Tag: Albanian Residency

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Albania Albania Residency

Residency Approved!

Oh my! I just got word that my Residency application is approved, just three days before I’m supposed to leave here and go to Shkoder for the summer, yikes!  The Immigration officer told me I’d have to bring a copy of a bank statement showing the first Social Security deposit to my Albanian bank before it would get approved (scheduled first deposit is June 28) but the facilitator tried sending him the form I filled out to change the deposit to my bank here, and evidently it worked!

I have several things I need to do on Monday (a bank deposit of $57, fingerprinting and get my address verified) and then it takes about a week to get my card. So another little zigzag but it seems things are falling into place. I’m nervous about getting all this stuff done right but excited that I’ll finally have it all behind me.

I don’t want to do the 5 hour bus trip to Shkoder and then come back here a week later, so I’m renting a small apartment a couple blocks away for that last week for $30 a night.

I’ve been packing. And repacking. The one big suitcase that’s going with me still won’t quite close, even if I sit on it. I’ve gone through everything a couple times and there’s nothing I think is extraneous. So I think I’ll have to also take my bigger daypack and maybe the small daypack as well. I guess that’s okay; there’s just not much luggage space on the minibuses. I wish I could travel lighter than that but I know these Airbnb’s have crappy scratched & peeling nonstick pans and scanty cooking utensils so I want to take a couple of my good pans and my favorite kitchen gadgets and good sharp knives. I can’t go 3 months without a bathroom scale either, and my supplements also take up a good bit of space. I think I’m gonna make it but that suitcase sure weighs a ton.

I went out to dinner with a couple friends a few days ago and had lamb! I’ve only had it once before, many years ago, and I’ve been wanting to try it again. (I’d also like to try goat) They had lamb ribs on the menu for $7.50 but the waiter said they didn’t have them. He suggested another lamb dish so I ordered that. It was tiny little grilled lamb chops, delicious! I found out later they cost $14! Oops. Oh well, I guess a splurge once in a while is okay, and isn’t it nice that now I can afford it.   We were near Dewayne’s  apartment so we walked over there afterward and chatted awhile. I really liked the location and hope maybe I can find something similar in that area in the fall. I suggested he move out in November but apparently he’s not THAT good a friend. I forgot about having to catch a bus back home and just missed the last bus at 10 p.m. I could have sprung for a taxi but just decided to walk the 1.6 miles home. I need the exercise anyway; I’m so lazy! It’s so nice to be able to go anywhere at any time and be so safe.

My friends are having a farewell dinner for me on Sunday! Wow! And now I’m not leaving, but any excuse to eat out….we’re still going. Nice.

Check out the top flight of these stairs….no handrail!

I saw a photo posted to an AZ Facebook group and thought “my tiny house view is as good as that “. Turns out it was posted by the friend who bought my place, and it IS my view!

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Albania Albania Residency Dentistry in Albania Uncategorized

Summer Plans & Residency

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!

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Never a Dull Moment

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.