Tirana - Days 94-95

Tirana has turned out to be a lovely little city and I´ve ended up staying here longer than I had "planned."

Yesterday (4/18) was international museum day, and instead of saving something like 20 Euros had I been in Paris, I saved a whopping $2 and visited the National Museum of Albania for free. The most impressive thing was probably the massive communist themed mosaic on the exterior of the building...

Other than visiting the hand full of attractions in the city, I have been living quite a "normal" life. Sleeping in a little bit, talking to the girls at the flat, watching movies on their laptop, spending time in cafes, and even cooking on occasion. I can´t believe it but I actually miss cooking! Right now I´m sitting in a little cafe with a borrowed laptop where the z and y are flipped so I end up typing things like thank zou and reallz and backspacing more times than I can imagine. The cafe culture here and in Greece (and I imagine other European countries) is infectious and most are filled with people inside or out depending on weather. As a result, I end up having somewhere in the neighborhood of 5 coffees a day. And as a result of that, I´m always hungry and the plethora of street food available is really dangerous. Just yesterday I was eating a piece of tiramusu by the articial lake of Tirana as dozens of joggers passed by. Classic...and no I don´t feel guilty!

On a more serious note, I feel compelled to tell the story of Besa, one of the CS hosts. She was born in Kosovo and her entire family went to Germany when she was an infant to seek asylum while the Serbs were slaughtering the Albanians in Kosovo. Fastforward 16 years when the German military busted into their home at 4am to deport the family back to Kosovo. Can you imagine being forced to leave everything familiar in an instant at the age of 16? And this was moving from Dusseldorf to Kosovo, where their home was dilapidated and left unattended for 15 years. Plus she barely spoke Albanian. There are too many similar and much more tragic stories, but for me it´s another example of human resilience.