Albanians are known for their kindness to strangers and overall I’ve found that to be true, EXCEPT when it comes to buses. There’ll be just a couple people waiting for the bus and then when it arrives, suddenly a bunch more people appear out of thin air, all rudely pushing and shoving to be the first on the bus! I got my revenge yesterday though. A girl in her 20’s literally shoved me aside, got on the bus ahead of me and sat down in the last remaining seat. A minute later the money-taker guy came along and made her give up her seat so I could have it! It was very satisfying, except when I realized it meant I really AM elderly! How did that happen to a nice person like me?
Last week I saw a guy on the sidewalk selling transistor radios! How long has it been since you saw one of those!
We had another great Game Night on Friday. The group is pretty fluid, with different people coming each week but there’s a core group of about 8 people who come every week. It’s a hugely diverse group and so far everyone is really interesting and fun.
In this photo of part of the group we have people from Finland, US, Canada and Italy!I don’t know what Vincent was saying but Katie and I look pretty disbelieving!
Vincent, one of my new friends, is leaving to spend a few months in Kosovo. He promises to come back to Vlorë in September but I’m still really sad about it, as he’s an ever-cheerful happy-go-lucky bright light in my life. I’m really going to miss him.
Vincent
Today a few of us did the Saturday Walkabout again. We met for morning coffee at Bold Bistro
Catherine, Dewayne, me & RJ
Then we walked to the Mercato in town and took a bus to the bazaar in Old Town. I got some farm fresh eggs and veggies and the others got a 1.5 liter of home pressed olive oil (it comes in a previously used water bottle!), olives and herbs.
Dewayne, me & RJ
We saw this really cool old wreck of a building…don’t you love that curved staircase! They’re not real big on handrails here.
I was tired so we took another bus back to the promenade area and had a late lunch at Ristorant Anchor. Excellent brick oven pizza but of course I didn’t have any. I had grilled chicken and it was good too. I walked 3 miles today, plus my elevator is out of order again today so I had to do the Ninety Stairsteps. Ugh.
Well it’s very nice here in Bari but too expensive. I’ll be glad to get back home. The hotel’s free breakfast looked good but it was all heavy carbs…..pastries and other yummy stuff. So I just had that tablespoon of espresso and headed out to the train station. Ugh, it was raining! I suddenly wished I’d packed an umbrella but I did have my rain jacket.
I didn’t realize there were two train stations in Bari so naturally I went to the wrong one. I thought I’d be able to figure out the ticket machine but I couldn’t find destination Aeropuerto anywhere. I guess I was taking too long so a uniformed man came up and offered assistance. Oh the train that goes to the airport is in a different building, the one with blue windows! It was only about 100′ away.
I got my ticket (€5.20) and had only five minutes wait for the train. I was glad I’d left early because the next train wasn’t for 50 minutes. From the train station it’s about a ten minute walk to the airport but it goes through a long long tunnel so it’s out of the weather.
They tell you to be at the airport three hours before your flight for international flights but WizzAir’s check in desk doesn’t open until two hours before, so I had an hour to kill, and nowhere to sit! I got some euros from the ATM; that killed a whole two minutes. I had read that ATMs in Italy are fee free and I guess it’s true, because they didn’t charge a fee even at the airport!
Elevator doors at the airport
I decided to go have breakfast at McDonald’s. Yeah, I know what I said before but they do have keto friendly breakfast options. But not here. The breakfast offerings here were all croissants, rolls and muffins. I wandered around and the only other restaurants on this floor also only had rolls & pastries. I guess Italians are not into American style egg breakfasts at all.
The flight was pretty full but uneventful and coming back through Immigration in Tirana is just through two machines that look at your passport and then take your picture. I sure hope they recorded my entry, as that was the whole reason for going to Italy!
I walked to the back of the airport parking lot to the buses and I didn’t have to take the bus that goes to Tirana city center; I found a minibus that went straight to Vlorë! Almost. Several of us had to change to a different bus halfway there. It cost 1200 lek ($11 USD) and I was able to get dropped off at my usual city bus stop instead of going all the way to the far side of town. But I’d just missed a bus so I knew it would be a 15 minute wait. I just started walking towards home, in hard rain. I was soaked, cold and miserable when the bus did finally come along so I hopped on even though it was just one stop before mine.
I’m so glad to be home and so tired! Air travel sure isn’t fun any more., especially International travel.
I had a really hard time getting to sleep last night; I’m used to total darkness and the room had lots of little led lights everywhere plus a lighted phone panel. The pillow was too fat and there wasn’t a top sheet. I thought that was really odd for a hotel and now I’m worried that it was a housekeeping mistake and they’ll think I stole it.
I woke up before my alarm went off. Ahhh, a new day with better experiences. I jumped in the shower. It’s a really nice big shower with a huge rain shower head plus a hand held. The glass shower doors had not a single waterspot…..impressive!
I turned on the hand-held shower wand to get the water warmed up and I stepped in. Great water pressure, nice! All of a sudden the hose fell off the wand and started flinging itself all over the place like an out of control fire hose! Oy! I tried unsuccessfully to capture it as it was whipping the crap out of my ankles and finally thought to shut the water off. I wasn’t able to reattach the wand to the hose but did have a nice shower using the big rain head. When I got out of course the whole bathroom was awash from the water jetting all over the place. Oops!
I went into the restaurant to have breakfast and the desk clerk came in after me and insisted I check out their free breakfast buffet. It was pretty impressive! Fried and scrambled eggs, potatoes, sausages, cheeses, fruit, croissants, juice, cereals and lots of other stuff. I decided to just eat there instead and it was very good, even the super strong espresso.
I got the free shuttle to the airport and tipped the driver 400 lek. I find myself grossly overtipping here (where it’s not even expected). The average monthly wage here is around $400 so I don’t mind helping out a little. It’s a very small airport, with only 14 gates. There were no lines anywhere and you don’t have to remove shoes at Security!
I’m flying on WizzAir, a VERY budget airline. My round trip ticket cost $45 but that only includes a small underseat item. A carryon, checked bag, or seat assignment, everything else is extra. So I’m bringing quite a small daypack with way less than I’ve ever traveled with before. No little sewing kit, no first aid kit, no glasses repair kit, no makeup except eyeshadow, no laptop. One tee shirt to sleep in, a couple underpants and some leggings. I’ll be wearing the same outer clothes for 3 days straight. They wanted $14 each way to get a seat assignment but it’s only a one hour flight so I let them assign me a free seat….in the last row, of course!
I actually like the fact that I don’t have to worry about whether there’ll be space in the overhead bin for my carryon, and my back really appreciates the light load, as my usual carryon is also a backpack.
Here’s a photo of the cigarettes for sale in the airport. This is printed on all the cartons. Many many people smoke here,though I wonder how they can afford it.
The flight to Bari was uneventful except that because I was in the cheap seats, I was the last to deplane and at the end of a very long line of people at Customs and Immigration. I easily found the train station and a nice lady showed me how to get a ticket to the city center from the vending machine.
When I got off the train I realized my cellphone only works on wifi here, and I had no idea how to find Hotel Adria without Google Maps! I thought I knew the general direction though, and I knew it was nearby. . I just started walking and hoped I’d see a policeman or an internet cafe but no. So I stopped 2 different young people and they both spoke English and gave me directions, the first one not quite right because I ended up on the street behind it, but it was close. There’s a lot of graffiti here but it doesn’t feel unsafe, at least in daytime.
I have a tiny room with one comfy single bed with a nice squishy soft pillow (yay!) AND a top sheet, for $79. Ouch! The shower is ordinary so hopefully it won’t attack me. The view from the window is just all green and I’m on the 4th floor…..what the heck?
OH! When I get up close, I see it’s a huge 6 story high wall of moss & succulents! Wow!
Hotel Adria lobby
I went out exploring a little, and to try and find a restaurant for an early dinner. I walked for 2.4 miles and no luck with a restaurant; there were lots of gelato shops, coffee shops, bakeries and pizza shops and a few Italian restaurants with pizza and pasta dishes àbut nothing “legal” for me to eat. They have a McDonald’s here but I wouldn’t eat there in the US, so I sure won’t eat there in Italy. I was starting to think I might be fasting tonight when I ran across a little grocery and bought a little bit of ham, cheese, nuts and two bottles of water. I’ll just have a little picnic in my room.
The streets are tree-lined and the architecture here is amazing! I loved just walking along gawking at everything.
I went into a large pharmacy and they had some high quality Vitamin C but it cost $56 for ninety 1000 mg tablets! I didn’t buy them. So I guess Italy is not a good place to get supplements either.
This morning I took the minibus (called a furgon) to Tirana. I’m staying overnight here before tomorrow’s flight to Bari, Italy. We arrived at a huge parking lot filled with big and little buses from all over. Right away men came up and yelled “Taxi”? I told them I was going to walk. I found a calm spot and searched for the Toptani Mall on Google Maps, as it was supposed to be close to the bus terminal. It’s a huge 8 story mall and I was going to search for supplements and sweeteners. I guess I had my bus terminals mixed up because it said it was 2.4 miles away. Since I still have shin splints from Saturday’s walk, that was out of the question.
I decided to just get a taxi to the city bus terminal, which is behind the Palace of Culture on the main square. I knew I could catch the airport bus from there, and it would have cost 400 lek. I was accosted by a taxi guy again and asked how much to the Palace of Culture and he didn’t know where it was. That should have set off some alarm bells but I just decided to get a ride to the hotel. So I said I needed to go to Lord Hotel near the airport and he didn’t know where that was either. But he said “1500 lek” which is pretty high; it should have been 1200-1300. But I said okay and he led me over to the next street where all the taxis park. He went to an unmarked car, not a taxi at all but just an ordinary sedan. Oh crap. A taxi imposter! I can hear all you moms yelling “Don’t get in the car!!”
Well…..being the nonconfrontational, don’t cause a fuss kinda person that I am, I got in the car. I plugged the Lord Hotel into my Google Maps so I’d know if he was going the right way and wondered how much it would hurt if I had to jump out of a moving vehicle if I seemed to be getting kidnapped. He followed the directions though and got me safely to the hotel. Then he demanded 2000 lek because he said he based his original quote on going to the airport, not a hotel. Boy it really made me mad but I handed over the loot.
So far the hotel is making up for all that unpleasantness. The girl at the check- in desk spoke perfect English and she upgraded me from a tiny twin bed room to a huge room with king size bed a comfy reading chair and a balcony! All for $45. This room is normally $115!
It must be pretty new construction because everything is worked by touch screens. I got to my room with the little plastic card and there was nowhere to insert it. Last time I stayed in a hotel, you had to put the card IN something. I stood there feeling like an idiot and a housekeeper came out of the room next door and showed me how to place the card against a black box on the wall. Duhhh.
Then I couldn’t figure out how to turn on the lights… nothing worked! So I went and got the housekeeper again and she showed me another black box where you have to insert the card to turn on the electricity.
Later I was cold and naturally I couldn’t figure out the touchscreen controls for the heat/air. That housekeeper was long gone so I went down to the desk and the same sweet girl that checked me in said “Come, I’ll show you” So we went back to the room and she explained how it works. I’m really feeling like a complete idiot! And old, really old.
View from the balconyAnother view
There’s a restaurant attached to the hotel so I went there for dinner. The waitress spoke perfect English too! I ordered grilled chicken with baked potato for $5.50 and she offered fire-roasted vegetables instead of the potato, yay! It was delicious, and I didn’t even have to be shown how to eat it!
The hotel offers a free breakfast thing but I think I’ll splurge and go back to the restaurant for the $2.35 ham & cheese omelet with bacon.
They have a free airport shuttle so I won’t have to deal with any greedy imitation taxi drivers in the morning. On to Italy tomorrow!
On Saturday a group of six entrepid explorers took a wonderful guided tour of Old Town Vlorë and the bazaar. It was led by our young expat friend Travis (age 32) who is a darling boy, with huge dimples…I want to adopt him!
L to R Vincent, Catherine, me, RJ, Dewayne and Travis
Travis walks 10+ miles every day so he knows where everything is, and since he’s on a strict budget here, the locations of all the best and cheapest cafes and restaurants.
Interesting story he told….he befriended a street dog and somehow got distracted and left behind his bag with about $300 of Airpods and other electronics on the beach. He went back the next day and it was still there where he left it! I’ve heard others say they had similar experiences here in Albania. Would that happen in your town?
We walked to Old Town and Travis showed us some of the really old buildings
Muradie Mosque built in 1537
He took us to a really cool little coffeeshop, Committee Cafe, where we sat in an enclosed patio full of banana trees and other lush vegetation
This was a whole wall of twigs inside the coffeeshop!
In the ladies’ room was this weird hole in the floor, which I think was an ancient toilet. Thank goodness it also had a modern toilet (though it had no seat)
These are some of the pretty little shops in Old Town, though I guess most of them are only open in summer.
RJ
And some ancient artifacts, just laying around. Vlorë was founded in the 6th century BC!
We ended up walking through the bazaar area which goes along several streets but it was late and most were all packed up already.
So we headed back to our starting point and Travis took us to a little tiny restaurant where we got roasted pork sandwiches that came with French fries, a little salad and some yogurt-cucumber sauce for around $2! But it was all tucked into a pita together. I don’t think I’ve ever seen french fries in a sandwich! Travis ordered me (Miss Fussy Eater) a plate with just meat and salad. There had to be close to a pound of meat there, for around $4.25 US! Vincent got a huge tray of food for 600 lek, about $5.50 US!
Vincent’s huge tray of food
RJ has a really accurate distance app and he said we walked 4.8 miles! I’m pretty sure I’ve never walked that far in my LIFE before, and I was really starting to wilt. For the last mile or so they kept telling me we were “almost there”, the big fat liars! But it was a really enjoyable day with a fun bunch, so it was well worth the mild shin splints and stiffness I’m experiencing today. I’d do it again in a heartbeat!
Stephen, a crazy Canadian and me at Game Night
I’m having so much fun here! But I am very happy to be spending all day today staying home reading and recovering from yesterday’s big hike. Tomorrow I take the bus to Tirana and stay overnight at a hotel near the airport and on Tuesday I take my $46 round trip flight to Bari, Italy, returning on Wednesday.
I saw this man walking his sheep on a leash right in the middle of the city! They stopped off at this tiny patch of grass for a snack.
My dental issues have caused no small amount of problems and setbacks. I thought it was a simple matter of replacing existing crowns and two bridges on top. I forgot about my bad luck!
Getting crowns here involve three or four visits. First the prep work and impressions, then another visit to make sure the new bare metal or zircon crown fits and to be adjusted as needed. Then the lab adds the porcelain and there’s another visit to make sure it still fits (because now it’s thicker and larger than before). It then goes back to the lab for final color and polishing. Each of these visits are 2-3 days apart. I feel like I’m practically living at the dentist’s office!
I had the extraction and root root canal I already mentioned. Then she removed two old crowns on that same side and took impressions. They don’t do temporary crowns here so I was left with a really ugly ground-down “peg” of a tooth right in front!
At my next visit she greeted me with the words no one ever wants to hear, “We have a big problem “. As we age, our teeth get worn down, mine more than most because the enamel on my teeth is so thin. My bottom front teeth are extremely worn and are actually hollow, with the pulp exposed. I also am missing 3 bottom molars on each side, which allows the opposing teeth to float downward. The lab said I didn’t have enough space in my bite for the new bridge; it would raise that side and cause the teeth on the other side to not meet at all!
The solution was to do both sides at the same time and raise the whole bite. And another advantage would have is that it would even out the bite pressure along my whole mouth instead of the current excessive pressure on one side. That is what caused the porcelain veneer to pop off two crowns on that side in the past.
But wait, it’s not over! Because my lower front teeth are so worn, and worn so unevenly, none of the front teeth in the new 12 tooth upper bridge met the bottom teeth. There was a huge gap of more than 1/4″! Of course you don’t want the new upper teeth to be hanging way down and crooked just so they’ll meet those old bottom teeth, so she went to work with that carbon paper stuff that shows where the teeth meet, and ground down each side & back tooth of the bridge as much as she could. I still have a gap in front but it’s much smaller.
The bad part was that she then had to remove the 5 tooth bridge on the other side so I was left virtually toothless on top! I had one set of upper & lower teeth way at the back that still met each other, and the next day the crown fell off one of those poor overworked teeth! And I was stuck with three of those ugly little toothpegs qright in front! I looked like a very macabre jack-o-lantern for more than a week.
It looks like the Expat Game Nights are a weekly event! I had to skip last Friday because of my scary Miss Snaggletooth look, but I got the new teeth just one hour before this week’s event and it was lots of fun again. I’m a little worried that my extreme introvert tendencies will eventually chafe at having a weekly “commitment” but for now I’m loving it! It’s always a mix of really interesting people. This week we had people from Finland, England and Ukraine plus 7 Americans and one Canadian.
The final cost for one extraction, one root canal and 13 crowns was $1156 USD.
Last night there was an Expats Game Night at Pizeri Amantia restaurant and I overcame my Extreme Introverted tendencies and actually forced myself to go! I’m still a little amazed at that. Like all good little introverts, I usually sign up for something that sounds really fun but then at the last minute I don’t go.
I’m so glad I went! It was so fun, and so nice to speak English again. There were 11 people there; mostly Americans but also one each from England, Canada and Italy. I was happy to see that the other expats weren’t all 20-somethings, though of course I was the oldest by a long shot and also had the most “seniority ” in Albania. Several had only just arrived. There was lots of raucous chatting, laughing, eating and a really fun game called Dixit. It’s an Italian restaurant and most people were eating delicious-looking pizza (around $5-6 for a big pizza!) And it was really hard to have to sit there and smell that pizza aroma and not be able to partake. But I survived, and really had a great time. I hope this is the start of regular expat gatherings and maybe even some small group travel to other cities.
I’m so jealous of all the places these young kids have been….Thailand, Germany, Bali. All over the world, made possible by being able to work on line. The other day I went to breakfast with Catherine and we met a young guy from Poland who was looking to put more distance from the Russian army. He worked for a S. Korean company, spoke perfect English and was buying a brand new one bedroom apartment one block from the sea for $85k US. It’s the building right behind mine and I’ve been watching the construction proceed. I find it amazing that those guys just scamper around on narrow scaffolding 7 or 8 stories above the ground.
When I was young I always wanted to do the backpacking through Europe thing. I’d look up the Eurailpasses and hostel information and figure costs, but I never could afford it.
I was thrilled last week to find a source for ziplock sandwich bags! They’re quite rare, in fact all ziplock bags are a little hard to find.
I also went to my favorite fish store to buy frozen sardines. The fresh ones are half the price but are not cleaned and while I know how to clean fish, I’m happy to pay double for them to do it. The cleaned ones are $.85 a pound. But I accidentally picked up something else. They’re really skinny like sardines but once I got them home I realized my mistake….They’re about 9-12″ long and they don’t have any fins. I think they’re baby eels! I haven’t decided if I’m going to try and eat them or not but I’m leaning towards NOT. This one is 12″ long!
I went for an early walk on the beach the morning after a windy day and found some treasures. I love the round one; it’s a sea urchin shell.
I just realized a couple things. There’s no packaged sandwich bread in the supermarkets. You get bread from a bakery and it costs around $.60 a loaf. The other thing is that Albania has 20% tax on nearly everything you buy! (And I thought Arizona’s 8.5% sales tax was bad!) It’s included in the marked price on each item though so there’s no big shock at the end of checkout. Except that very often the price marked on the shelf is way lower (as much as $1.50!) than the actual price at checkout. What can I say? It’s an Albania thing. Oh 3 things. You can’t get cash back with your debit card. It’s very much a cash society here. Some stores will take a card if you’re spending more than $10-15 but none will give any cash back.
I’ve had a busy morning! I am proceeding with my plan to apply for residency. I have to leave the country and reenter because the application has to be submitted within 30 days of entry. So I leave for one day, come back and my entry date is fresh and new! I booked a flight on a discount airline called WizzAir. $48 rd trip from Tirana to a little town in Italy’s “bootheel” called Bari on March 14, returning the 15th. I booked a hotel for $80 that’s close to the city center and the rail line from the airport.
My landlords rent my apartment in summer for $2000 a month! (I pay €250, about $277.) So I will have to be gone from June 15 until September 1. If I have my Residency I won’t have to go to a different country, which is really good because my health insurance is only valid in Albania. At my “advanced age” the cheapest travel insurance I could find for neighboring countries cost $660 for that 2.5 month period! (My Albanian insurance is only $100 a year). So I started searching Airbnb for somewhere to live this summer. It had to be away from the ultra-expensive coast. Places are already going fast and I couldn’t find any decent sized city that’s really cheap. I booked an apartment in Shkoder (Northern Albania) for June 15 until September 1. Quite pricey, $523 a month! But that includes utilities, which could run as much as $80+ in summer.
Shkoder is on Europe’s largest lake which also is half in Montenegro. They have some pretty cool kayak trips on the lake to twoq restricted-access bird sanctuaries and also boat trips to Komani Lake and Shala River which I’m really excited about. Shala River is beautifully turquoise and clear, really pretty.
Shala River
So now I feel like I can relax a bit. I still need to go to the US Embassy and swear a notarized affidavit that I’m not a criminal. I was hoping to do that on the day I fly back from Bari but the Embassy’s last appointment is at 1 pm and my flight gets in at 12:50, so no. I’ll have to make a special trip. It’s about 2 hours and $9.25 each way on the bus.
I had to get a tooth pulled last week and it was a doozy, with a curved root plus it was broken off at the gumline and split vertically, so it was hard to remove. Glad that’s over! Tomorrow I get a root canal and then in a week or so I’ll have the two new 5 tooth bridges and I can smile again! It cost $9.25 to get the tooth pulled and the root canal costs $56.
I’ve made a friend! She’s a 61 year old retired from the US Forest Service. We met for lunch and had a nice time and are meeting for breakfast on Wednesday. For lunch we just walked along the promenade looking at the menu boards and chose a restaurant that looked promising. One place offered grilled goat or lamb for 1000 lek ($9.25), grilled guts for 500 lek and whole sheep’s head for 400 lek. Yeah…didn’t go there!
Those who know me well know that I’m an extremely fussy eater. It’s been said that I have the taste buds of an 8 year old boy. And eating low carb makes it even harder to eat in restaurants.
I can’t remember the name of the restaurant we chose but I’ll walk back over that way soon and find out, though I hope no one is reading my blog for restaurant recommendations; if so they must be sorely disappointed! This was the first time I’ve eaten out since I got here almost 4 months ago!
So I was tempted to just order a nice safe omelet for $2.30 but I decided to be really adventurous and ordered a whole grilled fish, including the head which had a lot of really sharp little teeth! It came with scrumptious hand cut french fries which nearly killed me to resist gobbling up. I only ate one. This was a pretty expensive meal at $10 US but it was excellent!
One of the things I was anxious to do as soon as I arrived here was to get my teeth fixed. Somehow it ended up taking 5 months, but now I’m finally starting the process.
I need two 5 tooth upper bridges and one single crown on the bottom. All those teeth already have crowns and/or bridges so I won’t need any of that nasty grinding done. But a 3 tooth bridge I had gotten 5 or 6 years ago in Mexico has been loose for a long time and I couldn’t afford the $3000+ to replace it, so at least one, maybe both of the anchor teeth need to be extracted and that 3 tooth bridge will be replaced with a 5 tooth bridge. Uggggh.
I found a young dentist who got great reviews and stopped in to make an appointment. She’s quite young and very kind, and she speaks halfway decent English.
First I needed to get x-rays, as she doesn’t have that equipment. A full mouth panoramic view cost $14. Last week I started with the single crown. She thought it should be qa full zircon crown. So the first appointment she removed the old porcelain/gold crown and took impressions. I went back two days later and she fitted the crown and then sent it back to the lab for coloring. It ended up taking 4 visits because the lab didn’t get the color right the first time.
Next Wednesday I will go back and she’ll remove that 3 tooth Mexican bridge and do the extraction(s). Hopefully only one, but the way my luck runs…. I’ll have a 3 tooth gap there for two weeks while the gums heal, then she’ll remove the other two crowns and take impressions. She doesn’t seem to do temporary crowns so I’ll then have a 5 tooth gap for two or three more days. No laughing for 2.5 weeks!
And then the other 5 tooth bridge should be uneventful and just take 2-3 days. Two teeth in that one have excessive bite pressure that made the front facing pop off so the metal is showing, and it looks like I have huge cavities. Those two teeth will get full zircon crowns that are much stronger than porcelain.
She charges (in US dollars) $9.25 for extractions, $83 for porcelain crowns and $214 for the full zircon crowns. So the whole thing, 11 crowns (3 of them zircon) plus one extraction is going to cost $1290….about the cost of a single porcelain crown in the US. And I’ll finally be able to smile again without embarrassment!
I’m working on getting my Albanian Residency. The hardest and most expensive part for me is getting my Social Security benefit statement Apostilled (an official government affidavit). For $20 I could get it Apostilled at the official government agency but their lead time is 20 weeks! So I have to use an expedited service. I paid $150 for that, uploaded my benefit statement to them, and voila! It was done that same day and sent Priority Mail to my friend Raquel in California. Well that one got lost in the mail somewhere. After almost a week, I reached out to the service and they redid it and re-±¹sent it, and this time it made it to Raquel!
She sent me a copy of it though and it was Apostilled by the State of Illinois, not the US government! It’s a federal document and must be done by the federal agency. I looked on the service’s website and nowhere does it say where the apostille will be done. I just assumed they would know where it needed to go. So…you know what happens when you assume things. My $150 mistake.
I sent that copy to my residency facilitator but didn’t hear back from her about whether or not that one might be acceptable. She’s not good at communicating, but I felt like it needs to be done properly and surely the Albanian government will feel the same way.
In the meantime I did more research and discovered that I can’t use the benefits statement from the SSA website; I need a special letter signed (stamped) by the Commissioner of SSA and notarized by me. That’s only available by calling SSA or visiting the local office. My “local office” is in Rome. I contacted them and they are not able to supply it with that special signature.
So I called SSA on my US phone that uses wifi. The connections are always awful. I managed to finally get through to a real person after only a 49 minute wait, and of course she could only hear half of what I was saying. We both persevered and she finally understood what I needed and then suddenly I lost the connection completely but I am hopingà the document is on its way to Raquel.
Raquel would have to send me the letter via DHL at a cost of $147! Then I’d have to take it to the US Embassy in Tirana (5 hours on a bus plus $50 fee) for a US notarization. Then I’d send it via DHL (about $125) to the express apostille service ($195) and finally get the Apostilled form back to me (another $147 DHL fee)! So in the end, about $600 cost for this one document, and a whole lot of chances for it to be lost. Eeeek.
I thought it would actually make more sense to just fly back to the US and get it notarized and sent off to the Apostille service from there, saving around $425 in DHL fees. Plus I could restock some of the supplements, etc that I’m unable to buy here, and by leaving Albania and reentering, I wouldn’t have to make that $200 one day trip to Italy. (Residency applications must be made within 30 days of entering the country).
I had a $563 travel voucher from British Airways so my ticket to Atlanta only cost $200 out of pocket. And don’t you know, 30 minutes after I bought it, I got an email from the facilitator saying, “Great! They won’t notice where it was Apostilled”! She thinks we should proceed with that one. I’m very skeptical…obviously the woman is not aware of the perpetual bad luck cloud that follows me around!
But I canceled the flights and I think I’m getting a refund since it had been less than 24 hours since I had purchased them. Raquel will wait to receive the new benefits statement that’s hopefully on the way and send it along with the Apostilled document, just in case my application does get rejected and I need to proceed with the new statement.
Phew! This stuff is not for the faint of heart! It’s exhausting just writing about it.
Today is an important milestone for me; it’s been four years since I started dieting. I was looking back at photos and realized a lot has happened in those four years!
In January 2019 I was living in my tiny ALiner folding camper on my recently purchased property in Concho, AZ. Brrr!
With me was my faithful and ever-cheerful sidekick Roxie.
I was uncomfortably fat, with high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, GERD and constant heartburn, and aching joints. I could barely walk one block without terrible pain in my knees and hips.
I had just started seeing a new doctor whom I absolutely loved. He was alarmed at my blood test results and wanted me to start taking drugs for cholesterol and diabetes. I was already on blood pressure medications but they were not adequately doing the job. I asked that he give me 90 days to try to turn things around.
And that was the start of my weight loss journey. I started out just trying to cut back on snacks….i.e. no more eating an entire bag of candy or can of Pringles in one sitting! And I did lose weight, and in that 90 day period I lowered all those markers. Doctor Matt was happy! I originally thought getting down to 180# would be great…that would have been a loss of 51#. Quite an ambitious goal.
I started building my tiny house on the property. It was really really hard at 200+ pounds, plus I realized that at 70 years old, I no longer had the strength to lift sheets of plywood, 60# bags of cement, etc. The last time I’d built a house I was only 40!
But I persevered, and I got some good paid and volunteer help, and continued to shed the weight. It took almost a year to get my little bitty 85 square foot house to the point where I could move in!
After about six months of a calorie restriction diet I hit a plateau and didn’t lose any more weight for a couple months. It was at that point that I learned about the Keto diet, something I would never have even considered to be possible before, but I realized I was almost doing it! So I changed a few things and adopted the Keto lifestyle. I saw a video by Dr. Jason Fung, a brilliant nephrologist, took his advice and started Intermittent Fasting, and the weight started falling off. I’ve never looked back! I lost a total of 98# and got down to 129#, which Dr. Matt thought was too skinny. That’s okay, once I got a little less strict, I leveled out at around 135-140, which seems good for me. My bloodwork was great, I am on a tiny dosage of one blood pressure med and my diabetes is long gone. My AIC tests have been at 5.2 for the past 3 years! I never need Rolaids any more. And because I eat an anti-inflammatory diet, my severe neck, back, hand and knee arthritis don’t hurt at all any more, except when the elevator doesn’t work and I have to walk up the 90 stairsteps to my apartment! Then one knee hurts for two days when I go to sit down. I routinely walk 1.5 to 2 miles every time I go into the city, with no problems. Life Is Good!
I wish my friends would be more proactive about their health. My thought is that I really don’t want to spend my last 10-15 years of life being in pain, miserable, and sickly. Several have tried the Keto diet but I admit, it’s an extreme way of life and like any diet, you have to keep it up or the weight comes right back. I read that the average person stays on Keto for only 42 days! But more and more studies are showing that it’s a pretty healthy way to live.
I needed more almond flour. I guess it’s like childbirth; you forget what a pain it was the last time around! I stupidly decided to make twice as much as the first time. I forgot all about having to de-skin them all! This time I blanched them in the boiling water for almost twice as long and that did make it easier but who knew two cups of almonds would turn into two billion of the darn things when you start undressing them! My poor arthritic thumbs! They don’t normally hurt but this was torture, and they have to be skinned while they’re still wet. Now they have to dry out for a couple days, then ground up in the little coffee grinder, a little bit at a time.
With my elevator broken and no way of knowing when it might be fixed (but probably not soon) the rental agent proposed temporarily moving some of my stuff to a different apartment until the elevator is fixed, then move back.
Maxim (my landlord, I guess he works for them) took me to see the new place. It’s directly behind my place, with a front sea view. It was very nice, a small one bedroom with sofabed in the living room.
And when we got back to the office, they told me that my elevator was working again!!! So I walked back with Maxim and sure enough, it worked. I hadn’t even bothered to try it this morning. It’s not permanently fixed, just temporary. So I’m not moving….. today, anyway. I just hope that I’m not IN the elevator when it decides to break again. And that the worn out parts are not the ones that might send me plunging wildly down to the ground floor at the speed of light. Wheeeeeeee!
So. More changes. I don’t fully know the extent of them just yet. A friend who’s in the know advised me to go ahead and apply for Residency now instead of waiting until I’ve been here the full 12 months of free visa for Americans. It seems the European Union is pressuring member countries to set the income requirements to €2000 euros a month. Albania is not an EU member but they have applied, so they would have to comply at some point. And the changes usually happen without advance warning. For instance in February of last year, Albania withdrew the 12 month free Visa for Americans without warning and suddenly there were a whole bunch of Expats who had overstayed the new 90 day visa! Eventually they ruled that if they had entered before January, they’d be grandfathered in. And then a few months later they completely reversed the decision and the 12 month visa was back!
Without warning, Cyprus raised their income requirement from €900 a month (same as here) to €2000, plus raised the bank deposit requirement from €10,000 to €24,000 (a year’s expenses) effective January 1. Several other European Union countries require bank deposits of €10,000 to €25,000. If this happened here, I’d be ineligible!
So I’m applying for Residency now. I need to supply an Apostilled (special certification by the US Government) income statement from Social Security, a certification that I’m not a criminal (available from the US Embassy in Tirana), an Albanian bank account for direct deposit of my income, proof of health insurance and at least a one year notarized apartment lease. And you have to apply within 30 days of entering the country, so I have to leave and come back to reset my entry date.
I already feel completely overwhelmed by all this! I have contracted a facilitator to help me wade through it all. It’s going to end up costing $1000-1200 before it’s all done.
I checked and getting an Apostille is easy enough and only costs $20. But the government website advises a 10-12 week wait time! So I had to use an Apostille service that hand-carries the documents to the Apostille office. It cost $150 but they got it done the same day! It is already on the way to my friend Raquel, who will send it to the facilitator in Tirana via DHL. The shipping cost for that is approximately $147!!
Next I spent half the day yesterday researching the cheapest and easiest way to leave the country and reenter. I’m going to Italy! For one whole day! I can fly to Bari (just north of Italy’s “bootheel”) for $47 round trip on Wizz Air, get a $70 hotel for the night and return the next day at around 1 pm which will allow time for visiting the Embassy for my criminal check, and still get back home that same day. I think it’s a two hour bus trip to Tirana.
I really was dreading to ask about getting a notarized apartment lease because it involves the owners having to file and pay 15% tax on the rental income. A lot of apartment owners just don’t want to be bothered. But I decided to go visit the rental again and get her to ask.
The elevator here has been out of order for five days! And due to the thick cement floors and 10′ ceilings here, that means 90 stairsteps. It’s terrible on my poor knees, especially when carrying a bunch of groceries and a 7 liter jug of water. When I finally got to the ground floor yesterday, I saw a sign on the elevator. It says the elevator is broken and the parts to fix it cost €1300. The apartment owners must pay for the parts before they’ll order them, and once ordered, it will take at least a month to get the parts. How long will it take to collect that money from all the mostly absentee owners??
So just like that, the being elevatorless took precedence over getting a new lease. I can’t live on the 6th floor without an elevator; I just can’t. So I may have to move. The rental agent is out of town until Tuesday. Back when I was apartment hunting, the owner of this apartment also showed me a one bedroom apartment in an adjacent building; maybe he owns both? I don’t remember a thing about that other apartment but I think it was cute. I don’t remember anything bad about it, I just liked this one better. If I have to move I’d really like to stay in this neighborhood. The one bedroom unit would be cheaper too, as if I stay here all year long my rent will probably increase by about $100 a month!
So I’m not going to N. Macedonia for the summer. I canceled my Airbnb in Ohrid, and was penalized 30 days’ rental fee plus some service fees….$545! Gulp. But that’s somewhat offset by not having to pay the other two months’ $465 a month rent plus $450 for travel insurance required to enter the country. I’m relieved about that; I didn’t want to go and have my apartment taken over by casual renters who might spill things on the sofa or scratch the new glass cooktop, etc. I can’t imagine what the summer will be like here, with triple the population. The traffic and parking are already awful and the buses are often Standing Room Only! It’ll be interesting, I’m sure.
The weather has been so nice, consistently 5-10° above normal, and no rain for the past couple of weeks, just lovely bright sunny days. On average it rains 15 days in January but the forecast for the next two weeks only shows two rainy days. I suppose the farmer’s might not be happy but I am!
If it’s above 60° when I go into the city I just wear a long sleeve shirt or microfleece shirt but virtually everyone else is wearing winter coats! I don’t get it….I get hot when I walk. Doesn’t everyone? The other day at a produce stand in town the girl said “Hello,” so I asked her how she knew I was American and it embarrassed her. She said I just looked like I spoke English. I’m pretty sure it’s the clothes. While I was waiting for the bus I noticed the old ladies, 60 & up. Some wore dressy slacks but most, especially the older ones, wore skirts well below their knees and thick stockings. Not a one of them in jeans. I only have three pairs of pants and two are jeans! A lot of people here say Hello to me before I even open my mouth so something is tipping them off!
A lot of the street vendors are selling raw olives right now. Harvest is in late November. They cost around $.45 a pound but they’re not edible (extremely bitter) until soaked in brine or oil for 6 months. I guess a lot of people must do that though, considering how many are being sold.
Here’s one of the little street booths. There’s one street downtown that’s blocked off from traffic for about two blocks and has lots of people selling everything…fruit, nuts, fish, mops, pots and pans and clothing. The price signs are in leke, for one kilo (2.2#). So the lemons are $.34 USD a pound. Vine ripened tomatoes are usually around $.50 a pound.
I bought a little propane stove so I can cook in case of power outage, it cost $10 and the gas cartridges are $1. 10 each. The power has gone out a few times but so far never for more than ten minutes. I have my solar Luci Light handy in case it happens after dark!
Also at the Mercato I bought this cute blackberry table runner for $1.80! I love it. The lady took my 200 leke and said “Gracias? Thank you”? (I ask you, do I look Latina at all??) We both laughed and I said “Thank you, faleminderit” and went on my way. It’s these funny little encounters with people that really brighten my days.
The other day I had another funny encounter, with the lady at the produce stand near my apartment. I am determined to start speaking Shqip more, even though I’m not sure of the pronunciation. I’ve been getting some avocados that never ripen, and I’m not sure how to pick a good one. I wanted to ask if this was a good avocado but I accidentally asked if it was a happy avocado! She looked puzzled and shrugged her shoulders and then I realized what I’d said and we both laughed. I wish I could get photos of this lady. She’s in her 50’s with jet black hair and huge eyebrows that look like they were drawn on with a wide tip black Sharpie!
I didn’t see any turkeys anywhere until Christmas eve, when I passed a woman on the street carrying a live turkey in a plastic shopping bag! Just his head was sticking up out of the bag. I fear he came to a bad end. Then in the butcher shop I saw turkeys. They’re just as scrawny as the chickens. A friend who lives in Cyprus said the European Union does not allow growth hormones, antibiotics and steroids in poultry, so they don’t end up with all that breast meat that we’re used to. They are also probably a different breed. Apparently the turkeys here can actually walk around without falling on their faces! What a concept. They have more thigh meat than ours, because they are allowed to get some exercise. She cooked one for Christmas and said it was delicious. I know that the chicken here tastes way better than even the organic chicken I used to buy in AZ. These turkeys (back row) are quite expensive at $6 USD a pound!
I bought a little chunk of beef for my Christmas dinner. Beef here is cut with the grain instead of against it like in the US so it’s hard to recognize the cuts. A lot of them look like a big muscle (which of course they are). There’s no factory farming here so all the meat animals are grass fed or pastured and are very lean. Beef is not very tender but like the chicken, it really tastes great. I simmered the beef on very low heat for two hours but should have started earlier. It wasn’t shoe leather but it was chewy!
I had a very quiet Christmas and New Year but New Year’s Eve is a huge celebration here. New Year’s Day is the biggest holiday of the year because for the 50 years of Communist reign, all religion was forbidden. Even though that era is 20+ years past, the tradition continues. Also, 70% of Albania is Muslim so Christmas is not a big deal. There were some decorations along the street and in stores, but not much. New Year’s Eve was incredibly noisy though, filled with heavy artillery noise from fireworks and maybe cherry bombs (?) stating as soon as it got dark. Much louder than firecrackers anyway; they made me jump every time.
Update on a few things…..I fixed the sofa cushions! It’s a big L-shaped sofa with 5 identical back cushions so I switched them around until I found a combination where the stripes lined up better. Now the cushions on the end that I sit on are wildly “off” but I don’t care because I don’t have to look at them. That’s better!
And the landlord didn’t return until three days later, after I’d given up on being presentable at all times. So it was again Scary Janis who answered the door….poor guy! Same baggy fleece pants, mismatched and wildly clashing fleece shirt, no bra, fuzzy teeth. I had at least brushed my hair this time, for whatever that’s worth. I think he said they had to order a part for the mini-split AC unit in the bedroom so that means another surprise visit at some point. Sigh. I’m afraid he’s just going to have to chalk Scary Janis up to me being old, or American. Or both.
I read that they’re building a new international Airport here in Vlorë! It will take 2-3 years to build and it will have direct flights to the US. That’ll be nice!
It’s a really nice day, sunny and 64° so I went out exploring my neighborhood a bit more. About 2.5 blocks away I found a second meat store, another little produce market and a fresh fish store! I got some salmon that was $7.50 a pound, pretty pricey, especially compared to the little teeny fishies I usually get that are $.75 a pound. And for the first time I saw goat meat for sale….the whole goat was on display at the meat market! I didn’t buy any but I do wonder what it tastes like.
I also went into a little variety store and got some really thick sweatpants and a sweatshirt. I’ve been mourning the nice warm sweatpants I had to leave behind because they were too bulky and too heavy. These weren’t cheap, $20 for both but they’re really nice. The pants are big; I could have used a smaller size but I held them up to me and they seemed too small. They’re just for wearing around the house so big is okay. The man & wife store owners were really sweet.
I sure lucked out with this neighborhood; it’s got everything I need! To think I didn’t want to live in this area because it’s the tourist side of town! I’m so glad I didn’t rule it out completely and not even look at this apartment. Now I really only need to go into the city to get cash from the ATM.
I stopped at my little grocery on the way home for a few items. If the total is over 1000 Leke (about $9) they’ll take a credit or debit card. I think it’s really funny that I can tap my “contactless” debit card but they also still make me sign the receipt. Then I went to the produce market and got lettuce and 3 little tangerines. I just want one bunch of lettuce but they always have two bunches hooked together. Today it was four bunches; a huge armload of it! I can’t keep it fresh long enough. Because it’s not refrigerated here, it’s kinda limp right from the start. But I guess it’s okay if some gets tossed out; it only cost $.70 and the tangerines were 3 for $.08!
It’s less than two weeks until Christmas and I’m feeling kind of Grinchy. I’m not exactly sure why but maybe it something to do with the absolute certainty that I’ll be alone that day. What’s the big deal; I’m always alone that day!? Time to snap out of it.
Albania is about 70% Muslim (20% Orthodox Albanian and 10% Catholic) so Christmas is not nearly as much of a big deal here as in the US, though I have seen some decorated trees here and there. Christmas cards are nonexistent (as are all other greeting cards) and I do miss sending and receiving them. I brought only one Christmas card with me. I sent it to my friends in Hawaii on November 25 (cost $1.80 US for the postage) and it hasn’t arrived yet!
I thought this was a really good article on Albanian Christmas….well New Year really. For the 50 years that Albania was a Communist country, all religions were illegal, so New Year’s was the big holiday of the year.
I did get a coffee grinder and it did solve my almond flour problem! Yay. If I shake it while grinding, it doesn’t even need to be sifted. The grinder also did a great job on flax seeds. In the blender, all they did was fly around and end up exactly the same way they went in.
My biggest pet peeve in Albania is the trash that seems to be everywhere (though the beach is clean; someone must be picking it up). These photos are the areas on both sides of the steps leading to my building. I keep forgetting to grab a trash bag and go down there and pick it up. Maybe if I did that several times, people would catch on?
My cooktop here had two electric and two propane burners which I thought was a great idea! In case of power outage, I could still cook! But the gas burners had never been hooked up so I asked the property manager if they could do that. The next morning the apartment owners showed up with a brand new glass electronic cooktop! She said that the summer renters have kids and they didn’t want gas burners around the kids. ?? So they switched the cooktop so I could have more than just the two burners to cook with. The new cooktop was slightly bigger than the old one as they used a power cutter to enlarge the opening in the countertop. What a mess; sawdust everywhere!
They also brought me a very pretty area rug for the living room. They placed it under the sofa legs and I didn’t realize until after they’d left that it was CROOKED! Oh horrors, my OCD antenna was up and quivering wildly! See how the border is way more exposed at one end?
The sofa was too heavy and I couldn’t budge it but the next day I propped one end of the sofa up on a small saucepan to get the weight off it and was able to get it mostly straight….it’s not perfect but at least it’s not nearly as obvious. I fear I’ll wear a path where I pass through to the kitchen so I’ve adopted a crazy little hopscotch-type maneuver so I only step on the red areas, which I figure will hide dirt a lot better than the cream ones.
And while we’re on the subjject of my OCD, here’s another thing that constantly bugs me…..the green stripes on the back cushions don’t all line up straight with each other! Oh the agony…..
When the owners showed up the other day I wasn’t expecting them so I was in my Staying Home clothes and I was pretty embarrassed. I wore really baggy fleece pants and a fleece shirt that clashed; no bra and hadn’t yet brushed my teeth yet; my hair was sticking up all over and the previous night’s dinner dishes were unwashed! The landlord is supposed to be coming today to check out the bedroom heater so I set my alarm to wake up early and be properly dressed, etc. Wow I’d forgotten how horrible it is to get awakened by an alarm! I can’t believe I went through that torture 5 days a week for nearly 50 years. (And naturally, it’s almost 4 pm and he hasn’t shown up yet!)
Little Bitty Living 