Category: travelog

After planning last night to head out towards the airfield park, we woke up this morning and kinda remembered how lots of things are closed on Sundays still here, so maybe flat-out exploring a new area was better done on a non-Sunday. So maybe a short day out and then a relaxing evening in with some hobby time.

Coffee again at Hana (just an iced Americano for me, they were busy and I do want them to see me as a regular customer who is thoughtful and ruggedly handsome) and then I thought maybe we’d at least look a little westerly, but evidently it was game day at the stadium and it did feel quite raucous, so instead we went back towards the innards of town to see if we could find some lunch.

Lunch was at a place called Kok a Pule — we got a sandwich, some chicken tenders, two fries and two bottles of water for under $10. (Another in-your-face reminder of the drastically different cost of living to America.) Fries were good, crinkle cut fries. Sandwich was good too. But it’ll never make it to the apartment in that condition.

We kept walking a little after lunch, towards the Pyramid and Bulevardi Dëshmorët e Kombit (Martyrs of the Nation) which is the wide road that goes from Skanderbeg down to Mother Teresa Square. There appeared to be some kind of art installation down in the old traffic circle at Mother Teresa, so we went to check it out — turned out to be a temporary library! Very interesting architectural design, with green movie-theater-style seats and shelves of books on various topics — art, architecture, British literature, as well as a section of kids’ books.

We came back up towards the Pyramid, tried to check out Albagame for a Switch 2 case for H (no luck, closed), then stopped for coffee at the Mulliri by Park Rinia before making our way home. Shorter day, back in time to listen to the second half of the North London Derby which was nice, and then delivery Chinese food to cap it all off.

Next two weekends we’ll be in Athens, then back to the US for the two after that. And then maybe we’ll get out to that park.

We’re determined to explore more new areas of Tirana as we think further about a “permanent” residence here. Both of the areas we’ve lived so far have had their plusses and minuses, but there are tons of neighborhoods, so maybe we just haven’t seen the “perfect” spot yet.

But that requires coffee so we started our day at Hana. It’s become the de facto Antigua replacement in the past week or two, and while they aren’t their own coffee roaster, they are a very good coffee shop, with a very third-wave mindset, good beans from The Barn in Berlin, and excellent chocolate chip cookies if you get there early enough.

I tried an iced v60 last weekend and it was very good — they have little individual-ish bags of beans for v60s — this one said it had notes of blackberry jam which I definitely got and enjoyed. I had been chatting with one of the baristas and she recommended the same treatment for another bean, this one with chocolate and orange, so I picked that one for today. It was also good … although I think I like the blackberry one better.

After there, we headed south and around the opposite side of the stadium (there’s a tiny football pitch here where KF Tirana play — “Wrexham-sized” as H put it) and then kept walking straight, heading towards the big park and man-made lake at the southern end of the city. There was evidence that we are getting closer to spring — the cherry trees have started to flower. We found another spot to get a second coffee and H deemed the area the most relaxing she’d been in so far. It was maybe newer overall than our current building (which is probably Communist-era) and you could still see signs you were in Albania if you knew what you were looking for, but overall it was pleasant.

We stopped for … lunch? at a place called Tony’s American Something or Other and they had Mexican offerings and if we have not learned anything yet in our time in Albania, it was evidenced by us both ordering “enchiladas” despite being fooled time and again by anything that purports to pass as Mexican. The Greek salad was good though. I think we’re both looking forward to Greek salads in Athens next week.

Since that put us back on the street that Woodrow Wilson is on, we started wandering back towards the apartment, stopped at My Way to finish out the daylight with some Aperol spritzes, and then went into Opa to have some chicken skewers for a late dinner.

A very nice day. We agreed that it was easy and necessary to keep exploring, so planned to wander out west on Sunday. There’s an old airfield runway there that’s been turned into a park, and we’ve been seeing apartment listings in that area, so we’re curious to find out what it’s like.

This is the first February we’ve spent in Albania and so far, it’s been less “winter” and more “rainy season.” Temps are mild but there always seems to be a chance for the cloud cover to open up and rain at any point. There’s been some thunder and lightning here and there the last two weeks, but mostly it’s just been stormy clouds and ten-minute downpours. All you have to do is hide under an umbrella at any of the many coffee shops you pass and it’s all good.

It does, however, make it a little more likely that we wake up, look at the weather forecast, and decide to make “getting coffee” the problem of the delivery kid on the Wolt motor scooter.

But it’s killing our travel planning, which seems to only happen at Mulliri. We talked this past weekend about using the upcoming three-day weekend to rent a car and go out exploring, maybe to Berat, but here it is Wednesday and because we haven’t been to a coffee shop since Sunday, it seems to have hit a speed bump.

Gotta get out tomorrow, if only so we can sort out the weekend.

When we were out this weekend, we got approached by a younger guy on a bike who had heard us speaking English. He was, essentially, “creating content” — running a bike tour company and trying to create more English-speaking content for his business Instagram channel to appeal to tourists. We had a little friendly chat — he was curious about our experience, what we liked, where we liked, where else we had been around Albania. Nice guy, and we wished him well in his business ventures.

Anyways, parts of our conversation appeared on his Instagram channel today. I’ve always thought it was weird to hear myself (since way back when I was eight and was recording myself cracking jokes) but it is, I think, more weird to see yourself where you don’t expect yourself.

(I mean, in this digital age where everyone has a video camera in their pocket, I’m sure I’ve been in hundreds of people’s home movies by now, I just never get to see them so I’m oblivious to it. I wish I got tagged in all this stuff, I bet I said some funny thing in someone’s video that I’ve long forgotten.)

Another lazy day today. The rain’s off and on and I did run to the grocery store and stocked up on soda and some groceries, so we’ll make it to tomorrow.

But it might mean Wolting some coffee.

Sunday of our first “out in the world” weekend back in Tirana went a bit like Saturday — get up, go to Mulliri, get hungry, etc. The conversation at Mulliri was even mostly the same, although with decidedly different results — after digging around, exploring options, picking layover or stopover, we actually bought the airline tickets to Australia for this summer. Crazy! To think only thirty years ago we would have had to go to a travel agent. Now we can just click a button on our phones.

I am pretty excited about this. I know H is not excited about the long time on a plane. On multiple planes, really, since the flight is TIA > LHR > SIN > SYD and almost 30 hours in air time. We really are on the exact opposite side of the world.

Next item on the list was to see if we could find Instax film. We had seen it in quite a few places last year, most notably in a game shop chain called Albagame, but so far they were very low on stock or completely out in most locations. H thought she remembered a place from last year down on Rruga Sami Frësheri that had cameras in the window, and that way led towards old favorite drinking spots from the last two years, so we went to see what we could find. Shpresa was the name of the shop — a nice, big electronics store with a full Apple product display, a bunch of drones and other video equipment, game consoles, and conveniently a giant countertop full of the Instax film H was looking for. I love my Albagame but I gotta remember this place is here, if only for all the DJI video goodies.

We also went into Baronesha which is a funny little import “specialty” grocery store. It carries some funny American imports like boxes of pancake mix but also things from other expat diasporas like cans of British baked beans. We mainly go in to get jalapenos — they had a good Mexican brand this time — and H also got a bottle of Tajin since we left our bag of spices at home accidentally this trip.

Grabbed lunch at Pastaria. It’s never going to be lost on me that we can eat out cheaper than we can cook, and this place is really one of the proving spots. Two bowls of pasta for around six bucks — spaghetti at home costs more than that. (Don’t worry, we upped the final bill by drinking an entire bottle of wine.) Then we took a nice circuit through the ol’ Blokku neighborhood before settling in for another round of drinks at My Way and then dinner at Opa, a local Greek fast food chain.

The location of the new apartment is definitely nice for days like this where we want to just wander. It wasn’t bad up north but we definitely finished some nights dead on our feet and getting a cab back to the apartment; here when we wrap up, it’s just across the bridge and a block down and straight into the building. So it does have that going for it.

Got a late start and a bunch of things are closed on Sunday, so we took it easy this morning.

The big talking point of today was thanks to a video we saw on Youtube where a guy bought a house here in Albania for 60k cash money. A condo, I guess it was, but still. I mean, I understand that rent here is cheap cheap, and that I’m probably paying twice what an actual rent would be because I’m paying my Airbnb host some profit, but I don’t think I considered how that would translate to actual real estate.

(Which is funny, because I definitely do check out realtor window listings in Paris when we walk by them.)

(Those are decidedly not 60k.)

We walked up to Mulliri in the afternoon since it was cool and overcast, and we wanted coffee. Pretty much the entire conversation today was: Could we buy a house in Albania? How long would it be before we realistically could pay cash money for a house in Albania? Does it make sense to rent something long term since it seems like we’re coming back here a lot? What does it look like ten years from now? What does it look like after we retire?

A lot of interesting thinking to do.

We coffeed a bunch, tried out some savory snacks, then ultimately made our way over to the Chicken Guy for dinner. I should probably figure out what the Chicken Guy is actually called but basically — there’s a corner gyro shop on Zogu that has excellent sufflaqi and H and I can get lunch for like eight bucks total. H’s checkin is at a place called “Fast Food Merakliu” so I guess that’s what we’re going with. Then we called it an early night with the hopes of getting a good start tomorrow, since it’s a work holiday and we get an extra weekend day.

(When things will actually be open.)

Cab time.

It’s funny how lazy we’ve become. I don’t know, maybe “lazy” isn’t the right word for it. But shoot, we’ve been here a month? Now? And have been quite the homers on the weekends since getting here. We’ve walked out for coffees here and there, we have made a loop or two through Skanderbeg, but the flip side of it is definitely “we’re spending time on the couch watching Andor” and honestly I’m not sad.

But we’ve definitely hit the “ready for some food variety” checkpoint.

I think I wrote last year about how Albanian drivers are complete maniacs with disregard for any kind of pleasantries or cares for the continued wellbeing of their vehicles. If there’s two inches between you and the next car, you are not trying hard enough. It’s even funnier with cabbies, who somehow manage to both dive completely into this stereotype, and still complain about everyone else’s driving.

Our cab dropped us off at Kung Fu Noodle, a little fast-food Asian restaurant down by the stadium, near Blloku. We found it last year and it’s pretty enjoyable, but I will say now that it’s no StreetWok. We grabbed lunch and tried to spin for stadium keychain Pikmin (the soccer stadium here can give them).

Our next stop after that was to Antigua, I think the only coffee roaster in town at this point — another favorite from last year. They have made some additions to the menu this summer which I will definitely take advantage of — new cold brew which was delicious, as well as an espresso tonic which had a nice fruitiness to it. Nice short chocolate-chip cookies as well. Unfortunately they were closing a little early, so we only squeezed in two coffees each, ha.

With the coffee shop closing up a little earlier than expected, we decided to continue our refreshments with a stop at the tiki bar that sits catty-corner to the coffee shop. It’s quite the themed experience, complete with thatched roof over the patio and a big island-themed mural on one wall. They had the “Grandpa” beer (Gjyshit) that we found last year and is made here in Albania so I got an IPA; H got an Aperol spritz (and remarked that it seemed weird that I hadn’t had an Aperol spritz in Albania yet — I think it still isn’t warm enough?) Cute little place — I would go back and hang out on that porch again.

Slowly but surely we were thinking about food again, so we finished up in the tiki bar and made our way out to Rruga Sami Frësheri, which is one of the main borders of Blloku. We figured we’d check out some of the international grocery stores on the street before getting some food. First stop was Neranxhi which has a few spots around town and mostly has Asian ingredients and spices, but also carries some Mexican / South American items — unfortunately just as we walked in the door, the power in the entire block went out! So we made our way up to Baronesha who did have power, avoided the eight-dollar boxes of cereal this time, and bought some very silly snack items — canned pickled jalapenos and nacho cheese dip.

There used to be a French fry place called A’dams in this area but evidently they closed up (or we couldn’t find them), so we settled on grabbing lunch from Opa, another of our favorites from last year, a Greek street food place that makes nice chicken kebabs. Next stop after that was up to the river (air quotes) and a nice walk down to the Pyramid, where we stopped in a game store so H could check out the Instax printers. There was a sale going on and so she decided to get the wide Instax printer she had been eyeballing, and we got an even better discount for being Albanian residents. Nice.

It started raining a little — it had rained off and on all day — so we grabbed a coffee in the Mon Cheri in one of the other Pyramid blocks and tried to wait it out. Ultimately we decided to grab a cab back to the apartment — there was something noisy happening up in Skanderbeg so we were likely not going to be able to walk through it anyways. A good day!

New country who dis?

Arrived back in Albania on Monday. We’ve basically been hermits for the week, just trying to acclimate our sleep schedules and detox. I suspect we’ll go out into the world tomorrow, probably back to some of our favorite haunts from last year. I expect coffee to be drank and my hair to be cut. Probably in that order.

Time for a new category!