayor’s office. It would be like if in 2004 there was a third party Presidential candidate named Jon Kerry. How upset would the real John Kerry have been? I have to believe this is an obstacle for Mr. Oldashi. Aren’t there going to have be at least a few votes that were meant for him that are going to bizarro Oldashin? Isn’t this a conceivable mistake? One that I would make myself? I think yes.

I have to say, the growing pains of a fifteen-year-old democracy do offer their lighter moments.

February 13, 2007

I have never appreciated so much the luxury of being able to escape the elements of weather. In America – I now refer to my home as “America” rather than the United States or the U.S. In my culturally sensitive days I used to think this was a little inappropriate, like South Korea calling themselves “Asia,” but everyone else does it – I took for granted being able to escape the uncomfortable hotness or bitter coldness. I’m pretty sure there are entire American cities that are linked by gerbil tubes.

The hotness and coldness of the concrete Albanian buildings is understandable, – it’s like living in a parking structure – but the weather that I have come to hate the most is the rain. Somehow Albanian rain makes me wetter. It has a sideways approach pattern that renders umbrellas useless. Matters aren’t helped any by the fact that, and I admit this is due to my own stubbornness, my only jacket is too short, not warm and not waterproof. It really has no value as a jacket. And most people think it looks strange.

Weather patterns in Albania aren’t in and out in few hours, or even a day. The same clouds settle in over an area for a long weekend. To be fair, the country’s weather is by and large pleasant, certainly better than that of the Upper Midwest where it’s just accepted that we don’t see the sun from November through April, and the weeks of sunshine are pleasant. But when the rain moves in it stays for a few days. A hard, violent rain is rare, it’s usually constant drizzle and wind that will get more intense whenever I’m walking across town with a forty-pound box from America – love you Mom.

After three or four days of rain the drainage issues of cities becomes apparent. A downhill street becomes maybe a class two rapid. Not strong enough to take away a person, but cats and dogs have no chance. The unpaved streets and back lots are impassable without those fly-fishing pants. The wetness of a rainy week is all-consuming, in that it has an effect on my personality. I know that as soon as I take ten steps outside I’m going to be wet, my umbrella is going to turn inside out, I’m going to drop something that I was really looking forward to – like a good sandwich – in a puddle, and I’ll be reminded of all this by the first Albanian I see who will point out that “Beni, it’s raining.” I’ll then sit and work and scare people as I turn into Jack Nicholas from The Shining.

So I just shouldn’t leave the apartment, right? Just stay in and maybe take a nice long hot shower. Oh wait…..

An Interior Monologue of a Marathon

On November 23rd I ran in a marathon in Florence, Italy. I’m not a runner. Aside from a couple of Turkey Trots in Detroit, I had never taken part in any kind of event like this. A big part of completing a marathon is mental. You’ve got get your head right. Ignore the pain. Mind over matter. This is how I psyched myself through the Florence Marathon.

00:27:58
This is kind of fun. I’m feeling good. There goes the 5K marker, that’s like a quarter of the race right there. I’m on easy street. And people were like “Oh Beni, I can’t believe your still smoking and training for a marathon, blah, blah, blah.” Whatever. Hey, that girl’s pretty cute.

00:54:50
Still truckin along pretty good here. Wish I had my iPod. Okay, there’s the 10K mark. Those last five were a little farther than the first two markers, but I’m going slow. Respect the race. Much respect. Oooh, a sponge station. (Inhaling sharply) THAT’S A REALLY F----N COLD SPONGE! Alright here we go over the river. Not a fan of the incline on this bridge.

01:20:58
These guys behind me are totally confused by the Albanian writing on my T-shirt.

Guy 1: What language is that?
Guy 2: No idea. Russian maybe? I don’t know where this kid is from.
Guy 1: It’s not Russian. That thing’s got a crazier looking alphabet. I saw another guy back there with a similar shirt. His said something about puking.
Guy 2: Oh yeah, he might speak English.

Now they’re coming up next to me. Go away, go away, leave me alone.

Guy 2: WHERE ARE YOU FROM? DO YOU SPEAK ENGLISH?

Why is this dude talking to me? I’m kinda in the middle of something, I’m getting a little angry at this point and I’m about to dish out a haymaker to the neck.

Me: Yeah. That’s Albanian. I live in Albania. I’m in the Peace Corps in Albania.
Guy 1: Wow Albanian. Your English is impeccable.

Hesitating for a second.

Me: Thanks. I’m really good with languages. Kind of a natural. You know.

01:52:34
That’s halfway. So now I just have to do everything I just did,….again. Don’t think like that. We’re still good. Wow! That person has a dog on a leash. That’s a pretty healthy looking dog. He seems happy, got his tail wagging, appears to like being around people. I forgot those animals actually made really good pets.

02:12:54
Okay, so now I’m going past people running in the opposite direction. Are they behind me? I don’t remember doubling back down a street. There must be a longer course for the really fast runners. That makes sense. So we can all finish together. Nice idea. Ohhhahhh,….we are turning around up there. I’m sick of running on this bastard street. It is a really clean street though. Hey, there’s another person walking a dog. Crazy!

02:21:43
I fought the law and the, (pause) law won. I fought the law and the, (pause) law won.

02:36:11
SuperSweet! Looks like we’re heading to the center of town now. Still got about a quarter of this thing left. I guess they run us around the city for a little bit. Whoa, there are a ton of people lining the streets. Look cool, look cool. Oh hell no that lady is not passing me with all these people watching.

02:39:07
Dusted her. That was energizing. And there goes the 30K marker. You know what I wish I was doing right now? Not running. Alright pull it together. Only 12K left. Those first 10 were easy, fun, I enjoyed them. And where in the hell are we going now?!! We’re running out of town. Again!! There go my spectators. Oooo, they’ve got croissants at this water station.

02:42:36
Eating two croissants was a gabim. Shume gabim.

02:51:03
Mile 20 marker. From here, every single step I take is the farthest that I have ever run in my life. I’m seeing a lot of people walking. Some look like they’ve dropped out. There a few that have just collapsed. Is that guy alive? Is he still breathing? Does someone come out here and collect the bodies?

03:06:01
F--k this f---ing marathon! F—k running. F—k this city. F—k this stupid park I’m f---ing running through. F—k this person next to me. Yeah that’s right, you, with your stupid tights. If the Firenze Marathon was a person I would beat the crap out of him. I think I might be hitting the proverbial “wall.” There goes 35K. Alright, we’re going to walk for five minutes.

03:09:48
Is that? That’s the lady that tried to pass me back in town. And there she goes. Fine be the hero lady. I don’t even care. I’m in this for me. I’m the big winner for myself. Remember what was happening about 7 Ks back? You were getting dominated BY ME! I’m just collecting myself for the final stretch so I can ruin you again. I’m gonna enjoy that!……There’s no way I’m catching her.

03:37:28
40 Ks. This is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Everything hurts. Am I crying? I want my mom.

03:52:59 THE FINISH
Someone just threw a medal at me. Another person gave me a bag with crap in it. I need water. I’m feeling kind dizzy right now. A little loopy. Water. I need water. Yeah, I’ll have a banana. Sure take my picture. I’m about to get down and start lapping at this puddle. Where is the water?!! Hey there’s Brandon and Joey. They have water. Magnificent.

Joey: How was it man?
Me: I need a cigarette.