| See below for my first email journal from Albania
-----Original Message-----
From: Jake [mailto:jakemcowan@yahoo.com]
Sent: Monday, May 17, 2004 3:47 PM
Subject: My Dinner with Albanian Socialists
Greetings from Albania!
Just a reminder (or update if I have neglected to tell you) I am in Albania through the end of this month, providing some training and technical assistance to local governments in the country on techniques to monitor and improve their delivery of municipal services.
I have been here just under a week now, and already have a million stories to tell. I have to start you with today, though, which has been truly outstanding. This morning I departed from the capital, Tirana, for a city to the south, just about in the middle of the country called Kucova. With me were Lindita (local Urban Institute Staff), and Engjell (pronounced Angel) who is a local consultant. Engjell is also a former Mayor of a town called Elbasan, a former member of parliament (the legislative body, not the funk icons), and a former Minister in the central government. To round out the team we had my translator and our driver.
A word about the drivers on the Urban Institute staff. Hands down the most valuable people on staff. Albanians drive as if a traffic law had never been written. It’s chaos. These guys navigate the chaos with ease, however. Also, they are incredibly resourceful. George, for example, not only picked me up at the airport when I arrived last week, but he also paid off a “handler” to assist me through customs, helped me change my currency, and fixed the server in the office. Think “the Wolf” in Pulp Fiction.
Back to today – the 2/2.5 hour drive was smooth – the chaos of driving in Albania does mellow out once outside of Tirana. Notably, for the first time I saw the Adriatic Sea on this drive. As per usual, the skies were incredible today as well. There are always huge, impressive low hanging cumulous clouds spread across the sky here. We pulled into Kucova around 9:30am or so. The driver was whistling along with Eminem on the radio, perhaps reinforcing his status as a badass.
We are greeted by the Mayor and invited to coffee. Everywhere you go in Albania, you have to go out for coffee when greeting visitors. I had already downed a Red Bull an hour earlier, but I am always game for ramping up my metabolism another notch. We finished coffee, the Mayor went on to his other meetings, and we went on to meet with the Municipal Service Director, Deputy Mayor and a handful of others. Nothing terribly eventful about the meetings. I will note, however, that Engjell is a member of the Democratic Party, while all the officials in Kucova are Socialists. So they were jibing each other a bit in a good natured way.
I will point out that the Deputy Mayor had a desk organizer with 6 white flowers (fake) in one of the holders. He said a friend and Democrat in the government gave them to him to symbolize that their 6 municipal service departments all need to work together, regardless of anyone’s party affiliation. Interestingly, the logo on the desk organizer was the Boston Red Sox. I’ll leave it to the partisans on this email to interpret that however you’d like to!
So the meetings ended around 1pm and we all set out for a meal together. I had no idea what I was in store for. We pulled off the cobbled road leading out of town, onto an even more cobbled road leading to a very unlikely house of dining. You’ll see pictures up on my website (it is not up yet, it might be Tuesday or Wednesday before it is up, so check back). The scenario was gorgeous, again with the incredible skies, and mountains in the background. We tooled around there for a while, and then went inside to eat. The restaurant really just had our table for 8, and three other tables that could fit four. All the cooking is done in a building next door, and the proprietor’s house is also just down the path.
The meal started with Raki, a local spirit made from wild berries. This particular Raki was made on this property, and we finished their last bottle, to the toast of Gazour! There were also a number of bottles of wine on the table, and all were having a good time. They kept topping off my glass too – which reinforces now internationally that I just have a look that makes people want to see me drunk for some reason. I drank slow, however, because I expected these Albanians could drink me under the table. The meal proceeds with many toasts of Gazour, a serving of an excellent salad with incredibly fresh hard boiled eggs, followed by a rice dish, and finally a small, whole chicken, which I am pretty sure was so fresh it had been running in the yard the other day.
I noticed the guy sitting next to me dig in to cut the neck off his chicken with a knife, so I start to do the same, until Lindita stops me and tells me that in Albania, hands are used to eat chicken. More specifically, she said, “In Albania we use our hands for three things: to eat chicken, to eat fish and to touch our women!”
Also at this point, the translator becomes too shy to translate some of the stories being told, as I guess they were getting raunchy. Engjell is a big jolly fellow, that had a big jolly amount of Raki and Wine, and my man was on a roll! I was so geeked out at how neat and random it was to be boozing up with 7 Albanians, at a fantastic eatery where only someone from their town would know about, listening to them tell their stories, which included some stories about the state of Albania today, how it has been influenced by party politics, as well as by its communist, xenophobic past.
Later in the meal I catch Lindita digging into her chicken with a knife, and called her out on it to the table. I think this somehow earned me some “face” with the group. I had not realized I had lost it in the first place until then! After dinner, we had some dessert, apples and finally Turkish coffee. I’ve had Turkish coffee before, and like it quite a bit. What I did not know, is the lore that after finishing your cup, you are supposed to flip it upside down on the table, and you can read your future in the glass when you turn it back up. So Engjell takes everyone’s cup and reads their fortune. For me, he predicted I would become a regular visitor to Albania, and that I would find much fulfillment here. Engjell has been joking with me all week about moving to Albania. So after he made the rounds I read his fortune, and predicted a great partnership between his city and mine, and that he would pass out asleep when we got in the car.
And so we left about 4pm, and that was my day. Coffee with the Mayor, about 2 hours of meetings, and a big 3 hour eating and drinking event. For what it is worth, I worked all weekend, so it’s not all roses here, but today was sweet!
Lots of other notables, I’ll try to share them at some point. On the flight over here from Dulles to Vienna I sat next to a woman from Kosovo, who goes to school in America, is interning for Kosovo’s president this summer, and who herself wants to lead Kosovo someday, after it achieves independence. Other details – they do have Dunkin Donuts in Albania, much to my surprise. Everyone here was really excited last weekend about the European singing festival, because the Albanian entrant made it to the finals for the first time (losing to the Ukrainian, however). My hotel is also NATO headquarters. And here is, amazingly, a set list from a radio station here the other day. I could not make this up:
1. The Cure - Boys Don’t Cry
2. Kenny Loggins - Footloose
3. James Brown - It’s a Man’s World
4. (missed this song – something country/bluegrass)
5. Def Leppard – Rocket
6. Depeche Mode – People are People
7. The Mavericks – Things I Cannot Change
8. John Lee Hooker – 1 Bourbon, 1 Scotch, 1 Beer
9. Uriah Heep – Circle of Hands
Last note, I have entered into the Marine Corp Marathon for 2004. The air is too polluted here that I feel like running, so training will start in June.
And I leave with these thoughts, from Def Leppard:
Guitar, drums, load up!
We're gonna fly
(Rocket yeah)
Satellite of love
We're gonna fly
(Rocket yeah)
Yeah!
Satellite of love
Rocket yeah!
Cheers,
Jake
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